Hayley Jakrot:

Hello, everyone. Welcome. Thank you so much for giving us your time today. I'm Hayley, and this is Clare, we’re the legal deposit team here at the National Library.

And before I get started, I'd like to acknowledge traditional owners of the land on which we meet today, the Ngunnawal and the Ngambri people. I pay our respects to elders past, present and emerging, and extend that respect to any First Nations and Torres Strait Islander people that are visiting with us today.

So we're going to start off today by giving you a little overview of what you can expect. And Clare is going to launch us into that now.

Clare Beckett:

So before we get started, I'd just like to echo Hayley's sentiments. Thank you all so much for joining us today.

We're really excited to have the opportunity to chat with you about legal deposit, which is one of our favourite topics to talk about. So we hope we can bring that enthusiasm to you as well.

All right, so as Hayley mentioned, we thought we'd get started with a bit of an overview of what you can expect from today's presentation. So we thought we would begin by addressing an issue that we know has brought up a lot of questions for a lot of people, which is the Commonwealth library deposit and free issue schemes.

We're aware that those were decommissioned earlier this year and that's raised some questions. So we'll start with that to kick us off before we drill down into legal deposit.

Clare Beckett:

So to do that we'd like to start with a look at the broader picture. The purpose and scope of the National Library of Australia as a whole, before we get into the specifics of legal deposit and how it might apply to your department or agency, in a few steps through, what we collect through legal deposit, how that happens, what the specific types of publications are and how you can deposit your publications.

So as we move through those stages of the presentation, you might find it helpful to have a couple of different things open in front of you on another screen, So please feel free to do that. 

If you would find it useful to have your organisation's website open, especially if your department or agency has got a publications page on their website, it might be great to have a look at that, to start thinking about what types of publications you might produce.

And another thing that might be useful is to have the National Library of Australia's online catalogue open, so that you can check what your agency has already deposited.

As we move through the presentation, we've got some useful resources that we'd like to share with you today. We'll also be sending around a recording of today's session, and at the end, we've got some dedicated time for questions.

We're aware that a lot of you may be coming to us with quite a few questions on your minds. So we've got the Q&A function open already.

Please feel free to pop your questions in if you've got some in mind already, or as they come up throughout the presentation, and we'll have plenty of time allocated to answer those at the end.

So without further ado, let's get started. 

Hayley Jakrot:

While you've got your Q&A function open, as Clare just mentioned, we'd love you to pop in, where you're joining us from your agency, your role.

It's really helpful for us to know the range of professionals we've got with us today, and to start thinking about some of those questions that you might be sending through. So I really encourage you to pop into that Q&A and to say a little hello.

All right. Yes. As Clare said, let's get started. Okay. So, we are looking at the Commonwealth Library Deposit Information Scheme, and it's something that, many of you in your departments will be familiar with. It was a program that was aimed at trying to increase accessibility to Commonwealth government documents.

And that meant that essentially your departments would package up your things like your on your report, your corporate plans, and they would get distributed throughout us to the National Library, but also public libraries.

It was a really successful scheme, and it's just been rolled back and decommissioned on the 1st of March this year, mostly because, the function that was happening through the scheme is now mostly running through the transparency portal.

Now, this has certainly, created some questions about what is this now mean for, sending publications to the National Library.

Well, we certainly still want what you produce and it's really important to note that you still have a legal deposit obligation to fulfill. Kind of by happenstance, when you sent in your two print copies of your report, one of them would fulfill your legal deposit obligation, which is why for many of you, legal deposit might be something that isn't as familiar. And hopefully by the end of today, you'll be right in with it.

But, with the free issues scheme rolling back, it means that the obligation to fulfill your legal deposit requirements still sits with your departments.

It's not that you have to send the National Library nothing anymore. We certainly still want what you produce.

The good news is that where you produce publications in, two formats, we only require one copy, and we prefer it to be digital.

So this should hopefully ease some of the requirements, some of the time spent fulfilling your requirements, which allows you to give us a digital version.

And don't worry, we'll run through all of that. And how to give it to us and what that looks like later on in the presentation.

But just to note here that you certainly still do have a legal deposit obligation, even though the scheme has rolled back now, and we'll run you through all the rest. So if you have any questions again, keep bringing them through.

I can see a few people. So thank you so much. 

Clare Beckett:

Yeah, absolutely.

So the key takeaways here around the Commonwealth library deposit and free issues schemes are that that really is a separate scheme to legal deposit, as are things like the obligation to upload your documents and your publications to the transparency portal.

Legal deposit functions separately to all of those different things. So, now that we've got that out of the way, hopefully that's cleared things up a little bit and we can get into the main event, which is, legal deposit and what that actually means. 

