Online Australian Publications: Selection Guidelines for Archiving and Preservation by the National Library of Australia
Contents
4 General selection guidelines
- 4.1 Australian content
- 4.2 Multiple versions
- 4.3Authority and research value
- 4.4 Defining title parameters
5 Selection guidelines for priority categories
- 5.1 Commonwealth and ACT government publications
- 5.2 Publications of tertiary education institutions
- 5.3 Conference proceedings
- 5.4 E-journals
- 5.5 Titles referred by indexing and abstracting agencies
- 5.6 Topical sites
6 Selection guidelines for other categories
- 6.1 Annual reports
- 6.2 Digitised materials
- 6.3 Educational material
- 6.4 Exhibitions
- 6.5 Ethnic community sites
- 6.6 Juvenile publications
- 6.7 Literary works
- 6.8 Maps
- 6.9 Music
- 6.10 Newspapers
- 6.11 Organisational and personal sites
- 6.12 Other protocols, e.g., FTP, gopher, email
- 6.13 Pacific publications
- 6.14 Religious sites
- 6.15 State government publications
Appendix 1 Decision table for publications available in multiple formats
Appendix 2 Subject categories for topical sites to be collected on a rolling three year basis
1. Introduction
1.1 The National Library of Australia began selecting Australian online publications for archiving and preservation at the beginning of 1996. It recognised the need to preserve Australia's documentary heritage in online formats as well as in the traditional formats of its existing collections. In order to store, manage and provide access to archived publications, the Library built PANDORA: Australia's Web Archive, with its associated policy, procedures and technical infrastructure, including a digital archiving management system (1).
1.2 The Library placed emphasis from the beginning on the need for a collaborative approach to ensuring long-term access to online Australian publications, as the volume of material to be preserved is too large for one organisation to deal with adequately. In 1998 the State Library of Victoria was the first agency to become a PANDORA partner and by 2003 all of the mainland State libraries, the Northern Territory Library, ScreenSound Australia, and the Australian War Memorial had become partners. The State Library of Tasmania has established its own archive for Tasmanian publications - Our Digital Island - and there are strong cooperative links between the two archives.
1.3 Other sectors with which it would be beneficial for the Library to work are the tertiary education, government and commercial publishing sectors. It is envisaged that in time such sectors will establish archives of their own output and that these will form part of a national, distributed archive with individual nodes, including PANDORA, linked and conforming to common standards. The Library considers that is has a role to play in fostering collaboration within this framework and will work with key stakeholders to develop the national distributed archive.
1.4 Since the mid 1990s there have been a small number of initiatives by national libraries around the world that have explored different approaches to archiving national documentary heritage. The National Library of Australia has kept a close watch on developments elsewhere in order to learn from them.
- Selective archiving of static web resources: Denmark and Canada are the principle exponents of this approach and Japan is just starting. Resources that are like print publications and that do not change or contain inter-active or dynamic elements are archived on a selective basis, with library staff making the selection decisions.
- Selective archiving of static and dynamic web resources: Australia is the only known country archiving dynamic as well as static publications and web sites, once again with a high degree of intellectual input from library staff.
- Whole of domain harvesting: Libraries attempt to harvest automatically the entire web domain of their respective countries using harvesting robots and a minimum of human intervention. This involves harvesting not only all the resources in the specific country domain but also identifying those of country origin or subject matter in the .com and other generic domains. Sweden, Finland, Iceland and Norway are pursuing this approach.
- Combination of the selective and whole of domain approaches: The Bibliotheque Nationale is attempting to program a robot to archive both automatically and selectively those resources likely to be of research value.
- Archiving based on collaborative agreements with selected commercial publishers: The Netherlands has developed technical infrastructure and organisational relationships with a few commercial publishers, including Elsevier, to archive, preserve and provide limited access to the whole digital output of the publishers concerned. The Bibliotheque Nationale has also recognised the need to work with publishers for deposit of the 'deep web', which is out of reach of crawlers, and includes a large amount of rich web content.
