(1 August 2017) In February 2016 the National Library of Australia welcomed long-anticipated changes to the Copyright Act. For the first time in its history, the Library could collect electronic publications under the legal deposit provisions of the Act.
18 months later what has the library collected?
- over 5,900 ebooks – an increase on the 300 or so ebooks collected in the previous twelve months
- over 19,000 electronic issues across nearly 1,100 e-journals, magazines and newsletters
- almost 150 electronic music scores, and
- 10,151 e-map files.
Over 500 publishers have deposited current and backlist titles using the Library’s edeposit service. Publishers are able to select the access conditions to be applied to their publication. This makes it possible for publishers to agree to a broader level of access than permitted under the Copyright Act. The proportion of material available off-site is significant – over one third of material deposited so far allows open or view-only access, meaning that these publications are available via Trove to Australians wherever they live or might be.
Read the full story by Meredith Batten on the NLA blogsite.
