The following was passed on to us from Larry Czarnik. Thanks to Larry and to Sandra Henderson of the National Library of Australia for graciously allowing us to reprint it.

For many years now librarians have been able to search the national database provided by the National Library of Australia, to discover which books are held by which library (to put it simply!). In late February a public version, accessible to all, was made available. A search screen for the new service can be found at: http://librariesaustralia.nla.gov.au

The national database (the Australian National Bibliographic Database) lists over 40 million books, maps, pictures, microfilm, newspapers and more, in over 800 Australian libraries.  Where the libraries know about a free online version of an item, you’ll be able to click through from the catalogue record to the item.   In other cases there’s a list of libraries which hold the item, and you can click on the library name to find out more about that library.   There are also links to online bookshops, and to loan and copy services.   There is more information about Libraries Australia at http://www.nla.gov.au/librariesaustralia/ and you can read the full press release about the new service at http://www.nla.gov.au/pressrel/2006/la-launch.html

The National Library also provides PictureAustralia (http://www.pictureaustralia.org) which many of you will already know, and is now harvesting images from the Flickr site, to which anyone can add images.   Go to http://www.pictureaustralia.org/Flickr.html to learn more about how you can upload images of people, places and events which can then be selected for PictureAustralia. Since this facility was made available a few months ago over 2000 images have been loaded by members of the public, on subjects as diverse as an old tobacco farm at Myrtleford in Victoria, Australia Day celebrations, a surf carnival at Cronulla, as well as some scans of old photos of historic interest.

Sandra Henderson
Manager, Research,
Coordination Support Branch
National Library of Australia
CANBERRA   ACT   2600