1.5 While there are disadvantages in the selective approach to archiving, it enables libraries to achieve four important objectives
- Each item in the archive is quality assessed and functional to the fullest extent permitted by current technical and resource capabilities;
- Each item in the archive can be fully catalogued and therefore can become part of the national bibliography;
- Each item in the archive can be made accessible, at least to a limited extent. In the case of Australia, all items are either accessible now or, in relation to commercial publications, will be accessible in the future when they are no longer commercially viable, owing to the fact that permission to make publications available to the public via the web have been negotiated with the publishers;
- The 'significant properties' of resources within the archive can be analysed and determined both for individual resources and for classes of them. This enhances our knowledge of preservation requirements and enable strategies for preservation to be put into place.
1.6 The selective approach remains the most viable for the Library, given the resource constraints and the Library's requirement for an archive of high quality online publications processed in a way that ensures they are discoverable, accessible and functional for current and future researchers.
1.7 However, the Library acknowledges the disadvantages of the selective approach, including the subjective nature of the judgements about the value of resources to be included, and the fast changing information and research environment, which make it difficult to know how researchers will want to use information in the future. It intends to augment the selective archive with some whole domain harvests, although in the foreseeable future experimentation is likely to focus on sub-domains, e.g., asn.au, gov.au, rather than a harvest of the entire Australian domain.
1.8 In 2002-03, after seven years of selecting and archiving online Australian publications, a review of the selection guidelines written in 1996 was undertaken. When setting the terms of reference for the review, it was anticipated that it would lead to the identification of new categories of online publications/information not previously collected and recommendations for expanding collecting. The review did indeed highlight that there are types of resources we are not collecting at all, as well as significant gaps in our collecting of some categories specified in our existing selection guidelines. Under combined circumstances of increased online publishing output in all the existing categories and staff reductions in Technical Services, extension of collecting scope was not considered possible.
1.9 A paper documenting the review was considered by the Collection Development Management Committee (CDMC), which endorsed all the recommendations (2).
1.10 The key finding of the review was that the limited staff resources available for this collecting activity cannot keep pace with the increasing volume of online publications. With considerable regret, CDMC recognised that is therefore necessary to make a choice between collecting a broader range of publications superficially, or focusing collecting activity on defined areas in some depth. It endorsed the second option. Although it will mean collecting a smaller proportion of the available material than is desirable, it was agreed that priority should be given to the six categories of publications detailed in paragraph 3.5.
1.11 This approach will have a number of consequences, both positive and negative.
- It is expected that the proposed approach will strengthen the usefulness of the collection from one point of view by taking a more systematic approach to content development, reflecting development over time and providing an historical perspective.
- This approach, together with these new selection guidelines, will enable the Library to communicate more clearly what is archived to publishers, researchers and other interested parties.
- However, the proposed approach would be at the cost of some breadth and diversity of sites in the Archive. The choice is between collecting a broader range of publications superficially, or focusing the collection activity and archiving defined areas in some depth, at least until other sectors are in a position to take responsibility for their own resources.
- It also needs to be recognised that it is unlikely that anyone else in Australia at this point in time will archive the social/cultural/community sites that the Library and partners can no longer manage. A certain amount of them are likely to be gathered by the Internet Archive, though a lot of these gatherings will be incomplete and no one really knows the long-term future of this archive.
1.12 These revised selection guidelines incorporate the recommendations of the review and are for use at the operational level by the National Library. The Library's Collection Development Policy is also available (3). Section 3 deals with Australian printed and electronic materials.
1.13 Each of the PANDORA partners selects publications for the Archive according to its own selection guidelines, which are also available on the PANDORA home page (4).
1.14 Publications archived by the National Library, as well as by all of the partners, are stored centrally on a National Library server. Display and preservation copies are maintained, and archiving, storage, management and display is mediated by the PANDORA Digital Archiving System.
1.15 Before archiving, the National Library (and all other PANDORA partners) negotiates with publishers for permission to copy the publications and to make them available from the Archive. Most of the publications in the Archive are freely available from the publisher's site and also from the Archive to anyone in the world.
1.16 A small proportion of the titles in the Archive are commercial publications. In order to protect the commercial interests of publishers, a period of restricted access is negotiated with publishers. The Digital Archiving Section aims to negotiate the shortest possible period of restriction and the broadest possible access consistent with protecting the publishers' interests. The Digital Archiving System then ensures that restricted publications are accessible only from a single PC in the Main Reading Room on which electronic copying and communication has been disabled.
1.17 The legal deposit provisions within the Copyright Act 1968 do not cover electronic publications. The National Library and ScreenSound Australia together are working to have the legislation changed to include all non-print formats.
