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 Australia. It is a website, a system and a service, [1] the result of a project by National and State Libraries Australia, and is a world-first collaboration. [2] [3] The National Library of Australia (NLA), Libraries ACT, Libraries Tasmania, Northern Territory Library, State Library of New South Wales, State Library of Queensland, State Library of South Australia, State Library Victoria and the State Library of Western Australia are the member organisations, [4] while the system is hosted and managed by the NLA. [5]
The federal Copyright Act 1968 and legal deposit legislation pertaining to each state [6] mandates that publishers of any kind must deposit copies of their publications in the National Library of Australia as well as in the state or territory library in their jurisdiction. Until the 21st century, this has applied to all types of printed materials (and in some states, to audio-visual formats as well), [7] and on 17 February 2016, the federal legal deposit provisions were extended to cover electronic publications of all types. [6] By July 2018, while the Northern Territory was the only jurisdiction with legislation with explicit mention of "internet publications" (in its Publications (Legal Deposit) Act 2004), Queensland's Libraries Act 1988 and Tasmania's Libraries Act 1984 were broad enough to include digital publications. [8] Most states and territories are as of 2020 [update] reviewing or amending existing legislation to extend to digital publications as well. [7]
Director-General of the NLA, Marie-Louise Ayres, stresses the importance of the legal deposit system as a way to capture the country's identity, where everything is captured impartially, and no selection or judgement of the content takes place. [9]
Digital technologies created new challenges, but also an opportunity to facilitate legal deposit, by using specialised software to improve the deposit process, as well as the flow of other complex tasks involved in information retrieval, such as subject indexing, cataloguing and classification. NED provides a streamlined service to publishers, libraries and end users. [4]
With the surge in demand for all types of digital services in the 21st century, the National Library have used increasingly dwindling staff resources to develop services on their Trove platform and the NED service. [10] The development and building of NED was a collaborative project to provide a single digital platform enabling the shared collection and preservation of and access to all Australian born-digital publications, with access to the public through the Trove website. [11] Publishers deposit material via the NED website, and for most end-users, discovery is via Trove. [1]
The core system was first developed in-house at the National Library by a team of business analysts, software developers and library staff, using PRINCE2 project management methodology. It uses open source software such as Drupal and Java. On 17 February 2016, the day the Copyright Act amendment for digital publications came into effect, the first ebook, Napoleon’s Last Island by Thomas Keneally was deposited by staff at Penguin Random House. [12]
Nine libraries meant nine sets of technical requirements and legislation, which had to be accommodated while also balancing open access principles, the federal copyright legal requirements, security of the holdings, and other aspects. [3] The steering group from the nine organisations met 100 times between 2017 and 2019, according to Kate Torney, CEO of State Library Victoria and Chair of NLSA. [1] The National Library had had an edeposit service since early 2016, used by 2,500 Australian publishers. The new system was designed so that the National Library would host the NED service and be responsible for secure storage of deposited copies. As digital formats change, conversion would ensue while maintaining the integrity of the publications. State and territory libraries would have view-only access to commercial publications, disallowing downloads in any form, mirroring the conditions of access from within the National Library building, except where state or territory legislation mandates that a copy of a work must be located within that jurisdiction, in which case the file would be securely transferred to the member library (Northern Territory, South Australia and Victoria [13] ). Access conditions, however, would remain the same. The libraries would continue to purchase copies of publications for their patrons to borrow and use for reference purposes. [14] Under the legislation (section 195CD (1) (c) (i)), publishers are required to deposit digital publications without Technological Protection Measures (TPM) or Digital Rights Management (DRM); that is, the copy must contain all content and functionality, without protection measures such as password protection or subscription paywalls. [13]
Briefings on the service were presented at the VALA and Asia-Pacific Library and Information Conferences in 2018. [14]
Online material is required to be provided to the relevant library or libraries if requested; if not available on a publicly accessible website, publishers can use NED to deposit the material. Along with PANDORA web archive service, NED effects digital deposit at the federal level; NED is designed to also include digital deposit at state and territory level. [8] [15]
Individual state libraries request publishers to fulfill their legal obligations by depositing their digital publications via the NED portal. [16] [17] Public access to the collection is available online through Trove, or from all national, state and territory libraries. [18] Deposited items progress from the NED deposit portal through to Libraries Australia, Trove, WorldCat and all NSLA library catalogues. [5]
The system was built over two years, [3] after two years of scoping and planning. [1] The nationwide service went live on 30 May 2019. [3] [18] All existing NLA edeposit content and most of the State Library of Queensland’s collection were migrated to the database prior to release, with the other libraries following suit soon afterwards. [5]
NED was formally launched by the Minister for Communications, Cyber Safety and the Arts, Paul Fletcher, on 16 August 2019. [3] [19] [20]
Major benefits of NED include: [4]
NED is not the first electronic depository with one deposit point for a network of libraries; for example, the British Library’s Publisher Submission Portal is similar. However, unlike the British Library and the German model at the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, where public access is only available in the reading rooms in the libraries, among other constraints, NED allows for remote access by the general public for most of the content. [21]
A number of other factors also contribute to its uniqueness: [21]
Other benefits touted by project collaborators include ease of use for publishers, more content overall, and the enhanced ability to collect a wider sweep of material from culturally and linguistically diverse communities, including migrants and Indigenous Australians. [22]
Reactions from publishers was positive from the beginning: more than 50 items were deposited by publishers within the first 24 hours of its initial launch in May 2019. [5]
Tim Coronel, manager of the Small Press Network, said that NED had made the process much easier and reduced the cost for small publishers, and that it would also help authors in the longer term, as their books would still be able to be found in the national collection even after it had gone out of print. [23]
NED was a finalist in the "Excellence in multi-agency partnership award" category of the 2019 Australian Government Digital Awards (formerly ICT Awards). [24] [25]
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 world. It is also Australia's busiest library and, as of 2018, the world's fourth-most-visited library.
