The National Library of Australia (NLA), formerly the Commonwealth National Library and Commonwealth Parliament Library, is the largest
reference library
A library is a collection of Document, materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or electronic media, digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a ...
in Australia, responsible under the terms of the ''National Library Act 1960'' for "maintaining and developing a national collection of library material, including a comprehensive collection of library material relating to
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...
and the
Australian people
Australians, colloquially known as Aussies, are the citizens, nationals and individuals associated with the country of Australia. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or ethno-cultural. For most Australians, several (or all) ...
", thus functioning as a
national library
A national library is a library established by a government as a country's preeminent repository of information. Unlike public library, public libraries, these rarely allow citizens to borrow books. Often, they include numerous rare, valuable, o ...
. It is located in
Parkes Parkes may refer to:
* Sir Henry Parkes (1815–1896), Australian politician, one of the earliest and most prominent advocates for Australian federation
Named for Henry Parkes
* Parkes, New South Wales, a regional town
* Parkes Observatory, a radi ...
, Canberra,
ACT.
Created in 1960 by the ''National Library Act'', by the end of June 2019 its collection contained 7,717,579 items, with its manuscript material occupying of shelf space. The NLA also hosts and manages the renowned
Trove
Trove is an Australian online library database owned by the National Library of Australia in which it holds partnerships with source providers National and State Libraries Australia, an aggregator and service which includes full text document ...
cultural heritage discovery service, which includes access to the
Australian Web Archive
The Australian Web Archive (AWA) is an publicly available online database of archived Australian websites, hosted by the National Library of Australia (NLA) on its Trove platform, an online library database aggregator. It comprises the NLA's own ...
and
National edeposit
National edeposit (NED) is a collaboration between Australia's nine national, state and territory libraries which provides for the legal deposit, management, storage and preservation of, and access to, published electronic material across Aust ...
(NED), a large collection of
digitised newspapers, official documents, manuscripts and images, as well as
born-digital
The term born-digital refers to materials that originate in a digital form.NDIIPP"Preserving Digital Culture,"Library of Congress. This is in contrast to digital reformatting, through which analog materials become digital, as in the case of file ...
material.
History
In 1901 the
Commonwealth Parliament Library was established to serve the
newly formed Federal Parliament of Australia. From its inception the Commonwealth Parliamentary Library was driven to development of a truly national collection. In 1907 the Joint Parliamentary Library Committee under the Chairmanship of the Speaker, Sir
Frederick William Holder
Sir Frederick William Holder (12 May 185023 July 1909) was an Australian politician. He was Premier of South Australia from June to October 1892 and again from 1899 to 1901. He was a prominent member of the inaugural Parliament of Australia fo ...
defined the objective of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Library in the following words:
The Library Committee is keeping before it the ideal of building up, for the time when Parliament shall be established in the Federal Capital, a great Public Library on the lines of the world-famed Library of Congress at Washington; such a library, indeed, as shall be worthy of the Australian Nation; the home of the literature, not of a State, or of a period, but of the world, and of all time.
From 1923, two forms of name were used concurrently: Commonwealth National Library and Commonwealth Parliament Library, to designate the national and parliamentary collections respectively.
[
In 1960 the National Library of Australia was created][ by the ''National Library Act 1960'', and each library became a separate entity.][
]
Building
The present library building was opened on 15 August 1968 by Prime Minister John Gorton
Sir John Grey Gorton (9 September 1911 – 19 May 2002) was an Australian politician who served as the nineteenth Prime Minister of Australia, in office from 1968 to 1971. He led the Liberal Party during that time, having previously been a l ...
. The building was designed by the architectural firm of Bunning and Madden
Bunning and Madden is an Australian architecture and urban planning firm based in Canberra and Sydney. The firm was founded by Walter Bunning in 1945 in Sydney.Sydney: Self-published, 1970. his copy signed by partners Walter Bunning, Kevin Smi ...
in the Late Twentieth Century Stripped Classical style. The foyer is decorated in marble, with stained-glass windows by Leonard French
Leonard William French OBE (8 October 1928 – 10 January 2017) was an Australian artist, known principally for major stained glass works.