2. Terminology
2.1 In this document, the term 'online' is used in preference to 'electronic', 'networked' or 'digital' when describing documents published on the Internet.
2.2 'Home page' is used in the limited sense of the first screen or entry point for a site. It is the default page the reader is taken back to when s/he clicks on the home page icon within a site.
2.3 'Site' is used to mean a collection of linked documents, mostly with the same basic Internet address (internal links), although there are often links to documents on other sites (external links) as well. It is a general term which includes serials, monographs and what are often referred to loosely as 'home pages'.
2.4 'Title' is used in the sense of an entity that is being considered, or has been selected, for preservation. It may be a single document, or a number of linked documents with the same basic Internet address.
2.5 In these guidelines the term 'to archive' is used to mean the act of down loading from the Internet and storing on the Library's server or some form of offline storage.
2.6 The term 'to preserve' is used to mean taking certain steps, including archiving, organising, describing, refreshing and migrating of titles, to ensure that the Library can provide long term access.
2.7 For discussion of 'publication', see paragraph 3.4.
3. Selection Intentions
3.1 In the print format, the National Library aims to build a comprehensive collection of publications (subject to agreements with other collecting agencies). Online publishing, however, is different from print publishing and will be treated differently. The potential volume of online material to be dealt with is overwhelming in relation to the resources currently available. A higher degree of selectivity is therefore necessary for online publications than is the case with print. In addition, online publications are often mounted on the Internet without the quality filtering mechanism provided by editors and publishers of printed materials. Consequently, standards are much more variable than they are in print.
3.2 Distinctions between traditional categories of documents such as books, serials, manuscripts, working drafts and organisational records are blurred in the electronic environment. It is not the intention of the Library to preserve organisational records and similar materials, which are the domain of archives and record management. Ongoing discussions with the National Archives of Australia are taking place to clarify our complementary roles in preserving electronic documents.
3.3 In the online world the boundaries of a publication are often not as clear-cut as they are in print. In some cases, particularly when part of a web site is being selected for archiving, the selection decision defines what the publication is in the context of the Archive, the extent of it, the 'title' for the purposes of bibliographic description and archiving.
3.4 The Library has struggled since 1996 to find a useful working definition of 'publication'. Currently we are working with the following:
A publication is information, regardless of its format or method of delivery, that is made available to the general public, or to an identified public, either free of charge or for a fee. In theory this includes everything publicly available via the Internet. In practice the National Library of Australia will selectively collect only certain types of nationally significant Australian online publications without print equivalents, including both those that are free of charge and those for which there is a fee for access. The Library will generally not archive in PANDORA organisational records and other materials made available via intranets. Categories of publications from which the Library will select in accordance with the selection guidelines include but are not limited to:
- Journals, newspapers, newsletters and other serials
- Conference proceedings
- Substantial reports, papers and speeches
- Annual reports
- Maps
- Substantial literary works
- Public accountability documents, such as environmental impact statements and exposure drafts for public comment
- Databases of information for public access
- Any document that would formerly have been published in print
- Any document eligible for an ISSN, ISBN or ISMN
- Every new edition/version of any of the above (this does not include minor changes)
- Web sites or parts of web sites, which provide substantial or unique information about a topic, organisation, person of national significance, project or event
- Other categories not included here, which the Library may consider from time to time would have long term research value.
3.5 Inclusions
Archiving will focus on the following categories:
(i) Commonwealth and ACT government publications (State government publications will be left to the State libraries)
(ii) Publications of tertiary education institutions
(iii) Conference proceedings
(iv) E-journals
(v) Items referred by indexing and abstracting agencies (which frequently are from the first three categories but also include items with print versions)
(vi) Topical sites:(a) Sites in nominated subject areas (see Appendix 2) that would be collected on a rolling three year basis; and
(b) Sites documenting key issues of current social or political interest, such as election sites, Sydney Olympics, Bali bombing
More specific selection guidelines for each of these categories are detailed in Section 5.
3.6 This approach will not preclude us from collecting any site of a high standard and long-term research value, regardless of subject, format, or publication type. But we will give priority to the categories listed above and subjects detailed in Section 5. This means that some categories currently being collected will not be given priority but will be collected only as resources allow.
3.7 Exclusions
The following categories will generally not be collected, though exceptions may be made.
