Skip to content

Skip to menu

Pandora : Australia's Web Archive National Library of Australia and Partners
Home >

Collection Policy for Archiving Websites

In 2016 the National Library released a new Collection Development Policy. This Policy replaces the specific selection guidelines formerly used for the PANDORA Archive by the Library. The former guidelines have been left here (below) for historical interest.

The specific policy regardng the collection of websites may be found in the section of the CDP relating to Australian Published Collections.

Collecting websites and online publications is undertaken by the National Library in accordance with the Legal Deposit provisions of the Copright Act 1968.

Online Australian Publications: Selection Guidelines for Archiving and Preservation by the National Library of Australia

Revised August 2005. The previous version is available at http://pandora.nla.gov.au/archived/selectionguidelines2003.html

Contents

1 Introduction

2 Terminology

3 Selection intentions

4 General selection guidelines

5 Selection guidelines for priority categories

6 Selection guidelines for other categories

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 archives for Tasmanian publications - Our Digital Island: Preserved Tasmanian Web Sites and STORS: Long-term Storage of Tasmanian Electronic Documents - 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.

1.5 While there are disadvantages in the selective approach to archiving, it enables libraries to achieve five important objectives

1.6 Because of the advantages, the Library will continue the selective approach to archiving for the foreseeable future.

1.7 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. For this reason, in June and July 2005 the Library contracted the Internet Archive to undertake a whole domain harvest of the Australian web domain. Public access to the whole domain harvests is not available through the PANDORA Archive service.

1.8 In 2002-03, after seven years of selecting and archiving online Australian publications, a major 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.

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 The National Library negotiates with publishers for permission to make the archived copies of their publications available openly accessible. 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 Web 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 were extended to cover electronic publications in February 2016.

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:

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.

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. 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

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 may not be selected for preservation.

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.

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

Recognising the subject expertise of indexing and abstracting agencies, requests from them to archive resources for the assignment of persistent identifiers persistent identifiers are invited. The Library will select titles that are within scope of these guidelines.

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:

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:

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 Library's Map Section selects maps for archiving and refers them to the Web Archiving Section.

6.9 Music scores

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:

6.10 Music web sites

To support the Library's MusicAustralia service, and to take advantage of its subject expertise, online publications and web sites notified to the Web Archiving Section by MusicAustralia will be archived if they are within scope of these selection guidelines. Those titles that are within scope of a partner's selection guidelines will be transferred to that partner for consideration.

6.11 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.

6.12 Organisational and Personal Sites

Organisational and personal sites are selected on a 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 a printed 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.

6.13 Other protocols, eg. FTP, Gopher, email

Active identification of publications in protocols such as FTP, Gopher and email is not undertaken. Resources other than those available on the Web are only archived in exceptional circumstances.

6.14 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.

6.15 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.

6.16 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. Except for ACT Government publications (see paragraph 5.1), 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.

6.17 Exclusions

See paragraph 3.7


For further information please contact:

Manager, Web Archiving
Email: (non-clickable image)
Telephone: 61 2 6262 1411


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/guidelines.html

(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) PANDORA partners' selection guidelines are available at: http://pandora.nla.gov.au/guidelines.html

(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.

(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 Web 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: 2006-2007
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: 2007-2008
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: 2008-2009
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