Hayley Jakrot:

Absolutely.

So to give you the best overview of what legal deposit means, we thought we might tell you a little bit about us here at the National Library, what we do and why it's really important.

So our mission statement up on here is that we collect today what will be important tomorrow to connect Australians to this nation's past, its present and its future.

So at the core, we are trying to represent all Australians in our collection, and we are trying to ensure that we have a full, diverse and representative collection that is available for this current generation and for many to come.

And the research value in what your agency produces is really valuable to the national collection, because you are representing and serving the people, and it's really important to see how government responds to the challenges and the opportunities that we have in Australia today.

And without your information and without your documentation, we don't have that in our collection. And that means that people in future generations don't have access to it.

So just note that even those minor things your newsletters, your annual report, your corporate plans, they have really important research value to us.

So that's a big part of why we're coming to you today. 

Clare Beckett:

Yeah, absolutely.

So now that we've got an idea of the broader mission and the broader goals of the National Library of Australia, let's have a look at legal deposit and what that actually means, and how that ties into that bigger picture. 

Hayley Jakrot:

Absolutely. 

Clare Beckett:

So obviously, legal deposit is something that's very close to our hearts, and we'd like to talk to you a little bit about it, how it came into being and why it's important. So legal deposit is one of the provisions of the Copyright Act, which came into being in 1968, under which the National Library of Australia collects one copy of everything that's published in Australia.

Hayley Jakrot:

And there's a little note here that you can see on the slide. Many of you are Commonwealth government, agencies, so you will only have a National Library obligation.

However, if you have departments, or branches in different states, it's really important to note that today we're coming to you to talk about your national legal deposit requirements. But there are state and territory legal deposit requirements. So it's really important that if you function or even function over multiple different areas,that you check in with your state and territory library to see what your obligations that you need to fulfill are. So just again, to note, when we speak to you, we're only talking about your national requirements. But there is legal deposit legislation in other states and territories. 

Clare Beckett:

Yeah, that's absolutely right.

And we do have some resources available at the end of this presentation that will help you to figure out which legal deposit legislation affects you and your department.

But if you do have specific questions around that, you're more than welcome to put those in, using the Q&A function. Or you can always shoot us an email as well.

Clare Beckett:

So now that we know what legal deposit is, you might be wondering why it's so important.

Why does the National Library of Australia choose to collect one copy of everything that's published? 

Hayley Jakrot:

It's no small task. We've just asked you we'd like one of everything.

So you should have a good reason for that. 

Clare Beckett:

It does keep us fairly busy!

So there are two really, key reasons why we think that legal deposit is such a fundamental part of what we do here at the National Library of Australia.

The first is that by collecting through legal deposit, we aim to build a collection that is really diverse.

And it's a really democratic method of collecting without censorship, prejudice or bias.

We aim to build a collection that represents the voices of all Australians, not just those who might be in power at a particular time or those who might be overrepresented in the population.

So, collecting one copy of everything that's published, regardless of who publishes it, is a really effective way to do this.

Hayley Jakrot:

On top of that, it's really important to think about the, enduring significance of the collection. So this democratic collection that we're trying to build, we're aiming to make it accessible for all, for as long as we possibly can. And when we bring something into the collection, no matter what the material, we take our jobs as stewards very seriously.

We are aiming to preserve it to the best, possible way that we can and allow it to be accessible to as many people.

So when you think about that really diverse collection that we're trying to build and that we're trying to make it available and preserve it for as long as possible, you start to understand that there's a real building significance. As we add new things to the collection. They tie in with things, that we didn't even know would make a connection.

And this allows Australians and international people to really research what is happening within Australia. With a really a huge amount of depth.

And so when your agency adds things to this collection, you're adding one piece that then connects with a whole web of others. 

Clare Beckett:

Yeah, that's absolutely right.

And a lot of people, when they think about legal deposit, you know, a question we get asked all the time is surely you don't want every little thing, you don't want my little newsletter, you don't want this report on a project that was run for, you know, one quarter back in 2023. And we absolutely do! It may seem fairly mundane at this point in time, but if you think about that context of how interesting it might be to somebody living 50 years in the future or 100 years, it really forms a part of the bigger picture.

Hayley Jakrot:

Absolutely. 

Clare Beckett:

So without further ado, we've prepared, a few examples here for you, because we're aware that you probably have a lot of questions about the sorts of material that your department or agency might be producing and whether those things are required under legal deposit.

So we've got some examples here of different types of publications that we do collect here at the National Library under legal deposit.

As you can see on the slide, we've divided those into two broad categories. So the first is standalone publications which I will talk you through.

And then Hayley will take you through some examples of ongoing publications.