- Blogs (except those that support the academic publications category)
- CAMS (a web site employing a web camera that uploads digital images for broadcast)
- Datasets (5)
- Discussion lists, chat rooms, bulletin boards and news groups
- Drafts and works in progress, even if they otherwise meet the selection guidelines
- Games
- Individual articles and papers
- News sites
- Online daily newspapers for which print versions exist
- Organisational records
- Portals and other sites that serve the sole purpose of organising Internet information
- Promotional sites and advertising
- Sites that are compilations of information from other sources and are not original in content
- Theses (the responsibility of universities and the Australian Digital Theses Project)
- Titles not published on the Internet.
3.8 In general, where there are both online and print versions of a publication available, the latter (print) will be acquired for the National Collection in preference to the online version. The online version (including online versions of NLA's own print publications) will only be selected for preservation as well if it has significant additional information or value. The online version will be selected even when there is a print version when an indexing or abstracting agency has requested a persistent identifier for the title. Where there are both online and CD ROM or floppy disk versions available, the online version is preferred because the technical obstacles to long-term preservation are fewer for online publications. When it is a choice between online and other formats not already mentioned above, for instance, microform, a decision will be made on a case by case basis.
3.9 The National Library will not attempt to preserve all versions/editions of a selected online title, just as we do not attempt to preserve all stages of a print loose leaf item. In the online environment, publications can and often do change frequently and it is not feasible to capture all instances of change. A decision will be made on the frequency of capture desirable for each title. The publication pattern, the importance of the information, and the stability of the site will be factors that affect this decision. Some titles will be captured as comprehensively as possible, while others may have just a one off 'snapshot' taken of them.
3.10 The file format of an online publication is no barrier to selection, which is based on intellectual content only. In practice this may mean that some selected titles cannot be archived for the time being because of technical inhibitors. For instance, the Library has still not found a solution to the archiving of publications structured as databases. However, the Library actively seeks solutions to technical barriers and this approach has meant that some publications that at first could not be archived, have now been included.
3.11 The Library is exploring ways of identifying, selecting, archiving and cataloguing government publications in an automatic or semi-automatic way in order to increase the volume that can be taken into the Archive. Assuming this can be done, it is likely to mean relinquishing control over selection to the staff of government agencies who will prepare batches of metadata for intake by the Library into Kinetica.
4. General Selection Guidelines
Each of the PANDORA partners has developed its own selection guidelines all of which are published on the PANDORA home page (6). Broadly, the National Library takes responsibility for Commonwealth government publications and other publications of national significance. The State libraries and the Northern Territory Library and Information Service take responsibility for the government publications of their jurisdiction and for other publications of State or local significance. ScreenSound Australia archives sites relating to film and music, and the Australian War Memorial archives sites relating to war and the military.
4.1 Australian content
4.1.1 To be selected for national preservation, a significant proportion of a work should
- be about Australia (7); or
- be on a subject of social, political, cultural, religious, scientific or economic significance and relevance to Australia and be written by an Australian author; or
- be written by an Australian (8) of recognised authority and constitute a contribution to international knowledge.
4.1.2 It may be located on either an Australian or an overseas server. Australian authorship or editorship alone is insufficient grounds for national preservation. In the case of online publications, content is the pre-eminent factor determining selection.
4.2 Multiple versions
4.2.1 As indicated in paragraph 3.8, when a title is available both in print as well as online, the online version will generally only be preserved when it has significant additional information or value. If the National Library does not hold the print version, it will be acquired (providing it is within scope of the Collection Development Policy). However, see exception for indexed publications in Section 5.5..
4.2.2 Where there are both online and CD ROM or floppy disk versions available, the online version is normally preferred. However, when there are effective differences in content and/or presentation both versions may be sought. In cases where, for technical reasons, essential content cannot be downloaded and/or useful functionality retained, the physical format version may be sought either instead of or in addition to the online version.
4.3 Authority and research value
4.3.1 High priority is given to authoritative (9) publications with long-term research value (10). The National Library will preserve scholarly online publications (indicated in the case of e journals by peer review) without physical format equivalents, whether or not they are preserved elsewhere.