French was born in Brunswick, Victoria to a family of Cornish origin. His stained glass creation ...
and three tapestries by Mathieu Matégot. The building was listed on the Australian Commonwealth Heritage List
The Commonwealth Heritage List is a heritage register established in 2003, which lists places under the control of the Australian government, on land or in waters directly owned by the Crown (in Australia, the Crown in right of the Commonwealth ...
on 22 June 2004.[ A Tom Bass sculpture called ''Lintel Sculpture'' is installed over the entrance to the library.
In 2004 the book "A different view : the National Library of Australia and its building art" was published which talked about the NLA building.
]
Reading rooms
The large National Library building is home to various reading rooms and collections. On the ground floor is the Main Reading Room — this is where the bulk of the Library's Internet access terminals are located, and where wireless internet access is available. Services are also delivered on-site from the Newspaper & Family History zone on the ground floor, the Special Collections Reading Room and the Petherick Reading Room on the 1st floor, and Asian Collections on level 3.
Collections
Australian & General Collection
The Library collects material produced by Australians, for Australians or about the Australian experience in all formats—not just printed works—books, serials, newspapers, maps, posters, music and printed ephemera
Ephemera are transitory creations which are not meant to be retained or preserved. Its etymological origins extends to Ancient Greece, with the common definition of the word being: "the minor transient documents of everyday life". Ambiguous in ...
—but also online publications and unpublished material such as manuscript
A manuscript (abbreviated MS for singular and MSS for plural) was, traditionally, any document written by hand – or, once practical typewriters became available, typewritten – as opposed to mechanically printing, printed or repr ...
s, pictures and oral histories
Oral history is the collection and study of historical information about individuals, families, important events, or everyday life using audiotapes, videotapes, or transcriptions of planned interviews. These interviews are conducted with people wh ...
. Hazel de Berg
Hazel Estelle de Berg (21 March 1913 – 3 February 1984) was a pioneer of oral history in Australia. Between 1957 and 1984 she produced 1291 hour-long sound tape reels of interviews with writers, historians, artists, musicians and scientists a ...
began recording Australian writers, artists, musicians and others in the Arts community in 1957. She conducted nearly 1300 interviews. Together with the Library, she was a pioneer in the field in Australia, working together for twenty-seven years.
A core Australiana collection is that of John A. Ferguson. The Library has particular collection strengths in the performing art
The performing arts are arts such as music, dance, and drama which are performed for an audience. They are different from the visual arts, which are the use of paint, canvas or various materials to create physical or static art objects. Perfor ...
s, including dance.
The Library contains a considerable collection of general overseas and rare book materials, as well as world-class Asian and Pacific collections which augment the Australiana collections. The print collections are further supported by extensive microform
Microforms are scaled-down reproductions of documents, typically either films or paper, made for the purposes of transmission, storage, reading, and printing. Microform images are commonly reduced to about 4% or of the original document size. F ...
holdings.
The Library also maintains the National Reserve Braille
Braille (Pronounced: ) is a tactile writing system used by people who are visually impaired, including people who are Blindness, blind, Deafblindness, deafblind or who have low vision. It can be read either on Paper embossing, embossed paper ...
Collection.
As a national library, the NLA is required by legal deposit
Legal deposit is a legal requirement that a person or group submit copies of their publications to a repository, usually a library. The number of copies required varies from country to country. Typically, the national library is the primary reposit ...
provisions enshrined in the ''Copyright Act 1968
The copyright law of Australia defines the legally enforceable rights of creators of creative and artistic works under Australian law. The scope of copyright in Australia is defined in the '' Copyright Act 1968'' (as amended), which applies the ...
'' to collect a copy of every Australian publication in the country, which publishers must submit upon publication of the material.
