National Library of Australia

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Original National Library building (1934), demolished 1968

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.

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 Template:Convert of shelf space. The NLA also hosts and manages the Trove cultural heritage discovery service, which includes access to the Australian Web Archive and National edeposit (NED), a large collection of digitised newspapers, official documents, manuscripts and images, as well as born-digital material.

History and foundation

In 1901 the Commonwealth Parliament Library<ref name=libaus>Template:Cite web</ref> 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 defined the objective of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Library in the following words:<ref name=burmester>Template:Cite webTemplate:Dead link</ref>

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.<ref name=libaus/>

In 1957 the Paton Committee recommended a National Library as an independent statutory body.<ref name=henderson/>

In 1960 the National Library of Australia was created<ref name=libaus/> by the National Library Act 1960,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and each library became a separate entity.<ref name=libaus/>

Building

Prime Minister John Gorton officially opening the National Library on 15 August 1968

The original National Library building on Kings Avenue, Canberra was designed by Edwin Hubert Henderson (1885–1939), who was Chief Architect of the Commonwealth of Australia from 1929 to 1939, and built in 1934. Originally intended to be several wings, only one wing was completed, partly because of the advent of World War II. The 1957 Paton Committee reported that the accommodation was inadequate for a National Library. The building was used for the headquarters of the Canberra Public Library Service until its demolition in 1968, when it became the site of the Edmund Barton Building.<ref name=henderson>Template:Cite web</ref>

In 1963, prime minister Robert Menzies announced the near-completion of working plans for a new National Library building.<ref name=henderson/> The present library building was opened on 15 August 1968 by Prime Minister John Gorton.<ref>Template:Citation</ref><ref>Template:Citation</ref> The building, situated in Parkes, was designed by the architectural firm of Bunning and Madden in the Late Twentieth Century Stripped Classical style. The foyer is decorated in marble, with stained-glass windows by Leonard French and three tapestries by Mathieu Matégot.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> A Tom Bass sculpture called Lintel Sculpture is installed over the entrance to the library.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

The building was listed on the Australian Commonwealth Heritage List on 22 June 2004.<ref name=AHD/>

In 2004 the book A different view : the National Library of Australia and its building art was published which talked about the NLA building.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Reading rooms

The large National Library building is home to various reading rooms and collections. Usage of the reading rooms include speaking to expert staff, browsing the library's reference collection and electronic journals, ebooks, indexes, and databases. The reading rooms also provide free internet and computer use, scanning, photocopying and printing, and the request and access of collection items.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> 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—but also online publications and unpublished material such as manuscripts, pictures and oral histories. Hazel de Berg 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.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

A core Australiana collection is that of John A. Ferguson.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The library's Australiana collections are the nation's most important resource of materials recording Australia's cultural heritage.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> The library has particular collection strengths in the performing arts, 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 holdings.

The library also maintains the National Reserve Braille Collection.

As a national library, the NLA is required by legal deposit provisions enshrined in the Copyright Act 1968 to collect a copy of every Australian publication in the country, which publishers must submit upon publication of the material.<ref name=what>Template:Cite web</ref><ref name=nsla>Template:Cite web</ref>

At the end of the Australian financial year of 2018–19, the National Library collection comprised 7,717,579 items, and an additional Template:Convert of manuscript material.<ref name=stats2019>Template:Cite web</ref> The library's collections of Australiana have developed into the nation's single most important resource of materials recording the Australian cultural heritage. Australian writers, editors and illustrators 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.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> With the assistance and support of library staff from London, New York City, and Jakarta, building various collections have been possible.

Approximately 94.1% of the library's collection had been catalogued by July 2019, a total of 5,453,888 items<ref name=stats2019/> and these are discoverable through the online catalogue.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Digital collections

The library is a world leader in digital preservation techniques,<ref>Template:Cite webTemplate:Cbignore</ref> and has maintained an Internet-accessible archive of selected Australian websites called the Pandora Archive since 1996. The Australian Web Archive, released in March 2019, combines records from PANDORA, the Australian Government Web Archive (AGWA), and other websites published in Australia. In the 2019 federal budget, the government allocated Template:AUD million to the library, intended to be spread over four years to set up a digitisation fund.<ref name=phone>Template:Cite web</ref>

Template:As of, the library had digitised a total of 5,508,008 images.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Where possible, these are delivered directly across the Internet.

Since a 2016 amendment to the Copyright Act, all born-digital 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 (NED) service. 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 of the collaboration.<ref name=ned>Template:Cite web</ref><ref name=nlaar2.5>Template:Cite web</ref>

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, Persian, Indonesian, Japanese, Khmer, Korean, Lao, Manchu, Mongolian, Thai, Timorese, and Vietnamese.

