National Library of Australia: What Future for the Strategic Plan?

Abstract

The collapse of WORLD 1 has caused questions to be asked about the National Library's centralised leadership of the Australian library system. This failure of key electronic aspects of the National Library's Strategic Plan (1993–98) should prompt an independent—preferably a one-person—review of the Plan as a whole and, more specifically, of its three main themes: the National Library's new overseas collecting, electronic access, and Australia's Distributed National Collection (DNC). Scholarly critics of the Plan have strongly objected to its culturally discriminatory collecting policy, which has involved 60% cuts to the intellectually vital material from Europe and the United States. These cuts have already been made, without any proof of adequate electronic alternatives and without an effectively functioning DNC. The latter would require binding inter-library agreements about collecting patterns now and in the future. Yet minimal progress has been made towards such a goal. In discussions about the DNC and the National Library's cuts in overseas collecting, emphasis has been placed on the allegedly available electronic alternatives to print materials. In fact these alternatives are often not efficiently accessible. But even if they were, the debate has paid too little attention to the major problem of the costs of electronic access. These must be borne by the users, who are charged regardless of their capacity to pay. Any National Library savings from electronic alternatives to print will be funded by a heavy shift of costs to general readers, and to those working in universities. This also raises the question of the cost of access to knowledge in a democratic society, where the right to know has been a vital ingredient of responsible citizenship.With the collapse of WORLD 1 and the consequent damage to the National Library's Strategic Plan, there is now the opportunity for a positive and nation-wide response to an otherwise negative situation. In what has been described as ‘a national crisis for Australian libraries’, it is time for the whole of the library system to embark on a new kind of collective effort. It needs to mobilise the full range of its talents, rethink its sense of direction, and engage in spirited advocacy to improve library funding, both government and private.