So, a publication is - I can see we've just had a question come through about what exactly -

This is a really well-timed question! What exactly do we mean when we say published?

So there is a common misconception out there that publications have to have an ISBN is to be considered published, and that's actually not the case.

So, by the definition in the Copyright Act, in the definition that we work on, a publication is any text-based material that's been made available to the public, whether that's for free or for sale.

If it's publicly accessible, it's considered to be published and therefore a publication. 

Hayley Jakrot:

Absolutely. So this is an important line to draw, because when looking for documents that are aimed at external, we aren't interested in your internal documentation.

So anything that isn't published and available for the public to have access to, if it's just an internal working document

or even an internal review that stays with your organization, and that's where that would go through the Archives Act and that would go through archiving.

And I can certainly see we have a question about that. I might pop that one back. Later when we come to the questions section. Just to get into that, into some more detail, because it's an excellent question.

There is a delineation between the two. But for us, publications equals public. 

Clare Beckett:

Yeah. That's right.

So legal deposit only applies to material that's been made publicly available. If you are thinking about your internal documentation, it's still a great thing to think about, but it's not required under legal deposit.

So where we are talking about publications that are required under legal deposit, as you can see, we've divided them into these two broad categories of standalone and ongoing. So standalone publications. The simplest example that I can think to give you is a traditionally published book. It's a single work. It has its own individual title, and it's only published one time.

There might be revisions, there might be updated editions, but in its essential form, it's just this one item that's published one time.

So in a government context that might refer to other items as well. So things like individual project reports.

So for example, if Hayley and I decided to write a report on today's webinar and then the National Library of Australia decided to publish that report on their website, that would be an example of a standalone publication that we could provide via legal deposit.

We've also got in this category things like policy papers and occasional papers, and then the obvious examples of things like published books and published maps.

Hayley Jakrot:

So now we're looking at our ongoing publications. So in library terms, our standalone is a monograph and in ongoing we call that a serial. You may be more familiar with a journal, a magazine and newsletter.

These are publications that will have a shared title and will contribute different issues over time.

So the point of ongoing is that when you start the publication, you don't necessarily have a finite end date in mind. You're going to produce until you decide otherwise.

So the great example, which many of you are excellent at depositing with us, so thank you, is your annual report and your corporate plans. This is a serial.

You produce a new annual report every year, and it comes under the same title, Annual Report.

We also look at our budgets, reports, papers.

This will also include some of your, bills and your tabling information that is sent through these count as an ongoing publication, because especially when it comes to your budget reports, you would do one of those for you. And, bulletins and newsletters is an excellent one, I think for a lot of Commonwealth departments, newsletters and bulletins sort of get, hidden because you're producing so many reports.

This is something that you might just do as a information only, but it's really important and it gives a really good insight.

So this certainly counts as a single. It's ongoing. You introduce new issues in every quarter or every month.

So it's really important I guess we've just covered a whole bunch of different things. So again, if this is triggering some questions and you're thinking, I've got many, many of these and we haven't legal deposited them, that's okay. Pop in those questions.

And if there's anything specific about publication types that you produce, we'd love to hear about it. And we can definitely answer them.

But the takeaway is that legal deposit is much more than just your annual report. 

Clare Beckett:

Yeah. That's it. Yes.

And please don't be alarmed if you are just now realizing that there are a lot of things that are considered publications and are subject to legal deposit requirements that you didn't realize.

That's what we're here for. We're here to help. Any question is a good question.

And we're more than happy to support you to deposit the publications that you're producing now. And if there are any backlogs, we're more than happy to help with that, too. That's not a problem. 

I feel this is a good time, just as a general reminder as well, that we are only talking about documents and publications that are made available to the public.

So on that topic of newsletters, that would only be newsletters that are going externally, that are released. Yeah. So your internal documents are completely yours.

All right, so we've talked about these two broad categories of publications standalone and ongoing.

Just to keep things really exciting, we'd also like to introduce you to a third category. Which is - we've given it the heading of leaflets and flyers.

Any librarians who are joining us today might be familiar with the term “ephemera”. This is how we describe this sort of material.

So it refers to non-permanent material, which is often created with a specific event or a specific time in mind.

So it's only going to be used for a while, and then it will cease being in use. It's not something that's produced in an ongoing capacity, and often it's less than five pages in duration.

So the example we've given you here on the slide is one that hopefully you've all seen before. This is the National Library's, legal deposit factsheet for government publications. Topical.

And this is a really good example of the type of material we're talking about here. But it could also include things like fliers, posters, informational sheets, 

Hayley Jakrot:

Announcements. 

Clare Beckett:

Yeah. Yeah, all of those sorts of material. Exhibition guides is another good one.