At the end of the Australian financial year
A fiscal year (or financial year, or sometimes budget year) is used in government accounting, which varies between countries, and for budget purposes. It is also used for financial reporting by businesses and other organizations. Laws in many ju ...
of 2018–2019, the National Library collection comprised 7,717,579 items, and an additional of manuscript material. The Library's collections of Australiana
Australiana includes the items, people, places, flora, fauna and events of Australian origins. Anything pertaining to Australian culture, society, geography and ecology can fall under the term Australiana, especially if it is endemic to Austra ...
have developed into the nation's single most important resource of materials recording the Australian cultural heritage. Australian writers
Australian(s) may refer to:
Australia
* Australia, a country
* Australians, citizens of the Commonwealth of Australia
** European Australians
** Anglo-Celtic Australians, Australians descended principally from British colonists
** Aboriginal Aus ...
, editors
Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, photographic, visual, audible, or cinematic material used by a person or an entity to convey a message or information. The editing process can involve correction, condensation, or ...
and illustrators
An illustrator is an artist who specializes in enhancing writing or elucidating concepts by providing a visual representation that corresponds to the content of the associated text or idea. The illustration may be intended to clarify complica ...
are actively sought and well represented, whether published in Australia or overseas.
The Library's collection includes all formats of material, from books, journals, websites and manuscripts to pictures, photographs, maps, music, oral history recordings, manuscript papers and ephemera.
Approximately 94.1% of the Library's collection had been catalogued by July 2019, a total of 5,453,888 items[ and these are discoverable through the online catalogue.
]
Digital collections
The Library is a world leader in digital preservation
In library and archival science, digital preservation is a formal endeavor to ensure that digital information of continuing value remains accessible and usable. It involves planning, resource allocation, and application of preservation methods an ...
techniques, and has maintained an Internet-accessible archive of selected Australian websites called the Pandora Archive since 1996. The Australian Web Archive
The Australian Web Archive (AWA) is an publicly available online database of archived Australian websites, hosted by the National Library of Australia (NLA) on its Trove platform, an online library database aggregator. It comprises the NLA's own ...
, released in March 2019, combines records from PANDORA, the Australian Government Web Archive
The Australian Web Archive (AWA) is an publicly available online database of archived Australian websites, hosted by the National Library of Australia (NLA) on its Trove platform, an online library database aggregator. It comprises the NLA's own ...
(AGWA), and other websites published in Australia. In the 2019 federal budget, the government allocated million to the library, intended to be spread over four years to set up a digitisation fund.
, the Library had digitised a total of 5,508,008 images. Where possible, these are delivered directly across the Internet.
Since a 2016 amendment to the ''Copyright Act'', all born-digital
The term born-digital refers to materials that originate in a digital form.NDIIPP"Preserving Digital Culture,"Library of Congress. This is in contrast to digital reformatting, through which analog materials become digital, as in the case of file ...
content must also be deposited in the library (with varying provisions for state libraries as well). The NLA has since May 2019 hosted and managed the National edeposit
National edeposit (NED) is a collaboration between Australia's nine national, state and territory libraries which provides for the legal deposit, management, storage and preservation of, and access to, published electronic material across Aust ...
(NED) service. Libraries ACT
A library is a collection of Document, materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or electronic media, digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a ...
, Libraries Tasmania, Northern Territory Library
Library & Archives NT comprises the Northern Territory Library and the two Northern Territory Archives Centres in Darwin and Alice Springs. Located in Parliament House in Darwin City, it is the premier public research and archival organisati ...
, State Library of New South Wales
The State Library of New South Wales, part of which is known as the Mitchell Library, is a large heritage-listed special collections, reference and research library open to the public and is one of the oldest libraries in Australia. Establish ...
, State Library of Queensland
The State Library of Queensland is the main reference and research library provided to the people of the State of Queensland, Australia, by the state government. Its legislative basis is provided by the Queensland Libraries Act 1988. It contai ...
, State Library of South Australia
The State Library of South Australia, or SLSA, formerly known as the Public Library of South Australia, located on North Terrace, Adelaide, is the official library of the Australian state of South Australia. It is the largest public research l ...
, State Library Victoria
State Library Victoria (SLV) is the state library of Victoria, Australia. Located in Melbourne, it was established in 1854 as the Melbourne Public Library, making it Australia's oldest public library and one of the first free libraries in the ...
and the State Library of Western Australia
The State Library of Western Australia is a research, education, reference and public lending library located in the Perth Cultural Centre in Perth, Western Australia. It is a portfolio agency of the Western Australia Department of Culture and t ...
are the member organisations of the collaboration.
