The National Library of Australia strives to collect and preserve Australia’s published heritage for future generations, and to make publications accessible to researchers, scholars, and the public to inform understanding of the Australian experience. Key to the National Library’s ambitious goal is legal deposit—a requirement of every publisher (including sole authors and community groups) to send a copy of their work to the National Library. The National Library is reaching out to independent authors and publishers to urge them to contribute their works that may be missing from its collection.
About legal deposit
Legal deposit has been a requirement by law in Australia for more than 100 years. Under the legal deposit provision of the Australian Copyright Act (1968), publishers—whether that’s the author, a company or an organisation—are required to submit one copy of every publication to the National Library. This includes books, newspapers, electronic publications and any other work that has been made available to the public, for free or for sale.
Legal deposit has contributed towards the more than 10 million items in the national collection, with the goal to preserve Australia’s published heritage for future generations, and to make the publications accessible to researchers, scholars, and the public to help understand the Australian experience. Items are discoverable by the public through the National Library’s reading rooms, catalogue and digital portal Trove.
‘For publishers, legal deposit is the best way to ensure their publication will be preserved, discoverable and available to be viewed in the future,’ the National Library said. ‘For the broader community, it’s an invaluable resource to explore our history.’
‘We don’t always know at the time something is published what value it will have for future researchers or interested readers; the perspective of time is not yet with us,’ the National Library continued. ‘It’s often surprising what elements of the national collection prove to be crucial in informing research being done at the National Library. What do you think a researcher in 200 years might be able to learn from your publication?’
Publishers and authors can submit publicly available electronic versions of their work through the National edeposit service (NED), an online service that allows publishers to meet their legal deposit obligations to Australia’s national, state and territory libraries all at once. Publishers can choose the level of access when depositing to NED. Access ranges from openly on the internet to onsite only within the relevant state, territory and national library buildings—much like a print deposit would be accessed. If a publication is only available in print, then deposit of print is required.
Reaching indie publishers and authors
Independent publishers and authors can be ‘a little harder to reach’ than traditional publishers, according to the National Library’s legal deposit team, and their reasons for not contributing vary.
It’s difficult to know how many titles are published each year in Australia: figures from My Identifiers, the Australian ISBN agency, show there were 29,036 new titles issued with ISBNs in 2022. There’s also an unknown number of titles published without an ISBN. ‘We use a variety of reports to compare what we receive to what is being published and we know that we are not receiving a deposit copy of everything published,’ the National Library said.
‘A recent visit to Bookfair in Sydney showed less than 10% of exhibiting publishers were depositing their works with the National Library of Australia,’ the National Library continued. ‘We have found from our outreach that this is either because they are unaware of legal deposit, they are confused by the variety of administrative processes around publishing, or they don’t think legal deposit applies to their publications. This is a concern for us as the National Library aims to achieve its mandated role to preserve our published heritage, capturing what we are thinking, imagining, and writing about over time.’
The National Library said it prefers to ‘see legal deposit as a collaborative activity rather than pursue publishers for non-compliance.’ Along this line, it is trying to raise awareness among independent publishers and authors about their legal obligations: a recent blog explains the value and purpose of some of the administrative steps that exist around publishing, particularly as they relate to libraries. ‘We know we need to make information more accessible for independent publishers and we are working to simplify language when communicating about legal deposit. We have recently refreshed information on our website and added downloadable factsheet resources and a video,’ the National Library said. The National Library is also reaching out to authors and publishers at writer’s festivals, including the NT Writers festival in late June. If you are a member of the Australian Society of Authors, sign up for the information session for independently published and self-published authors on 26 June.
Growth in self-publishing
The number of self-publishers who have deposited their work electronically via NED is continuing to grow. More than 4,800 self-publishers have registered with the platform, and more than 34,000 publications by self-publishers have been deposited.
‘There has been sustained growth in independent publications received each year, as well as a notable bump during the pandemic,’ the National Library said. ‘Responses to the 2022 National Survey of Australian Book Authors from Creative Australia highlighted an increase in people who have self-published, and the Alliance of Independent Authors most recent data dump shows that indie publishing results in better outcomes for diverse authors. To continue to reflect the diversity of publishing in Australia, it is important that independent publishing is recorded and preserved through legal deposit,’ the National Library said.
Highlighting the growing popularity of self-publishing, and the importance of contributing titles to the National Library’s collection, is Michael Winkler, who was shortlisted for his 2021 novel Grimmish, which was originally self-published. ‘We recently had the pleasure of meeting Michael … and he reported to us that the very first thing he did when he received copies of his book was to put a copy in the post to the National Library – because then even if nobody ever read it, it felt like it was in the world, that his work was recorded and that it mattered,’ the National Library said. ‘There are three different editions of Grimmish in our collection including the first independently published edition.’
The value of the legal deposit scheme is not limited to literature, either. Self-published works by amateur historians and genealogists have been deposited electronically, and many of these authors who are not publishing for commercial reasons opt to deposit them with open access so that people around the world can benefit from their research. A recent example of this is Bingle Bay Botanist: The story of Norm Byrnes & his arboretum, published by the Mission Beach Historical Society.
‘Our shelves (both physical and digital) are filled with treasures,’ said the National Library. ‘In order to continue to build a collection that is inclusive, diverse, and reflective of all Australian experiences, we need to ensure that Australians know about the obligation and opportunity to have their published works preserved for future generations through legal deposit.’
More information about legal deposit is on the National Library’s website.
Comments are closed.