So those sorts of material that you probably are producing all the time, that maybe you haven't thought of as a publication, which is completely understandable.

So the exciting news that we bring to you today is that the National Library actually now has the capability to collect these types of material digitally.

And we'll get into the specifics of how that can happen a little bit later on.

But yeah, just so that that's on your radar, as you think about the types of publications that your department does produce, these sorts of things are also interesting.

Hayley Jakrot:

Okay. So now we've told you about what legal deposit is, all the different things that count as legal deposit. But we have missed, one very important detail, which is how do you give it to us?

Clare Beckett:

This is definitely our favourite part of the process. 

Hayley Jakrot:

It certainly is. So I'm going to chat to you about how you can give us, your digital publications and what we mean by digital.

And Clare is going to run through what happens with our print only publications. So, just before I jump in, National eDeposit is a platform that was created in collaboration with the National Library and all of the state and territory libraries in Australia.

And it was purpose built to bring in born-digital legal deposit material into the Library's collections.

So when we say born-digital, we mean something that is created and distributed digitally, not something that was, say, created in print, digitised, so scanned and then maybe published on a website or something like that.

We mean things that are created entirely in digital and distributed that way.

And that's what National eDeposit, or as we very affectionately call it, NED, is for.

So NED is a great way to bring in those, digital publications, as I said. And if you're producing things in two formats, so you might think about some of, the reports that you might produce or your, your parliamentary bills, they may be in two different formats where you have both.

The National Library, as we mentioned before, only requires one copy. And we prefer that copy to be digital. You do have the choice, our preference is that it be digital and it's a lot easier for you as well.

So NED is a fantastic portal that allows you to set up a publisher account. That publisher account lets you track everything that you've deposited.

It also allows multiple different users, so if you're in a very large department or organization and you might have different people that are producing publications, they can each have their own user account and they can each deposit a little note here as well as I'm sure some of you are thinking that given the vast scope of legal deposit, there will be things that might have sensitive information, that may that are still released to the public, but may have First Nations material, NED has the ability to set your access requirements.

You can lock it down to only being on site, or you can make it as broadly available as you like. And you're also able to select sensitivity, and that puts a cover on it and allows people to check a box before they open it.

So know that NED was created by librarians to bring in this type of material, and it's quite a user-friendly interface. I mean, we absolutely love working with it.

Also, there is an added benefit to putting things in NED. One, for the ease of, actually doing the deposit and tracking what you've done.

But also when you deposit with us digitally, you get a National Library, catalogue record, but you also get a Trove record, and these are very highly indexed on Google.

So it's a great way to lift some of the visibility of your individual publications because they will be searchable by their title.

So this is another way to allow some of those publications, especially when you think about things like ephemera, they can often get buried. And so this is a great way to lift that.

So again, just to summarize our take is that if you have digital publications we'd love for you to come in to NED. We'll give you all the links at the end.

Create a publisher account if you don't already have one and get started depositing. 

Clare Beckett:

Absolutely. And that's something that is worth noting as well here, that a lot of Commonwealth government agencies and departments do already have a NED publisher account, which you may or may not be aware of.

And a lot of agencies choose to manage their deposits in different ways.

So some departments choose to have one central point which is responsible for all the deposits for that department.

Others choose to have a broader approach where different teams within the agency are responsible for depositing their own publications.

So really, it's whatever works best for you and your organization,

If you're not sure whether your organization already has a NED account, there may be people within your department you can talk to about that. They always welcome to reach out to us as well.

We can have a look for you and see whether there is an existing account and if you need any additional uses added. We can help you out with that as well. 

So Hayley also mentioned that we will let you know what to do about those rare publications these days that are only produced in print.

And the answer is we definitely do still collect those under legal deposit.

So as Hayley mentioned, the requirement is to is to deposit just one copy in one format.

And generally, if both formats exist, we do prefer to receive the digital. But in those rare cases where you're only producing a print copy, we definitely do still collect those. So there are two ways that you can deposit in print.

The first is if you happen to be fortunate enough to be based in lovely Canberra, as we are, you're very welcome to come and drop them off in person and save on postage.

Otherwise, we've got our mailing address up on the screen there for you with a little stamp and everything, it’s just 'Legal deposit' at the 'National Library of Australia'.

So, yeah, if you do produce anything just in print, please feel free to send those through to us. We always love receiving them. 

Hayley Jakrot:

We do.

And just a note, we don't require any cover letters or anything like that. Just the publication is perfect to fulfill your requirements. 

Clare Beckett:

Yep, absolutely.

Hayley Jakrot:

So with that lovely amount of information overload for you all, thank you so much for sticking with us.

We've already got some questions coming in, so we're going to take a little pause and let you, pop some more in.

