Our roles
Learn about Legal Deposit, the relevant legislation, how to make a National edeposit (NED) and find information for South Australian publishers. As well our role in preserving and conserving the State Library's collection for future generations to explore and research.
Legal deposit FAQs
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Who are publishers?
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'Publishers’ include commercial publishers, government publishers, schools, societies, organisations, clubs, churches, associations and private individuals. Legal deposit does not apply to authors, retail outlets or printers if they are not also the publisher.
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What are publications?
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'Publications' are those deemed to be available to the general public, or distributed to an audience such as a club membership, either by sale or for free.
Legal deposit applies to printed items such as books, magazines and newspapers and works in any other format including film and video, audio CDs, CD-ROMs, websites and any electronic material. -
How does the State Library archive websites?
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Once permission is obtained, the State Library employs harvesting software that copies material online from a specified seed URL and publishes it to the PANDORA archive. In most cases, the publisher's assistance is not required.
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How do I find out about legal deposit titles?
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You can see what's new in our collection and subscribe to the South Australiana resources RSS feed, which lists all the South Australian material added in the last fortnight including legal deposit, donations, and purchased items.
Image caption: Infocuz Technologies, La tecnologia de big data revolucionara la seguridad de la informacion, Flickr Creative Commons, viewed 25/3/2014.
Preserving and conserving
We preserve and conserve the State Library's collection for future generations to explore and research.
The State Library has sole responsibility for preserving access to a large proportion of the South Australian historical record for present and future generations. Under Legal Deposit legislation, first instituted in 1878, the State Library receives one copy of every South Australian publication, irrespective of format.
Since the early 1900s, the State Library has also been entrusted with the archival records of thousands of businesses, organisations and individuals; hundreds of thousands of photographs; and unique audiovisual and electronic material including film footage and oral histories.
Predating its South Australiana responsibilities is the State Library’s role as a general reference library. Over time parts of the reference collection have grown in significance to warrant long-term preservation. Other significant non-South Australiana material has been acquired for posterity.
The State Library’s collections are intended to be accessible to the public, both physically onsite and digitally online. All the collections are described in the online catalogue and most are available for viewing upon request and a small but increasing proportion are available online. A large proportion of the general reference collection is also available through Inter-Library Loan services and the Lending Policy. The State Library’s preservation activities guarantee access to all these collections.
ArtLab Australia
Artlab Australia has a team of qualified conservators who provide specialised preservation and conservation services for works of art and historic items.