On Friday, 16 August 2024, Australia’s national, state and territory libraries are celebrating five years since the official launch of the National edeposit service (NED). This innovative and collaborative service collects, preserves, and provides nationwide access to the national collection of digital documentary heritage of Australia, for the benefit of all Australians.
What is the national collection?
Since the earliest days of libraries in Australia, the national, state and territory libraries have been collecting, preserving, and sharing Australia’s stories and have collectively built a vital national collection of the country’s documentary heritage using a mandate known as ‘legal deposit’.
Legal deposit legislation requires publishers to deposit one copy of all published material with their national, and relevant state or territory, library, depending on where the item was published. This legislated mandate is important because it means the national collection includes everything, free from political, moral, aesthetic, or literary judgements, ensuring that everything published in Australia is valued and treasured equally by the libraries who share the responsibility to preserve our country’s documentary heritage and stories.
Legal deposit collections help library users-researchers, readers, and audiences everywhere-to understand the Australian experience. For the national, state and territory libraries, being a legal deposit library is one of their most important responsibilities.
How does legal deposit work?
Legal deposit legislation has been in place from as early as 1869, when copyright laws were introduced in the Colony of Victoria, and national legal deposit was enacted with the Copyright Act of 1912. These laws enabled the creation of a vast collection of print publications, documenting the history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Australia, for all to access.
Today the Commonwealth Copyright Act continues to include deposit provisions that require all Australian publishers to deposit a copy of their publication with the National Library of Australia. All the state and territories, except for the ACT, have legal deposit legislation. In New South Wales, Queensland and South Australia, the legal deposit legislation requires publishers to also deposit publications in parliamentary and university libraries. Further, all material of particular relevance to South Australia, must be deposited with the State Library of South Australia regardless of where it is published.
Why develop the NED service?
For many years, publishers—including familiar names such as Penguin Random House, Allen and Unwin, and newspaper publishers such as NewsCorp–met their legal deposit obligations by putting their publications into envelopes and posting them to their state or territory library, and the National Library of Australia. The rapid rise of digital publishing over the last 20 years challenged this traditional model. In 2016, when Commonwealth legal deposit legislation was extended to include electronic publications, it presented an opportunity for Australia’s national, state and territory libraries to develop a single service for publishers to meet their legal deposit obligations and manage at scale the deposit, storage, preservation, discovery, and delivery of published electronic material across Australia. The NED service went live in 2019 and the national, state and territory libraries became NED member libraries.
The rise in digital has also democratised publishing and made it more accessible for everyone – including community groups, historical societies, schools, clubs, churches, and a growing number of self-publishers – to record and publish their stories and ideas. The national collection via NED encompasses a vibrant independent and small press publishing community, as well as government publishers at Commonwealth, State and Local Government levels. These publications are valued items in the national collection and take their place alongside major works from some of the largest publishers in the world.
What’s in the NED collection, and how is it accessed?
The success in building a representative national collection is achieved through partnerships with all publishing communities across Australia. Since launching in 2019, over 10,000 publishers have interacted with the NED service, depositing more than 100,000 titles. These titles include almost 800,000 electronic books, journal issues and articles, maps, music scores, reports and so much more.
On a typical day in NED land, Australian authors, and publishers deposit approximately 150 publications, encompassing everything from the latest works by prize-winning authors like Alexis Wright, to daily editions of newspapers, such as The Age in Melbourne and NT News in the Northern Territory.
There will be magazine issues from specialist clubs, like Freewheeling by the Rover Owners’ Club in NSW and ACT, and the Wine and Viticulture Journal from South Australia, Tasmania’s Biosecurity Strategy by the Department of Natural Resources and Environment, and newsletters like Palm Island Voice from Queensland and the fabulous Ferreting Around from the West Australian Ferret and Ferreting Society. All are equally important parts of the national collection.
The NED member libraries understand the importance of protecting publishers’ commercial interests and the intellectual property of creators. Public access to deposited content is provided in accordance with the Copyright Act, legal deposit laws, and the access conditions specified by depositors though the deposit process.
Many publications are available openly on the internet, while others are available onsite at national, state and territory libraries. Some of the most viewed open access NED publications over the last 6 months include Guidelines to First Nations Collection Description, A guide to the Main Roads rest areas and roadside amenities : on major routes in Western Australia and the Sydney Royal Dog Show Catalogue.
Publications deposited via the NED service can be found on Trove and the member library catalogues. As part of NED’s 5th birthday celebrations, this significant national collection will be easier to discover with the release of the NED Collection feature on Trove.
Collection features highlight special collections within Trove. National edeposit: Collecting Australia’s electronic publications brings together everything that has been deposited into NED into one web page for you to explore. The ‘Explore’ tab is a way of browsing the collection by subjects added by cataloguers, and tags added by the people using Trove. Selecting any of the words in the word cloud will limit the results to that subject or tag. The ‘Search’ tab can be used to keyword search the NED collection.
What do the next five years look like?
The collaborative approach that drove the development and implementation of NED has continued, with ongoing enhancements to ensure that the service meets the evolving needs of publishers, library users, and NED libraries. This work is guided by consultation with key stakeholders and the NED Strategic Plan 2023-2026. The Strategic Plan outlines a vision of an innovative service that is valued by publishers, library users, and member libraries, preserving our nation’s documentary heritage now and for the future. NED’s strategic goals and initiatives will be realised through the delivery of projects staged over the three years of the Strategic Plan.
A survey with publishers using the NED service was completed in May 2024. There were over 1,000 responses providing valuable feedback and identifying key areas for improvement, and the member libraries will be actioning these over the next 12-18 months.
If you would like any more information about NED please contact the NED Program Manager, Jo Ritale, at jo.ritale@nsla.org.au. If you are publishing in Australia, you can also contact your NED member library to find out more about what you need to deposit and how. Details are here.
