On Friday August 16, 2024, Australia’s national, state, and territory libraries are celebrating five years since the launch of the National edeposit service (NED). NED is a collaborative service that collects, preserves, and provides access to Australia’s digital heritage, ensuring all published materials are available for future generations.
What is the national collection?
Australian libraries have long been gathering and preserving the country’s documentary heritage through legal deposit laws. These laws require publishers to deposit one copy of all published material with their national, and relevant state or territory, library, depending on where the item was published.
Legal deposit collections help library users - researchers, readers, and audiences everywhere - to understand the Australian experience. For the national, state and territory libraries, being a legal deposit library is one of their most important responsibilities.
Why develop NED?
As digital publishing grew, the need to develop a single service for publishers to meet their legal deposit obligations grew.
NED was created to manage the deposit, storage, and access of digital materials, making it easier for publishers to meet legal requirements and for libraries to preserve and share Australia’s digital heritage.
What’s in the NED collection, and how is it accessed?
Since 2019, over 10,000 publishers have deposited more than 100,000 titles, including e-books, articles, maps, music scores, reports and more. The collection includes a wide range of materials, from major publications to niche newsletters, all accessible through Trove and library catalogues.
On a typical day in NED land, Australian authors, and publishers deposit about 150 publications. These publications encompass everything from the latest works by prize-winning authors like Alexis Wright, to daily editions of newspapers, such as The Advertiser and newsletters for clubs like the Fern Society of South Australia.
Over the last five years 916 publishers from South Australia have contributed to NED. They have added 5255 electronic publications and 14,814 newspapers or serials to the national collection.
Looking ahead
NED continues to evolve, guided by feedback from publishers and the NED Strategic Plan 2023-2026. Future improvements will ensure the service remains valuable for publishers, libraries, and users, preserving Australia’s digital heritage for years to come.
More to explore
- Learn more about NED by watching the special birthday video, celebrating NED’s 5th birthday.
- Visit the NED collection feature on Trove.
- If you are a publisher, visit NED National edeposit.
This article has been amended. Original article was published on the National and State Libraries Australasia website, 12 August 2024.