We'd love you to anything, if anything is jogged throughout this presentation, which I'm sure for many of you, there are, yeah. Please pop them in into the Q&A.

And we'll get through, and start answering them in just a minute. 

Clare Beckett:

Thanks, everybody. 

Hayley Jakrot:

Okay, so, one of the questions is a bill for an act. So we're talking about, the supporting explanatory memorandum.

Is that considered to be publication? And is that a legal deposit? Yes, it certainly is. We get quite a few.

And the National Library has a very large collection, and we're very thankful for it.

So, yes, those explanatory memoranda, any of those, bills, they certainly do count as legal deposit because it is publicly available, especially when it goes through the tabling process. So yes. 

Clare Beckett:

Okay. I can see somebody also asked about media releases.

Hayley Jakrot:

Oh yes.

Clare Beckett:

And that also is the same as long as it's been made available to the public in a text based format.

That is something that would be subject to legal deposit and would be gratefully received via NED. Absolutely. So if after the media event, whatever it is, you will make that release available, generally it would be on your website. 

Hayley Jakrot:

Yes, please. That would be fantastic.

Clare Beckett:

It is possibly worth noting here as well, that there are some formats that can be deposited through. NED and others that can't.

So if you've got any content that's just published in an HTML format as part of your actual website, that's not something you need to deposit, manually through NED.

All of that will be captured through web archiving. Just the content of the page, so if you've got any PDFs or anything that are linked to, those do need to be deposited separately.

But if you're thinking about, yeah, for example, blog posts or anything on your website that's actually contained within the body of the page, that doesn't need to be deposited separately.

Hayley Jakrot:

Okay.

I can see in our webinar chat that. Okay. Yeah.

We've also got that question just following on from Clare's about websites, HTML. So we've also got a great question.

Does legal deposit include podcast website storyboards? Okay. So each one of these will have a little bit of a different answer. 

Clare Beckett:

Fantastic question. 

Hayley Jakrot:

Oh it's yeah it's great.

I can see you're thinking on the right line. So that's fantastic. I'm going to jump in and I might take the podcasts.

So podcasts and anything that is audio or visual doesn't come under the National Library.

So something that's really important to note is the National Library has a collection development policy. And we see it as one which in a much larger pie of collecting institutions.

And so for podcasts, which are generally audio visual, thinking about any videos that you create, any of that, multimedia content that sits under the National Film and Sound Archive.

And if I say that’s their collecting remit, we as a library will deal mostly in textual based things.

So NED will allow you to deposit PDF, ePub and Mobi. So that's a nice kind of indicator as to what things we will take in.

Clare Beckett:

Yeah. That's right. And I'm happy to address the storyboards section of that question. So as a general rule, as Hayley was saying, we have a fairly broad, I suppose, collection development policy, but we generally stick to collecting things that are predominantly text based.

So that rules out audiovisual material. And with something like a storyboard, it could go either way. 

Definitely, we're happy to provide advice case by case. So if you would like to send us an example, I'm more than happy to comment on that. But usually we don't tend to collect things that are entirely visual.

So if your storyboard is mostly made up of images, it's possibly not something that would need to be deposited.

But again, if you have specific questions, we're happy to take a look at it.

Hayley Jakrot:

And I might just round out by mentioning that, legal deposit does - there's a web archiving function that the National Library is in charge of.

It will scrape all of the .au domains twice a year. And so, there will be a snapshot of your website that will be taken.

However, it's really important to note that legal deposit is a requirement for the publisher.

So if you have something available on your website and web archiving takes a photo, a quick snapshot of your website, that doesn't count as you providing the publication to us.

There's a couple of reasons that you do actually have to provide it to us to fulfill the requirement. And the second part of that is that when we do that, web archiving, we're not necessarily able to drill in and capture all of the links to the individual documents that you put on your website, so they will be missed, and it's best for them to come in through NED. So that's a great question.

Clare Beckett:

Yeah, very good question.

NED is definitely the best and safest place and best way to deposit those sorts of publications, those digital publications, because it's been specifically designed with the idea of preservation over a really long period of time, as technology changes.

Hayley Jakrot:

Yeah. Okay. So we might just jump back into a few more. We'll try and keep the pace up a little bit.

So what access is standard or recommended for publications that are sold commercially? Okay. So this can vary quite a lot.

Generally, what we find most publishers who have a commercial interest in the publication choose to have the strictest access condition, which is only available at the National Library and relevant, state and territory libraries.

So that means that someone has to come in person and use one of our terminals to view that particular work.

So that's the most restricted, and that doesn't impinge on your commercial viability. 

Okay. I have one, if you just scroll up… Thank you so much. 