Asian Collections
The Library houses the largest and most actively developing research resource on Asia in Australia, and the largest Asian language collections in the Southern hemisphere, with over half a million volumes in the collection, as well as extensive online and electronic resources. The Library collects resources about all Asian countries in Western languages extensively, and resources in the following Asian languages: Burmese, Chinese
Chinese can refer to:
* Something related to China
* Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity
**''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation
** List of ethnic groups in China, people of ...
, Persian
Persian may refer to:
* People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language
** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples
** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...
, Indonesian
Indonesian is anything of, from, or related to Indonesia, an archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. It may refer to:
* Indonesians, citizens of Indonesia
** Native Indonesians, diverse groups of local inhabitants of the archipelago
** Indonesian ...
, Japanese
Japanese may refer to:
* Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia
* Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan
* Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture
** Japanese diaspor ...
, Khmer, Korean
Korean may refer to:
People and culture
* Koreans, ethnic group originating in the Korean Peninsula
* Korean cuisine
* Korean culture
* Korean language
**Korean alphabet, known as Hangul or Chosŏn'gŭl
**Korean dialects and the Jeju language
** ...
, Lao, Manchu
The Manchus (; ) are a Tungusic East Asian ethnic group native to Manchuria in Northeast Asia. They are an officially recognized ethnic minority in China and the people from whom Manchuria derives its name. The Later Jin (1616–1636) and ...
, Mongolian, Thai
Thai or THAI may refer to:
* Of or from Thailand, a country in Southeast Asia
** Thai people, the dominant ethnic group of Thailand
** Thai language, a Tai-Kadai language spoken mainly in and around Thailand
*** Thai script
*** Thai (Unicode block ...
, Timor
Timor is an island at the southern end of Maritime Southeast Asia, in the north of the Timor Sea. The island is East Timor–Indonesia border, divided between the sovereign states of East Timor on the eastern part and Indonesia on the western p ...
ese, and Vietnamese
Vietnamese may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Vietnam, a country in Southeast Asia
** A citizen of Vietnam. See Demographics of Vietnam.
* Vietnamese people, or Kinh people, a Southeast Asian ethnic group native to Vietnam
** Overse ...
.
The Library has acquired a number of important Western and Asian language scholarly collections from researchers and bibliophiles. These collections include:
* Australian Buddhist Library Collection
* Braga
Braga ( , ; cel-x-proto, Bracara) is a city and a municipality, capital of the northwestern Portuguese district of Braga and of the historical and cultural Minho Province. Braga Municipality has a resident population of 193,333 inhabitants (in ...
Collection (Portuguese in Asia)
* Claasz Collection (Sri Lanka)
* Coedes Collection (Indo-China)
* London Missionary Society
The London Missionary Society was an interdenominational evangelical missionary society formed in England in 1795 at the instigation of Welsh Congregationalist minister Edward Williams. It was largely Reformed in outlook, with Congregational miss ...
Collection (China)
* Luce
Luce may refer to:
People
* Luce (name), as a given name and a surname
* Luce (singer)
Places
* Luče, a town in Slovenia
* Luce, Minnesota, an unincorporated community
* Luce Bay, a large Bay in Wigtownshire in southern Scotland
* Luce Co ...
Collection (Burma)
* McLaren
McLaren Racing Limited is a British motor racing team based at the McLaren Technology Centre in Woking, Surrey, England. McLaren is best known as a Formula One constructor, the second oldest active team, and the second most successful Formul ...
-Human
Humans (''Homo sapiens'') are the most abundant and widespread species of primate, characterized by bipedalism and exceptional cognitive skills due to a large and complex brain. This has enabled the development of advanced tools, culture, ...
Collection (Korea)
* Otley Beyer
Henry Otley Beyer (July 13, 1883 – December 31, 1966) was an American anthropologist, who spent most of his adult life in the Philippines teaching Philippine indigenous culture. A.V.H. Hartendorp called Beyer the "Dean of Philippine ethnolo ...
Collection (Philippines)
* Sakakibara Collection (Japan)
* Sang Ye Sang Ye (born 1955) is the pen name of Shen Dajun, a Chinese journalist, oral historian, and collector. He is the author of two oral histories, ''Chinese Lives: An Oral History of Contemporary China'' (co-authored with the novelist Zhang Xinxin), a ...