The library has acquired a number of important Western and Asian language scholarly collections from researchers and bibliophiles. These collections include:

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The Asian Collections are searchable via the National library's catalogue.<ref>Asian collections, National Library of Australia</ref>

Pictures and manuscripts

File:Preserving Archipelagus Orientalis.ogv 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 metres 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, New Zealand and the Pacific. 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 Cartulary, the journal of James Cook on HM Bark Endeavour, inscribed on the Memory of the World<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Register in 2001, the diaries of Robert O'Hara Burke and William John Wills from the Burke and Wills expedition, and Charles Kingsford Smith'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, Sir John Latham, Sir Keith Murdoch, Sir Hans Heysen, Sir John Monash, Vance Palmer and Nettie Palmer, A.D. Hope, Manning Clark, David Williamson, W.M. Hughes, Sir Robert Menzies, Sir William McMahon, Lord Casey, Geoffrey Dutton, Peter Sculthorpe, Daisy Bates, Jessie Street, and Eddie Mabo and James Cook both of whose papers were inscribed on UNESCO's Memory of the World Programme Register in 2001.<ref name=mowmabo>Template:Cite web</ref><ref name=mowcook>Template:Cite web</ref>

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 Union of Students, The Australian Ballet, the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust, the Australian Institute of Urban Studies, Australian Industries Protection League, the Australian Conservation Foundation, and the Australian Council of National Trusts. Finally, the library holds about 37,000 reels of microfilm 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.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Media represented in the collection include photographs, drawings, watercolours, oils, lithographs, engravings, etchings and sculpture/busts.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Ephemera

The library contains a large amount of printed ephemera, collected since the early 1960s and also including older materials. These include minor publications, pamphlets, leaflets, invitations, cards, menus, junk mail, as well as larger publications, such as theatre programmes or retail trade catalogues. They are selected based on certain key criteria, such as information content, design elements, period representation, and portraiture. They are divided into various types or topics.<ref name=ephemera/>

This group includes the Performing arts ephemera collection (PROMPT).<ref name=ephemera>Template:Cite web</ref> Within the PROMPT collection, there are further divisions by person or topic, for instance the J.C. Williamson collection of theatre ephemera, and performers such as Dame Nellie Melba and Kylie Minogue.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Since around 2017, a team of volunteers has been using the PROMPT collection to add content to the AusStage database.<ref name=daniels2022>Template:Cite web</ref> The J.C. Williamson Distributed Collection is held across six organisations: the NLA; Australian Performing Arts Collection in Melbourne; Mitchell Library in Sydney; Queensland Performing Arts Centre Museum; Scenic Studios Australia Pty Ltd; and Seaborn, Broughton & Walford Foundation Archives and Library collection.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Both AusStage and the J.C. Williamson Distributed Collection were added to the UNESCO Australian Memory of the World Register in 2021.<ref name=daniels2022/><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

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, publishers and the general public, with membership available to residents of Australia providing access to additional services.<ref name=services>Template:Cite web</ref><ref name=using>Template:Cite web</ref>

Some of the components of the services are:<ref name=services/>

  • For publishers:
  • For librarians:
  • Online, for the general public:
    • The Australian Web Archive, which now incorporates PANDORA (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.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
    • Ask a Librarian for users in need of research assistance or general information about the National Library of Australia.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Trove

File:Trove (NLA website) logo.svg
The Trove logo

Template:Main 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.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> 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.<ref name=stainforth>Template:Cite web</ref>

Publishing

The library seen from Lake Burley Griffin in autumn.

The library produces non-fiction and children's books which explore the collections. These cover subjects including History, Natural History and Art.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> 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.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Electronic copies of some items are able to be ordered, and for members who can visit the library in person, inter-library loans may be obtained to use in the reading rooms.<ref name="National Library of Australia 2020">Template:Cite web</ref>

Directors-General

The following individuals have been appointed as Director-General or any precedent titles:

Directors-General of the National Library of Australia
Ordinal Officeholder Title Term begin Term end Time in office Notes
Template:Nts Arthur Wadsworth Interim Commonwealth Parliamentary Librarian 1901 1927 Template:Age in years years
Template:Nts Kenneth Binns Template:Post-nominals Commonwealth Parliamentary Librarian 1927 1947 Template:Age in years years
Template:Nts Harold Leslie White Template:Post-nominals National Librarian 1947 1970 Template:Age in years years
Template:Nts Allan Percy Fleming Template:Post-nominals 1970 1974 Template:Age in years years
Template:Nts George Chandler Director-General 1974 1980 Template:Age in years years
Template:Nts Harrison Bryan Template:Post-nominals 1980 1985 Template:Age in years years
Template:Nts Warren Horton Template:Post-nominals 1985 1999 Template:Age in years years
Template:Nts Jan Fullerton Template:Post-nominals 1999 2010 Template:Age in years years <ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Template:Nts Anne-Marie Schwirtlich 2011 2017 Template:Age in years years <ref>Library Council Director-General and Executive Member Anne-Marie Schwirtlich, National Library of Australia Template:Webarchive Archived</ref>
Template:Nts Marie-Louise Ayres 2017 present Template:Age in years years <ref>Director-General and Executive Member Dr Marie-Louise Ayres, National Library of Australia</ref>

Funding problems

In 2016, with threatened funding cuts to Trove, a public campaign led to a government commitment of Template:AUD million in December 2016, spread over four years.<ref name=stainforth/><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

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.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Web accessibility

On september 2025, the website of the Template:Label was tested for conformance with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), in its version Template:Wikidata, using Template:Cite Q as evaluation platform, which, in turn, uses Template:Cite Q as automated web accessibilty evaluaton tool (AWAET).

The website of Template:Label obtained a score of Template:Wikidata out of 10. This is known as Template:Wikidata provided by Template:Wikidata, which, in turn, uses Template:Wikidata. The test was taken on Template:Wikidata as part of a research on web accessibility of national libraries around the world.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

This result means that the website of Template:Label can be considered accessible, if the treshold is stablised as 8 out of 10. Howerver efforts still need to be made to achieve full compliance with web accessibility directives.

This section is added to this page in order to raise awarness about the web accessibility barriers faced by persons with disbilities that limit them to equally enjoying the Web. Web accessibilily is considered basic human right by the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> from the United Nations (UN).

See also

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References

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Attribution

Bibliography

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