Yes. I have a reference to Commonwealth agencies depositing and states and territories, 

Clare Beckett:

I'm happy to address this one, if you like. 

Hayley Jakrot:

Sorry, I didn't read that out in full. 

Clare Beckett:

No, that's all right!

Yes. So we've made reference today to Commonwealth agencies depositing publications under legal deposit.

You've observed here that state and territory agencies deposit to the relevant state and territory library, and that's absolutely correct.

But actually, in most cases, state and territory legislation applies in addition to the national legal deposit legislation.

So Commonwealth agencies and entities are a bit of an exception in a way, that often they are not affiliated with one single state or territory.

And in that case, state or territory legislation might not apply.

But for most publishers out there in the wide world of different types of publishers, so, for example, if I were a self-publisher and I lived in Sydney, I would have an obligation not only to provide a copy of my works to the National Library of Australia, but also to the State Library of New South Wales and their other legal deposit libraries.

Hayley Jakrot:

Yeah. So it's not like legal deposit obligations cancel each other out. They can co-exist. 

Okay. Oh, we have a great question.

Are we available to give presentations like this to individual agencies? 

Clare Beckett:

Yes!

Hayley Jakrot:

We love doing that! Yes, absolutely. We find it's really helpful.

We're happy to do it over Teams as a sort of us to your team specific 1 to 1. Yes, absolutely. Please send us an email.

We'll give all of our contact details at the end. We are very much available for that. And we do understand that each one of you individual have your own requirements.

So very, very happy to do that. Yeah. 

Postcards and bookmarks.

Clare Beckett:

Ah, this is an example of that genre of material we talked about before called ephemera. That's a really great question.

So somebody asked whether they can drop off some postcards and bookmarks produced over the years to promote books.

Hayley Jakrot:

We would love to receive those. And we do know, yes.

Thank you so much. You're from our Aboriginal Studies Press. We adore what you do. So. Yeah. Thank you so much. Yeah, that would be fantastic. You're very welcome to, please send us an email and we'll, come at you, and that'd be great. 

Clare Beckett:

Yes. So, in in person, legal deposit just goes to the Main Reading Room. They will know what to do. If you say legal deposit, they will let you know. 

Hayley Jakrot:

Okay. Policy guidance is available on a department's website in HTML and PDFs is subject to legal deposit.

And what happens when the guidance is updated? Yes. So policy guidance is actually really important.

It's a really, as you are all very aware, it's a very valuable way that each department can, help the public try and interpret, our legislation. So yes, that guidance is certainly legal deposit. We would love to have it.

We'd love to have it in PDF in NED when it gets updated you would have to upload the updated version to NED. 

Clare Beckett:

Yep. And this is a really good question that actually comes up a lot. A lot of publishers ask us, hey, I've published a new updated version. Can you take away the old version and we'll give you the new one instead?

It's totally intuitive that people think that, but actually libraries prefer to preserve every version as it was at the time that it was published.

So yes, as Hayley said, if you are producing updated versions of existing publications, just pop them in NED.

Hopefully they'll be labeled clearly on the on the front page or somewhere within the publication that it is an updated edition.

Hayley Jakrot:

Okay, I might pop them into the Q&A for a little bit, I’m just mindful about time, but certainly, we are happy to answer all of these and we continue through some emails if you have any specific questions that we don't address today, please send it through in an email and we'll definitely get back to you. 

Newsletters that are member only access, are they classified as publicly available? Oh, this is a fantastic question.

And again, one that we get all of the time. Yes, I do know that publication. Yes.

So as long as any member of the public can join your members only access, it is publicly available.

There are certain examples which we could run through, but I'm mindful of time. Things like, family histories that are only given to members of the family. Unfortunately, not everyone in the public is a member of that family, so they don't have access to it.

But in this case, yes, that counts, and you're welcome to restrict it down, as your access conditions, as you feel fit. 

Okay. If we create a NED account, do we need to provide metadata for these publications for use in other catalogues? 

Clare Beckett:

That's a really great question. You obviously know quite a lot about libraries. 

Hayley Jakrot:

Yes you do! I can sense another librarian out there. 

Clare Beckett:

Yes, definitely. So the good news for you is that NED is kind of a one stop shop in that fashion.

So as Hayley mentioned, that is a collaboration between the National Library and the state and territory libraries. And Trove is also something that happens from the National Library.

So we all talk to each other. And when you do enter your metadata into NED, it gets carried across to Trove and the National Library of Australia's catalogue.

So all of those catalogue records, Trove records, are all populated from that data that you enter into NED. So no need to duplicate that effort.

Hayley Jakrot:

We try to make it as easy as possible. 

Is there a limit for when legal deposit needs to be made?