Collection (China)
* Simon
Simon may refer to:
People
* Simon (given name), including a list of people and fictional characters with the given name Simon
* Simon (surname), including a list of people with the surname Simon
* Eugène Simon, French naturalist and the genus ...
Collection (East Asia)
* Harold S. Williams Collection (Japan)
The Asian Collections are searchable via the National Library's catalogue.
Pictures and manuscripts
The National Library holds an extensive collection of pictures and manuscripts. The manuscript collection contains about 26 million separate items, covering in excess of 10,492 meters of shelf space (ACA Australian Archival Statistics, 1998). The collection relates predominantly to Australia, but there are also important holdings relating to Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; , ; tpi, Papua Niugini; ho, Papua Niu Gini), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea ( tpi, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niugini; ho, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niu Gini), is a country i ...
, New Zealand
New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...
and the Pacific
The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...
. The collection also holds a number of European and Asian manuscript collections or single items have been received as part of formed book collections.
The Australian manuscript collections date from the period of maritime exploration and settlement in the 18th century until the present, with the greatest area of strength dating from the 1890s onwards. The collection includes a large number of outstanding single items, such as the 14th century Chertsey
Chertsey is a town in the Borough of Runnymede, Surrey, England, south-west of central London. It grew up round Chertsey Abbey, founded in 666 CE, and gained a market charter from Henry I. A bridge across the River Thames first appeared in the ...
Cartulary
A cartulary or chartulary (; Latin: ''cartularium'' or ''chartularium''), also called ''pancarta'' or ''codex diplomaticus'', is a medieval manuscript volume or roll (''rotulus'') containing transcriptions of original documents relating to the fo ...
, the journal of James Cook
James Cook (7 November 1728 Old Style date: 27 October – 14 February 1779) was a British explorer, navigator, cartographer, and captain in the British Royal Navy, famous for his three voyages between 1768 and 1779 in the Pacific Ocean an ...
on HM Bark Endeavour
HMS ''Endeavour'' was a British Royal Navy research vessel that Lieutenant James Cook commanded to Australia and New Zealand on his first voyage of discovery from 1768 to 1771.
She was launched in 1764 as the collier ''Earl of Pembroke'', ...
, inscribed on the Memory of the World Register in 2001, the diaries of Robert O'Hara Burke
Robert O'Hara Burke (6 May 1821c. 28 June 1861) was an Irish soldier and police officer who achieved fame as an Australian explorer. He was the leader of the ill-fated Burke and Wills expedition, which was the first expedition to cross Australi ...
and William John Wills
William John Wills (5 January 1834 – ) was a British surveyor who also trained as a surgeon. Wills achieved fame as the second-in-command of the ill-fated Burke and Wills expedition, which was the first expedition to cross Australia from s ...
from the Burke and Wills expedition
The Burke and Wills expedition was organised by the Royal Society of Victoria in Australia in 1860–61. It consisted of 19 men led by Robert O'Hara Burke and William John Wills, with the objective of crossing Australia from Melbourne in the s ...
, and Charles Kingsford Smith
Sir Charles Edward Kingsford Smith (9 February 18978 November 1935), nicknamed Smithy, was an Australian aviation pioneer. He piloted the first transpacific flight and the first flight between Australia and New Zealand.
Kingsford Smith was b ...
's and Charles Ulm's log of the Southern Cross.
A wide range of individuals and families are represented in the collection, with special strength in the fields of politics, public administration, diplomacy, theatre, art, literature, the pastoral industry and religion. Examples are the papers of Alfred Deakin
Alfred Deakin (3 August 1856 – 7 October 1919) was an Australian politician who served as the second Prime Minister of Australia. He was a leader of the movement for Federation, which occurred in 1901. During his three terms as prime ministe ...
, Sir John Latham, Sir Keith Murdoch
Sir Keith Arthur Murdoch (12 August 1885 – 4 October 1952) was an Australian journalist, businessman and the father of Rupert Murdoch, the current Executive chairman for News Corporation and the chairman of Fox Corporation.
Early life
Murdoc ...
, Sir Hans Heysen, Sir John Monash
General Sir John Monash, (; 27 June 1865 – 8 October 1931) was an Australian civil engineer and military commander of the First World War. He commanded the 13th Infantry Brigade before the war and then, shortly after its outbreak, became co ...