4.3.2 Online publications that are not considered authoritative or do not have reasonable research value will not be selected comprehensively. However, the Library will seek to include in the PANDORA Archive examples of the different types of online publications on a wide range of subjects to document Australian society as it is represented on the Internet. See paragraph 5.6 and Appendix 2 for selection guidelines.
4.3.3 Where an online publication provides a superficial view of information which is readily available elsewhere, either in print or electronic formats, or where it is a compilation of non-original material, it will not be selected for preservation. (This differs from the policy for print publications, which would be taken in on Legal Deposit whether or not they are authoritative, are of research value or provide a superficial view of a subject.)
4.3.4 Support or sponsorship by an official funding body would be one factor only, which might influence a decision in favour of selection for national preservation.
4.3.5 Innovative examples of types of Internet publications that may have future research value because of experimental use of new technology may be selected.
4.4 Defining title parameters
4.4.1 If a publication has a number of internal or external links, the boundaries of the publication need to be decided. Internal links only are archived. Both higher and lower links on the site are explored to establish which components form a title that stands on its own for the purposes of preservation and cataloguing
4.4.2 Preference is given to breaking down large sites into component titles and selecting those, which meet the guidelines. However, sometimes the components of larger publications or sites do not stand well on their own but together do form a valuable source of information. In this case, if it fits the guidelines, the site should be selected for archiving as an entity.
5. Selection guidelines for priority categories
As outlined in paragraph 3.5, the Library will give priority to collecting online publications in six categories.
5.1 Commonwealth and ACT government publications
The Library will take two different approaches to the archiving of Commonwealth Government publications.
(i) It will continue to identify and select individual titles by searching government agencies' sites and by receiving notification from agencies of titles available for archiving. Because of the labour-intensive nature of this work and the volume of government publishing, it cannot archive all available titles in this way and will give priority to the publications of those agencies that actively cooperate with the Library by participating in the Kinetica Commonwealth Government Metadata Pilot Project (see 5.1 (ii) below), by giving us blanket permission to archive their domains, or by notifying us of new publications.
(In other cases the Library cannot undertake a formal and thorough approach to government agencies' publications, but will archive any significant publications that come to its attention.
(ii) The Library has embarked on a pilot project to ascertain whether it is possible to identify and select Commonwealth government publications more automatically, using metadata. It is working with seven agencies in 2003 to identify ways of taking in through Kinetica batches of metadata, which would then be fed into the PANDORA Digital Archiving System for harvesting, processing and receipt into the Archive. Under this acquisitions model, the Library would relinquish the role of selection to the participating agencies, and would archive any title for which the agencies provided metadata.
The Library will also archive ACT government publications that are online only.
5.2 Publications of tertiary education institutions
In the longer term, the Library would like to work with the tertiary education sector towards a situation where it established and maintained an archive or archives of its own published output, forming part of a national distributed archive, with individual nodes linked and conforming to common standards.
Until this is in place, the Library will continue to archive publications which contain the research output of tertiary education institutions. It assumes that administrative publications will be archived and preserved by university archives.
5.3 Conference proceedings
There is a large volume of literature published on the web each year, which emanates from conferences held in Australia. The volume is too large to permit it to be archived comprehensively.
- Only sites that contain the full text of a substantial number of papers presented at a conference will be archived. Powerpoint presentations alone do not contain sufficient information to warrant archiving.
- Priority will be given to conferences held by Commonwealth and ACT government bodies, professional associations and institutes, and academic disciplines.
- The proceedings of international conferences that are affiliated with an Australian body and that are held in Australia may be selected for archiving. The relevance of the content to Australia will be a factor influencing selection.
- Preference will be given to major conferences over small seminars, e.g., those held by a university department.
5.4 E-journals
Preference will be given to e-journals that are peer-reviewed, have good editorial control, or are commercial.
5.5 Titles referred by indexing and abstracting agencies
Titles referred by indexing and abstracting agencies for the assignment of persistent identifiers will be archived, even if there is also a print version available.
5.6 Topical sites
(a) Sites in nominated subject areas (see Appendix 2) that will be collected on a rolling three year basis; and
(b) Sites documenting key issues of current social or political interest, such as election sites, Sydney Olympics, Bali bombing.
5.7 Other sites of national significance
Giving priority to archiving publications in these six categories will not preclude archiving other high quality sites of national significance. As staff resources permit, other sites may be archived, according to the following guidelines.