So we have the, optimistic hope that it would come in within three months of the publication being released, publicly made available.

However, we understand that there's lots of time restraints. So our rule of thumb is within a year is ideal.

And legal deposit does apply retroactively.

So if you have items that you haven't deposited, I would certainly look to try and get your legal deposit up to date for the last five years.

And then you can look at the backlog after that. But yes, ideally three months within a year is also great. We'd really like to see them come in.

And again, it's really great for the public to have access to things that are up to date. 

Clare Beckett:

Yes. Back issues are always really gratefully received.

The advice that we normally give people is if you if you find you have a lot of publications that you need to deposit that haven't been done in the past is to start with what you're producing now.

So each time you publish a new publication, deposit it straight away, and then gradually work through your backlog by choosing maybe one type of publication and go from there.

Hayley Jakrot:

Go through in there and let that sort of as you produce things that that jog you, you might think, oh, I've made a new report, oh, have I put the last one in? Yeah, it's a really nice way just to catch up.

And then again, we're very happy to work with you on a plan for getting that through. If you haven't deposited in a while. That's all right.

Is there a need to contact you before a bulk upload? We are your member libraries, so we will be approving those bulk uploads. It is, it's not necessary.

You're welcome to send just through the bulk upload, but it does help us contextually.

If you might send through a quick “hi I'm going to upload these things and I've requested a bulk upload”. It just let us know what's coming in and what to expect in that.

But yes, it's just a courtesy if you wouldn't mind.

Is there a bill or an act and supporting memorandum? Yes. It is subject to legal deposit.

Any of those supporting explanations, bills that comes through? Yes, 

Clare Beckett:

Yes, yes, absolutely. 

Hayley Jakrot:

Okay.

How are our online newsletters treated? If they're publishing in text form.

I see, and not a standalone document given that the website is captured. 

Clare Beckett:

Yeah. Great question.

So as we mentioned briefly before, if it is published in part of the website within the HTML text of the website, that will be captured by web archiving.

Another format that you might have for newsletters, is that you might have a mailing list of newsletters that get sent out automatically by email.

And if that's the case, we do also have a method of collecting and preserving those by hand.

It's something that needs a little bit more set up from your member library, which, for most of you here today is us at the NLA.

So feel free if you've got an email newsletter and you're wondering how to preserve that in NED. Just shoot us through an email and we're very happy to help you get that set up.

Hayley Jakrot:

Absolutely. Yes. The crossover between National Archives and us here at the National Library.

Yes. So, legal deposit to attach its own standalone piece of legislation – well, clause within the Copyright Act.

And so that's, the intention is to create a representative collection. The National Archives have a much broader remit, although we do cross over.

So in the sense that they are trying to ensure that there is democratic access to government publications.

They are also looking to archive internal documents.

And they are also looking at the, you know, seven years before things get destroyed and what comes through to them is very different than looking at your organization as a whole, which will include all of your internal documentation and also your internal, processes that you might use. 

For the National Library we are looking at publications. Our focuses are literary and the wider community. So we will crossover in the sense that there will be documents that might be in both collections, but the view is very different, if that makes sense.

Clare Beckett

Yes, yes, it does. There's another question I can see here, which I would love to address. Somebody has asked, when you handle your in-house cataloguing for publications, you upload the bibliographic data to ANBD, which is the Australian National Bibliographic Database. 

Hayley Jakrot:

Well done.

Clare Beckett:

Thank you. The last time I tried to say that in a webinar, I butchered it terribly! 

And does that mean that they're deposited to the National Library? That's a fantastic question. I'm really glad you asked that. It comes up a lot. And actually, those are two separate services. So -

Hayley Jakrot:

We do do a lot of things here at the National Library, so we understand!

Clare Beckett:

We really do! Yes. So that comes under something called the Pre-publication Data Service. I'm doing very well with my tongue twisters today.

Hayley Jakrot:

PDS. 

Clare

PDS, yes. So that is something that you complete before you actually publish your work.

And it's to create what we call a prepublication record in the database to hold a space for your publication and to let us know that it's coming.

And there are a few other perks that come along with using that service as well. There's a lot of information about PDS on the National Library's website, which you can definitely have a look at if you're interested.

But the short answer to your question is no, that actually doesn't fulfill your legal deposit requirement.

So once your work is finally published, you do need to send a copy along, either deposit through NED or send the print copy to the Library.

And then a full catalogue record will be made after we receive it. 

Hayley Jakrot:

Absolutely.

I can see just popping over into the chat for a quick minute, articles that are dropped into us in hard copy. What do we do with our lovely hard copy things that we have?

Do we digitise them? Where are they stored? How do we make them available? So the National Library certainly deals in physical publications.