, Vance Palmer
Edward Vivian "Vance" Palmer (28 August 1885 – 15 July 1959) was an Australian novelist, dramatist, essayist and critic.
Early life
Vance Palmer was born in Bundaberg, Queensland, on 28 August 1885 and attended the Ipswich Grammar School. With ...
and Nettie Palmer
Janet Gertrude "Nettie" Palmer (née Higgins) (18 August 1885 – 19 October 1964) was an Australian poet, essayist and Australia's leading literary critic of her day. She corresponded with women writers and collated the Centenary Gift Book which ...
, A.D. Hope
Alec Derwent Hope (21 July 190713 July 2000) was an Australian poet and essayist known for his satirical slant. He was also a critic, teacher and academic. He was referred to in an American journal as "the 20th century's greatest 18th-century ...
, Manning Clark
Charles Manning Hope Clark, (3 March 1915 – 23 May 1991) was an Australian historian and the author of the best-known general history of Australia, his six-volume ''A History of Australia'', published between 1962 and 1987. He has been descri ...
, David Williamson
David Keith Williamson Officer of the Order of Australia, AO (born 24 February 1942) is an Australians, Australian dramatist and playwright. He has also written screenplays and teleplays.
Early life
David Williamson was born in Melbourne, Vi ...
, W.M. Hughes, Sir Robert Menzies
The name Robert is an ancient Germanic given name, from Proto-Germanic "fame" and "bright" (''Hrōþiberhtaz''). Compare Old Dutch ''Robrecht'' and Old High German ''Hrodebert'' (a compound of ''Hrōþ, Hruod'' ( non, Hróðr) "fame, glory ...
, Sir William McMahon
Sir William McMahon (23 February 190831 March 1988) was an Australian politician who served as the 20th Prime Minister of Australia, in office from 1971 to 1972 as leader of the Liberal Party. He was a government minister for over 21 years, t ...
, Lord Casey
Richard Gavin Gardiner Casey, Baron Casey, (29 August 1890 – 17 June 1976) was an Australian statesman who served as the 16th Governor-General of Australia, in office from 1965 to 1969. He was also a distinguished army officer, long-serving ...
, Geoffrey Dutton
Geoffrey 'Geppie' Piers Henry Dutton AO (2 August 192217 September 1998) was an Australian author and historian.
Biography
Dutton was born into a prominent pastoralist family of Anlaby Station near Kapunda, South Australia in 1922. His grandfa ...
, Peter Sculthorpe
Peter Joshua Sculthorpe (29 April 1929 – 8 August 2014) was an Australian composer. Much of his music resulted from an interest in the music of countries neighboring Australia as well as from the impulse to bring together aspects of Aborigin ...
, Daisy Bates, Jessie Street
Jessie Mary Grey, Lady Street (née Lillingston; 18 April 1889 – 2 July 1970) was an Australian diplomat, suffragette and campaigner for Indigenous Australian rights, dubbed "Red Jessie" by the media.
As Australia's only female delegate to th ...
, and Eddie Mabo
Edward Koiki Mabo (''né'' Sambo; 29 June 1936 – 21 January 1992) was an Indigenous Australian man from the Torres Strait Islands known for his role in campaigning for Indigenous land rights in Australia, in particular the landmark decision o ...
and James Cook
James Cook (7 November 1728 Old Style date: 27 October – 14 February 1779) was a British explorer, navigator, cartographer, and captain in the British Royal Navy, famous for his three voyages between 1768 and 1779 in the Pacific Ocean an ...
both of whose papers were inscribed on UNESCO's Memory of the World Programme
Memory is the faculty of the mind by which data or information is encoded, stored, and retrieved when needed. It is the retention of information over time for the purpose of influencing future action. If past events could not be remembered, ...
Register in 2001.
The Library has also acquired the records of many national non-governmental organisations. They include the records of the Federal Secretariats of the Liberal party, the A.L.P, the Democrats, the R.S.L., the Australian Inland Mission
The Australian Presbyterian Mission was founded by the Presbyterian Church of Australia to reach those "beyond the farthest fence" with God's Word. It is better known as the Australian Inland Mission (AIM). Rev. John Flynn was the first superi ...