6. Selection guidelines for other categories
As time and staff resources permit, high quality sites outside the six priority categories detailed in Section 5 may be selected for archiving.
6.1 Annual Reports
Annual reports from publicly listed companies with a national or multi-state focus, Commonwealth Government agencies, universities (generally at the top level only, excluding individual faculty reports) and major organisations with a national focus may be selected for preservation if they are not available in print.
6.2 Digitised Materials
In general, sites containing materials such as manuscripts, archival records and pictures that have been digitised by other collecting agencies, will not be selected. The National Library expects government-funded collecting agencies to undertake preservation of their own digitised materials. However, there are a number of factors that may influence a decision to select digitised materials for archiving:
- There is doubt about the availability of funds to support long term preservation, for instance, in the case of an historical society or arts organisation with uncertain financial support;
- The digitised materials are mounted on a site other than that of a government-funded collecting agency and may be at risk;
- To be considered at all, the site would need to contain more than a digitised copy of the original, and include, for example, historical or interpretative information, a transcript or other intellectual input.
6.3 Educational Material
Sites created for educational purposes will not be routinely selected. However, those that are of particular quality or interest in terms of presentation and content may be selected to provide examples of educational material in the Archive. Preference will be given to sites that are not institution specific or curriculum based, but have a broader educational focus.
Award winning school sites may be archived from time to time as representative examples.
6.4 Exhibitions
Online exhibitions may be selected if there is no printed catalogue available, or if the online exhibition demonstrates significant features that are unavailable in a printed publication. To be considered, the exhibition must contain more than just digitised copies of original works, but include historical or interpretive information or other intellectual input.
6.5 Ethnic Community Sites
Official (11) sites of ethnic communities will be selected when the predominant focus is information about the experiences, activities and concerns of the Australian community. Sites that are mainly compilations of news items from other sources or links to other information, either in Australia or overseas will not be selected.
6.6 Juvenile Publications
Sites created for or by juveniles will be selected on a limited basis. The intention is to sample sites which demonstrate the use of the Internet by young people and which represent their concerns, attitudes, lifestyle and culture. Factors that may influence a decision in favour of selection for national preservation include:
- the site is visually appealing and specifically designed to attract children
- the site uses popular children's symbols, characters or icons to promote an educational message
- the site is an official or semi-official site of a popular children's character or organisation
- the site has won high acclaim or award/s in reputable schemes, e.g. AFR/Telstra Australian Internet Awards.
Personal sites of juveniles will be selected on a very limited basis and only if they contain substantial information, are of exceptional quality or are particularly innovative or interesting.
Juvenile sites which meet other key selection guidelines, that is, they have substantial authority and research value, should be selected regardless of their being at a juvenile level.
6.7 Literary Works
The National Library accepts responsibility for preserving literary works. However, should other interested parties emerge, eg. State libraries or University Departments of Australian Literature, the NLA could relinquish responsibility for a negotiated portion.
In general, substantial pieces of creative writing, such as novels and major collections of poetry or short stories will be considered for archiving, whether or not the author is previously established in print and regardless of any quality control process.
6.8 Maps
In general, online maps produced by organisations which have a legisltative responsibility and a commitment to ongoing access and preservation will not be selected, e.g., GeoScience Australia, the Defence Department, Bureau of Meteorology, and the various State Lands departments. The National Library will seek to enter into formal arrangements with these organisations to ensure long-term preservation and access.
Other maps will be selected according to the following criteria:
- the information represented in the map is either not available in another format, or the online version provides significant additional features
- the data comes from an authoritative source
- the map includes the standard qualities of spatial data such as a concept of scale, definition of the geographic area covered, and good cartographic design that presents the information in a meaningful way.
The Library's Map Section selects maps for archiving and refers them to the Digital Archiving Section.
6.9 Music
For creative literature (6.7) the guidelines specify that the Library will archive only substantial works or collections of short stories or poems and that single poems or short stories will usually not be archived. Print music, especially popular music, jazz, etc., tends to be published as single items, at least initially, and this is also the approach with music that is beginning to appear on the web. For this reason music will need to be treated differently from literature.
Notated Australian music on the web will be selected according to the following guidelines:
- The original music is by an Australian composer and is published on the web by either an Australian or overseas publisher (providing independent editorial and evaluation process);
- The original music is published on the web by an Australian composer him/herself and the composer has some credentials, e.g., has had music published in print, or is a person recognised in the music community as a creditable composer, teacher or performer;
- The original music is by either an Australian or overseas composer and in its name, associated words, or other descriptive material has Australian content or association.
