This snapshot is taken from our 2023-24 Annual Report.

Visitor reach

Onsite visits to Library events; the onsite and online bookshop; learning and school education programs; Library donors and Friends. (Based on postcodes voluntarily supplied and grouped by Australian Bureau of Statistics Remoteness Area Codes.)

• Very remote 0.1%
• Remote 0.9%
• Outer regional 4.3%
• Inner regional 10.0%
• Major cities 83.8%
• Not known 1.0%

Research and information inquiries reach

Online research and information inquiries received via the Library's 'Ask a Librarian' service; research user registrations; fellowship and grant programs; Trove. (Based on postcodes voluntarily supplied and grouped by Australian Bureau of Statistics Remoteness Area Codes.)

• Very remote 0.5%
• Remote 0.8%
• Outer regional 7.4%
• Inner regional 16.8%
• Major cities 70.4%
• Not known 4.2%

Our people

Note that upward and downward arrows reflect the trend from previous year.

• 365 staff (up) - average full-time equivalent
• Median age of staff was 45 years
• 42.8% of ongoing staff have worked at the Library for over five years (down)
• 26 registered volunteers (down)
• 1,515 Friends of the National Library (up)

Buildings

We operated from six buildings.

• The main National Library building
• One administrative building
• Three offsite collection storage repositories
• An office in the Australian Embassy in Jakarta

Spaces

We operated two reading rooms and two galleries in the main building.

• Main Reading Room
• Special Collections Reading Room
• Treasures Gallery
• Exhibition Gallery

New items acquired

• 28,359 published works acquired (up)
• 165,576 unpublished works acquired (up)

Access and usage

• 23.2M total website sessions (up) - includes Australian and international engagement and Trove website sessions
• 14.3M Trove website sessions (up) - includes Australian and international engagement
• 54,776 physical items delivered to users either in reading rooms or offsite via interlibrary loan or document supply (up)
• 41,535 reference and information inquiries answered by Library staff (up)
• 19 billion Australian and online resources available (up) - includes all files in the Australian Web Archive, delivered via Trove
• 28.3 million newspaper pages available online (up)
• 498 million lines of text corrected (up) - all-time total since the National Library began tracking

Social media

Social media reporting relies on a third-party algorithm, which may be adjusted from year to year.

• 967,797 total social media engagements (up)

Visitors

• 389,389 onsite visitors (down)
• 359,928 offsite visitors (up) - total number of visits to third-party exhibitions

In 2023–24, there were:

• 183,722 reading room visitors (down)
• 66,219 visitors to our exhibition galleries (down) - exhibition galleries were closed for 6 months in 2023–24
• 12,004 visitors to events (down)
• 2,540 school students (down)
• 28 online events (down)
• 64,588 online event attendees (down)

Our staff delivered onsite and offsite public programs including:

• 53 public events (down)
• 118 volunteer-led tours (down)
• 82 organised school programs (down)
• 8 learning programs (down)