, the Australian Union of Students
The Australian Union of Students (AUS), formerly National Union of Australian University Students (NUAUS), was a representative body and lobby group for Australian university and college of advanced education students. It collapsed in 1984 and w ...
, The Australian Ballet
The Australian Ballet is the largest classical ballet company in Australia. It was founded by J. C. Williamson's, J. C. Williamson Theatres Ltd and the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust in 1962, with the English-born dancer, teache ...
, the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust
The Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust is a theatre and performing arts company that was founded in September 1954, with the aim of establishing drama, opera and ballet companies nationally.
Founding
In 1954 the Australian Elizabethan Theatre T ...
, the Australian Institute of Urban Studies, Australian Industries Protection League, the Australian Conservation Foundation
The Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) is Australia's national environmental organisation, launched in 1965 in response to a proposal by the World Wide Fund for Nature for a more co-ordinated approach to sustainability.
One high-profil ...
, and the Australian Council of National Trusts
The National Trust of Australia, officially the Australian Council of National Trusts (ACNT), is the Australian national peak body for community-based, non-government non-profit organisations committed to promoting and conserving Australia's Ind ...
. Finally, the Library holds about 37,000 reels of microfilm
Microforms are scaled-down reproductions of documents, typically either photographic film, films or paper, made for the purposes of transmission, storage, reading, and printing. Microform images are commonly reduced to about 4% or of the origin ...
of manuscripts and archival records, mostly acquired overseas and predominantly of Australian and Pacific interest.
The National Library's Pictures collection focuses on Australian people, places and events, from European exploration of the South Pacific to contemporary events. Art works and photographs are acquired primarily for their informational value, and for their importance as historical documents.
Media represented in the collection include photographs, drawings, watercolours, oils, lithographs, engravings, etchings and sculpture/busts.
Services
The National Library of Australia provides a national leadership role in developing and managing collaborative online services with the Australian library community, making it easier for users to find and access information resources at the national level. It provides services to libraries and publishers and the general public, with membership available to residents of Australia providing access to additional services.
Some of the components of the services are:[
*For publishers:
**Prepublication Data Service, ]ISSN
An International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) is an eight-digit serial number used to uniquely identify a serial publication, such as a magazine. The ISSN is especially helpful in distinguishing between serials with the same title. ISSNs ...
s and ISMN
The International Standard Music Number or ISMN (ISO 10957) is a thirteen-character alphanumeric identifier for printed music developed by ISO.
Overview
The original proposal for an ISMN was made by the UK Branch of IAML (International Associat ...
s for Australian publishers.
**National edeposit
National edeposit (NED) is a collaboration between Australia's nine national, state and territory libraries which provides for the legal deposit, management, storage and preservation of, and access to, published electronic material across Aust ...
(NED), to fulfill legal deposit
Legal deposit is a legal requirement that a person or group submit copies of their publications to a repository, usually a library. The number of copies required varies from country to country. Typically, the national library is the primary reposit ...
obligations. NLA hosts and manages the service, whereby all born-digital
The term born-digital refers to materials that originate in a digital form.NDIIPP"Preserving Digital Culture,"Library of Congress. This is in contrast to digital reformatting, through which analog materials become digital, as in the case of file ...
content published in Australia, as required by legal deposit legislation under the ''Copyright Act 1968'', is deposited remotely by the publisher, stored and made accessible to member libraries and the public.
*For librarians:
**The Australian National Bibliographic Database
The Australian National Bibliographic Database (ANBD), formerly part of the Australian Bibliographic Network (ABN) and for some years renamed Kinetica, is a national shared library cataloguing network, hosted by the National Library of Australia ...
(ANBD) and offers free access through the Libraries Australia subscription-based service. It is used for reference, collection development, cataloguing and interlibrary lending.
**National Libraries Gateway.
*Online, for the general public:
**The Australian Web Archive
The Australian Web Archive (AWA) is an publicly available online database of archived Australian websites, hosted by the National Library of Australia (NLA) on its Trove platform, an online library database aggregator. It comprises the NLA's own ...
, which now incorporates PANDORA
In Greek mythology, Pandora (Greek: , derived from , ''pān'', i.e. "all" and , ''dōron'', i.e. "gift", thus "the all-endowed", "all-gifted" or "all-giving") was the first human woman created by Hephaestus on the instructions of Zeus. As Hes ...