6.10 Newspapers
Sites for newspapers that mainly duplicate the information provided in print will not be selected for preservation.
Sites providing selected features and stories to promote print newspapers or other electronic news services are not considered suitable for preservation by the National Library. Snapshots of certain examples may be taken to illustrate the use made of the Internet.
Dial-up, commercial services are not selected.
Newspapers available online only will be assessed against the guidelines and preserved if they meet standards described in Section 4, including authority, quality and originality of content.
6.11 Organisational and Personal Sites
Organisational and personal sites are selected on a very limited basis. In the case of organisational sites, those that provide substantial information about functions, projects, research, etc may be selected. Those that provide the kind of summary information available in an annual report should not be selected. Personal sites will usually only be selected if they provide information of outstanding research value unavailable elsewhere or if they are of exceptional quality or particular interest.
6.12 Other protocols, eg. FTP, Gopher, email
While active searching and identification of publications in these formats is not undertaken, if titles which fit the guidelines come to our attention, we shall archive them.
6.13 Pacific Publications
While usually outside the scope of the selection guidelines, consideration will be given to significant titles published within Pacific island states. These countries are unlikely, in the foreseeable future, to have the capability to archive and preserve online publications, and the Pacific is a priority collecting area for the Library. The possibility of cooperation with the National Library of New Zealand, which has indicated an intention to collect Pacific electronic materials, will be explored.
6.14 Religious Sites
Official sites documenting religious views of Australians where the views are those of a religion, denomination, community, or sect will be selected for preservation to depict the diversity of religious activity within the nation. Sites which publish personal expressions of religious faith will not be selected.
Religious publications by personal authors will be selected for preservation where the general guidelines relating to content, authority and quality are judged to be met. This includes pure theology as well as social and cultural interpretations of religious questions. Publications which represent a diverse view may also be selected.
6.15 State government publications
Each of the State libraries and the Northern Territory have selection guidelines which indicate that they will take responsibility for the government publications within their jurisdictions. The National Library will not select State government publications for archiving. An exception may be made in situations where the subject matter covers more than one State, eg, a publication on irrigation in the Murray Darling Basin. See also the decision table at Appendix 1.
6.16 Exclusions
See paragraph 3.7
These guidelines are reviewed on an ongoing basis.
For further information please contact:
Director, Digital Archiving
Email:
Telephone: 61 2 6262 1140
Footnotes
(1) Extensive information about the components of PANDORA and its digital archiving system are available from http://pandora.nla.gov.au/index.html and http://www.nla.gov.au/initiatives/digarch.html
(2) Collecting Australian Online Publications is available at http://pandora.nla.gov.au/BSC49.doc
(3) National Library of Australia. Collection Development Policy is available at http://www.nla.gov.au/policy/cdp/.
(4) PANDORA partners selection guidelines are available at: http://pandora.nla.gov.au/manual/toc.html#selectguide
(5) In these guidelines, 'dataset' is used to mean an aggregation of data stored in a database, which has been produced as the result of business, government or research activity. it is often used to provide customised, commercial services. Examples include Hitwise (a company that monitors usage by Australians of Australian and and some overseas web sites), Australian Bureau of Statistics AusStats, and the geospatial datasets put together by government mapping agencies such as Geoscience Australia, the Defence Department and the various State Land departments.
(6) The selection selection guidelines are available at: http://pandora.nla.gov.au/manual/toc.html#selectguide
(7) This is defined as 'dealing with Australians, with Australia, or with the State, Territories or any other subdivision of Australia'.
(8) An Australian author is one who was born and has resided in Australia or has continued to be recognised as Australian although residence in Australia has not been continuous, or one who, although not born in Australia, has been identified through work and residence in Australia as an Australian.
(9) In order to determine the authority of a title, it should be clear which organisation or individual is responsible for producing it and what the qualifications or expertise of the creator/s are. Ideally, background information about the organisation or individual should be available. It may be necessary to research the legitimacy of the organisation, the individual or the information. There are a number of sources on the World Wide Web regarding the evaluation of online publications. One is the Widener University/Wolfgram Memorial Library Teaching Critical Evaluation Skills for World Wide Web Resources, http://www2.widener.edu/Wolfgram-Memorial-Library/webeval.htm. This site contains a bibliography of Web evaluation techniques.