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 repository of these copies. In some countries there is also a legal deposit requirement placed on the government, and it is required to send copies of documents to publicly accessible libraries.
The National Library of Australia (NLA), formerly the Commonwealth National Library and Commonwealth Parliament Library, is the largest reference library 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 and the Australian people", thus functioning as a national library. It is located in Parkes, Canberra, ACT.
PANDORA, or Pandora, is a national web archive for the preservation of Australia's online publications. Established by the National Library of Australia in 1996, it has been built in collaboration with Australian state libraries and cultural collecting organisations, including the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, the Australian War Memorial, and the National Film and Sound Archive. It is now one of three components of the Australian Web Archive.
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 the Arts, and facilitated by the Library Board of Western Australia.
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. Established in 1869 its collections date back to the Australian Subscription Library established in the colony of New South Wales in 1826. The library is located on the corner of Macquarie Street and Shakespeare Place, in the Sydney central business district adjacent to the Domain and the Royal Botanic Gardens, in the City of Sydney. The library is a member of the National and State Libraries Australia (NSLA) consortium.
The Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS), established as the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies (AIAS) in 1964, is an independent Australian Government statutory authority. It is a collecting, publishing and research institute and is considered to be Australia's premier resource for information about the cultures and societies of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. The institute is a leader in ethical research and the handling of culturally sensitive material and holds in its collections many unique and irreplaceable items of cultural, historical and spiritual significance. The collection at AIATSIS has been built through over 50 years of research and engagement with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and is now a source of language and culture revitalisation, native title research and family and community history. AIATSIS is located on Acton Peninsula in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory.
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 contains a significant portion of Queensland's documentary heritage, major reference and research collections, and is an advocate of and partner with public libraries across Queensland. The library is at Kurilpa Point, within the Queensland Cultural Centre on the Brisbane River at South Bank.
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 library in the state, with a collection focus on South Australian information, being the repository of all printed and audiovisual material published in the state, as required by legal deposit legislation. It holds the "South Australiana" collection, which documents South Australia from pre-European settlement to the present day, as well as general reference material in a wide range of formats, including digital, film, sound and video recordings, photographs, and microfiche. Home access to many journals, newspapers and other resources online is available.
The National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP) of the United States was an archival program led by the Library of Congress to archive and provide access to digital resources. The program convened several working groups, administered grant projects, and disseminated information about digital preservation issues. The U.S. Congress established the program in 2000, and official activity specific to NDIIPP itself wound down between 2016 and 2018. The Library was chosen because of its role as one of the leading providers of high-quality content on the Internet. The Library of Congress has formed a national network of partners dedicated to preserving specific types of digital content that is at risk of loss.
The State Library of Tasmania is the reference, special collections, research and public lending library in the Tasmanian capital of Hobart, Australia. It is part of Libraries Tasmania. Libraries Tasmania includes a state-wide network of library services, community learning, adult literacy and the State’s archives and heritage services.
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 organisation focused on the history, development and culture of the Northern Territory of Australia. The library holds more than 108,000 books and 30,000 items. The archive holds Northern Territory Government records, which are normally opened 30 years after they were created.
The National Library of Albania is an Albanian national library headquartered in the capital, Tirana. It was founded in 1920 and inaugurated on December 10, 1922.
A digital library, also called an online library, an internet library, a digital repository, a library without walls, or a digital collection is an online database of digital objects that can include text, still images, audio, video, digital documents, or other digital media formats or a library accessible through the internet. Objects can consist of digitized content like print or photographs, as well as originally produced digital content like word processor files or social media posts. In addition to storing content, digital libraries provide means for organizing, searching, and retrieving the content contained in the collection. Digital libraries can vary immensely in size and scope, and can be maintained by individuals or organizations. The digital content may be stored locally, or accessed remotely via computer networks. These information retrieval systems are able to exchange information with each other through interoperability and sustainability.
Digital Collections Selection Criteria are applied by organisations creating a digital library which of their existing holdings and forthcoming acquisitions to digitize for inclusion.
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 documents, digital images, bibliographic and holdings data of items which are not available digitally, and a free faceted-search engine as a discovery tool.
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 addressing issues including: copyright issues, archival collections, collection development, marketing, collecting and preserving digital content, collections and services focusing on Indigenous Australians, and other issues relating to the collection, storage and dissemination of the various types of resources held by member institutions. It also compiles annual statistics on public library activities and usage throughout Australia, and publishes statistics on the services of its own collaborating libraries. Precursors to the organisation include the State Librarians Council, the State Libraries Council and Council of Australian State Libraries (CASL).
Libraries Tasmania, formerly LINC Tasmania, is the Tasmanian state government-run organisation that operates the state's reference library, a network of public lending libraries, archives, heritage, adult education, and adult literacy services. Earlier predecessors of the network were HuonLINC and the Community Knowledge Network.
Marie-Louise Ayres is a librarian whose work has centered on providing digital access to cultural resources throughout Australia. Since 2017 she has been the Director-General of the National Library of Australia.
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 PANDORA archive, the Australian Government Web Archive (AGWA) and the National Library of Australia's ".au" domain collections. Access is through a single interface in Trove, which is publicly available. The Australian Web Archive was created in March 2019, and is one of the biggest web archives in the world. Its purpose is to provide a resource for historians and researchers, now and into the future.
Special Issue 14th International Conference on Open Repositories 2019 – All The User Needs
This article incorporates text by Lemon, Barbara; Blinco, Kerry; Somes, Brendan available under the CC BY 4.0 license.