(established 1996), the Australian Government Web Archive (AWA) and the ".au" domain archive.
** National Library of Australia Catalogue, a catalogue of resources in NLA which are available to the general public.
Trove
The online services mentioned above, and more, are accessible via the Trove service, which was launched in 2009. Trove is an online library database aggregator, a centralised national service built with the collaboration of major libraries of Australia. Trove's most well known feature is the digitised collection of Australian newspapers. Most NLA resource discovery services are now fully integrated with Trove. The service is able to locate resources about Australia and Australians, which reaches many locations otherwise unavailable to external search engines.
Publishing
The library produces non-fiction and children's books which explore the collections. These cover subjects including History, Natural History and Art. NLA Publishing has been a recipient of several Eve Pownall Award for Information Books.
Membership
Free registration with the library is allowed for all Australian residents, with cards sent to a physical address before use is allowed. Membership confers some extra benefits for users of the library, such as requesting items for use onsite in the reading rooms, and access to a select range of licensed electronic resources from offsite, such as the full text of ''Encyclopaedia Britannica
An encyclopedia (American English) or encyclopædia (British English) is a reference work or compendium providing summaries of knowledge either general or special to a particular field or discipline. Encyclopedias are divided into articles ...
''. Electronic copies of some items are able to be ordered, and for members who can visit the library in person, inter-library loan
Interlibrary loan (abbreviated ILL, and sometimes called interloan, interlending, document delivery, document supply, or interlibrary services, abbreviated ILS) is a service where patrons of one library can borrow materials and receive photocopies ...
s may be obtained to use in the reading rooms.
Directors-General
The following individuals have been appointed as Director-General or any precedent titles:
Funding problems
In 2016, with threatened funding cuts to Trove, a public campaign led to a government commitment of million in December 2016, spread over four years.
By early 2020, with the surge in demand for all types of digital services, the National Library was having to cope with increasingly dwindling staff resources to develop services on Trove and National edeposit, and undertook a restructure of its staffing and operations.
See also
* List of national and state libraries
A national library is established by the government of a nation to serve as the pre-eminent repository of information for that country. Unlike public libraries, they rarely allow citizens to borrow books. Often, they include numerous rare, valua ...
* National and State Libraries Australia
National and State Libraries Australia (NSLA), formerly National and State Libraries Australasia, is the peak body that represents the national, state and territory libraries of Australia. The libraries collaborate on and support working groups a ...
* Parliamentary Triangle, Canberra
The National Triangle, which is referred to as the Parliamentary Triangle, is the ceremonial precinct of Canberra, containing some of Australia's most significant buildings. The National Triangle is formed by Commonwealth, Kings and Constituti ...
* Parliamentary Library of Australia
The Parliamentary Library of Australia (or Commonwealth Parliamentary Library) is the library of the Parliament of Australia, administered by its Department of Parliamentary Services. It provides library services to elected officials, namely memb ...
References
Attribution
Bibliography
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External links
National Library of Australia
National Library of Australia Catalogue
NLA Publishing
Australian Libraries Gateway
Australian Interlibrary Resource Sharing Directory
Electronic Resources Australia (ERA)
NLA Preservation Policy
Trove
National Library of Australia
National Library of Australia, ''Trove, People and Organisation'' record for National Library of Australia
Commonwealth National Library (Australia)
National Library of Australia, ''Trove, People and Organisation'' record for Commonwealth National Library (Australia)
Commonwealth Parliament Library (Australia)
National Library of Australia, ''Trove, People and Organisation'' record for Commonwealth Parliament Library (Australia)
{{DEFAULTSORT:National Library Of Australia
1960 establishments in Australia
Archives in Australia
Commonwealth Government agencies of Australia
Libraries in Canberra
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...
Libraries established in 1960
Tourist attractions in Canberra
Deposit libraries
Sound archives in Australia
Art museums and galleries in Australia
Museums in Canberra
Music archives
Music museums in Australia
Library buildings completed in 1968
Commonwealth Heritage List places in the Australian Capital Territory
Articles containing video clips
Research libraries in Australia