(10) At the National Library, in relation to print materials, 'research value' has been defined very broadly. For example, even a single sheet of junk mail in the ephemera collection can be considered to have research value, in the sense of revealing information about an aspect of society at the time of its publication. In the context of online publications, 'research value' is much more narrowly defined and means that the publication should be a substantial compilation of information.
(11) ‘Official’ in this context will be taken to mean a site that emanates from any established association or society within the ethnic community.
Appendix 1 Decision Table for Publications Available in Multiple Formats
| Type of Publication | Print available | Out of Print | Available on CD-ROM | Held by NLA | Select for PANDORA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Commonwealth Government | Yes | Yes | No | ||
| Commonwealth Government | Yes | No | No - will claim print | ||
| Commonwealth Government | Yes | Yes | No, but will select if lending copy not held * | ||
| Commonwealth Government | Yes | No | Yes | ||
| Commonwealth Government | Yes | Yes or No | Yes | ||
| State Government | Yes | Yes | No | ||
| State Government | Yes | No | No - will claim print | ||
| State Government | Yes | Yes | No | ||
| State Government | Yes | No | Will select publications of national significance if print not held by appropriate State Library | ||
| State Government | Yes | Yes or No | Will select publications of national significance | ||
| Non-government | Yes | Yes | No | ||
| Non-government | Yes | No | No - will claim print | ||
| Non-government | Yes | Yes | No | ||
| Non-government | Yes | No | Will select publications of national significance if not held by at least one State Library | ||
| Non-government | Yes | Yes or No | Will select publications of national significance |
* The decision to select online Commonwealth Government publications to act as the NLA's lending copy will be revised if the activity becomes a burden to staff resources.
Appendix 2. Subject categories for topical sites to be collected on a rolling three-year basis
These subject categories are the ones that the Digital Archiving Section already uses for the subject listing on the PANDORA home page. Each of the broad subject categories has a number of narrower subjects beneath it, which indicate areas that are already reasonably well represented in the Archive. As further work is done to identify sites for archiving, the range of narrower subject categories may be expanded. For instance, Mathematics is not yet included under Science and this area will be investigated.
| Year 1: 2003-2004 | |
| Politics and government | Political Parties and Politicians; Defence; International Affairs; Commonwealth Government; Public Administration; Australian Republic Debate |
| Health | Medical Care; Pharmaceuticals; Mental Health; Public Health |
| Education | Schools and Schooling; Tertiary Education; Vocational Education |
| Technology and Industry | Computers and the Internet; Industrial and Manufacturing; Telecommunications; Transportation; Construction |
| Sciences | Biology; Genetics; Astronomy; Chemistry; Biotechnology; Physics; Earth Sciences; Geography, Exploration and Maps |
| Year 2: 2004-2005 | |
| Sports and Recreaton | Sports Events; Sporting Personalities; Sites for Children; Sporting Organizations; Hobbies and Pastimes; Olympic and Paralympic Games |
| Society and Social Issues | Social Structure and Change; Employment and Workplace; Social Problems and Action; Protest and Activism; Social Institutions; Community and Volunteering; Housing; Animal Welfare |
| Environment and Resources | Energy; Climate Change; Ecology; Mining and Mineral Exploration; Agriculture; Natural Resources Management |
| Arts | Visual Arts and New Media; Music; Dance; Theatre; Literature; Film; Architecture and Design, Festivals (Arts) |
| Humanities | Anthropology and Ethnology; Archaeology; Religion; Philosophy; Psychology; Sociology; Libraries and Archives |
| Media | Television, Radio, Print Media |
| Year 3: 2005-2006 | |
| Law | Criminology |
| Indigenous Australians | Indigenous Health and Welfare; Indigenous Education; Indigenous Arts |
| Business and Economy | Economics, Finance and Taxation, Business Management, Companies, Industry and Trade |
| People and Culture | Multiculturalism; Gay, Lesbian and Transgender; Families; Adult Sites; Men; Women; Children; Youth; Aged; Disabled; Festivals (Cultural); Relationships and Lifestyle; Food and Drink |
| History | Local History; Genealogy |