We're sitting on top of a very large - and you can see behind us is a picture of our stacks of all of our physical publications in there. So most of them will remain in hardcopy.

They are physically available for anybody to come on site and request and have a look at them. When it comes to digitising that is as needed.

And for things that are risk of degrading. Generally things in hardcopy, we are able to preserve quite well. Our Collection Care team are absolute wizards, so they will generally stay in that format. And digitising can be done on demand through Copies Direct. If there is a question, if someone has requested that to be digitised.

And as far as preservation, that's an as needed. 

Clare Beckett:

Yeah, that's right.

So if somebody needs to access that material and they're not able to attend the National Library in person, they can put in a request for digitised copy within the bounds of the Copyright Act.

Hayley Jakrot:

Absolutely. Okay.

I have a question about, oh, how we receive, actually, thank you so much for popping that in.

The question is, instead of asking their library team, it's someone at the Department of Finance wondering how they, if we receive copies of the annual budget paper, whether we get them in hard copy or digital.

I don't actually have access to my computer right now. So that's one, if you wouldn't mind, giving us through an email.

I'll double check, how it comes through, I can tell you that we would love to have it through NED if we don't already receive it that way.

Clare Beckett:

Yes, absolutely. And this is one of the handy things of NED as well. Once you do have access to NED, you can log in and you can have a look at what your department's uploaded before, and that will save you the hassle of having to ask around the office. 

Hayley Jakrot:

Yes. I do have a question about Freedom of Information disclosures.

If they're published on the disclosure log, are they required? And we also have a second one about Freedom of Information.

Once something is released in response to a oh, that's to a specific FOI application.

And it has been published on the agency's website, which makes the document which may not have been available to the public, public. Does this mean that it is subject to legal deposit? Wow.

Clare Beckett:

Well, that's a really good question. We may need to take that one on notice and get back to you. 

Hayley Jakrot:

And it would. Yeah.

Again, that may be a specific answer to each FOI, but we I can't answer that in generality because they exist in a slightly different pocket of the universe.

Clare Beckett:

If you do have an example of that type of a publication, we'd love to see one.

So please feel free to email us a link, and we'll take a look and we'll be able to get back to you with some specific advice. 

Hayley Jakrot:

Okay, last two. And I think we'll wrap up.

Thank you so much for giving us all 45 minutes of your time.

As long as it is born digital, is there any problem adding items to NED that predate NED?

Clare Beckett:

Ooh, I love this question. 

Hayley Jakrot:

Yeah. She's ready. I’ll get Clare to take it.

Clare Beckett:

Sorry, I got excited! No, there's no problem with that whatsoever. As long as it's created digitally. Yes. Please pop them in.

So NED came into being in 2019. The legislation for digital legal deposit came into being in 2016.

But that's not to say that we don't accept things before that as long as they're born digital and not scanned, we'd love to have them. 

Hayley Jakrot:

Absolutely, absolutely.

Okay.

Talking about submitting applications types underneath the archives and the Copyright Act, yes, you do have a legal deposit application, even if you have lodged it with another agency. 

Clare Beckett:

Yes. I think the best way of looking at this, and this is a question we get around transparency portal as well. A lot of the time when we're talking about digital publications, you know, we understand that it's a bit of a hassle having to upload them to two different places.

And the same with Archives Act. 

Hayley Jakrot:

We do understand there's a huge amount of obligation on, yes, Commonwealth agencies to provide lots of things to lots of places.

Clare Beckett:

That's right. Yeah, it's quite a lot of work.

The best way of looking at what legal deposit does for your publications is that really the aim is to collect and preserve them in a way that makes them discoverable to the Australian public indefinitely.

So it's really contributing to this national collection, making it available to Australians into the future and forming this really complete picture.

And so although the transparency portal is is displaying and making your publications available and the same potentially with Archives Act, there are things that are being preserved, none of those things makes them discoverable and accessible, in such a broad way as legal deposit.

So, we hope you will agree that there's value in all of the above. 

Hayley Jakrot:

Yeah, absolutely. Okay.

Well, we're going to wrap up. Thank you all so much for your time. And, we're just going to share in our next slide. Our - some resources.

We aren't running through them because you've already given us enough of your time. But please have a look through our legal deposit pages and NED, and our emails are down the bottom. We'll send you a wrap up email.

And please, if there are any questions that come up or we haven't gotten through or you'd like us to, do a presentation with your team. Please send them through.

Either inbox, but legal deposit is our main one, so. 

Clare Beckett:

Yeah. That's right. Thank you very much, everybody for joining us. 

Hayley Jakrot:

Thanks so much. Have a lovely afternoon. Bye now