Service charter

This Charter sets out the standard of service you can expect from the National Library of Australia. With your assistance and feedback, we seek to continuously improve our service to the Australian community by responding to the changing needs of our users, while providing access to the nation’s library collections and services and safeguarding our heritage building for future generations.

Jan Fullerton AO
Director-General

Who we are

The National Library is one of several agencies within the Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts portfolio with responsibility for maintaining and disseminating Australia's cultural heritage. The Library’s role, as defined by the National Library of Australia Act 1960, is to ensure that documentary resources of national significance relating to Australia and the Australian people, as well as significant non-Australian library materials, are collected, preserved and made accessible either through the Library itself or through collaborative arrangements with other libraries and information providers. By offering a strong national focus in all that we do, and cooperating with others who share our goals, we support learning, creative and intellectual endeavour, and contribute to the continuing vitality of Australia’s diverse culture and heritage.

Serving you

Our staff are dedicated to meeting your information needs. We do this by making our collections and services available via the Library’s website where possible, delivering an extensive range of onsite services, and offering a telephone, fax and online enquiry service.

Visitors can use the Library’s collections in the Main Reading Room or any of the specialist reading rooms, or explore the current exhibition in the Exhibition Gallery. The Library recognises it serves a national, and increasingly international, audience and where possible is making its collections and services available online. Offsite users can access a range of digital collections, online services and information about the Library by visiting our website.

We make every effort to ensure that the content of the website is current, well organised and reflects the full spectrum of our services to onsite and offsite users.

We strive to make the website user-friendly and accessible to a broad range of users, including those who are unable to use the latest technology or who have disabilities that inhibit access in some way.

To achieve our aim of providing rapid, easy and equitable access to the nation’s information resources to the widest possible number of people, we:

  • assist users to locate material held in the National Library and all Australian libraries by providing a range of online discovery services at www.nla.gov.au
  • assist users to directly access online information by digitising items from our collections and subscribing to electronic journals, newspapers and other electronic data sets.
  • lend eligible items from our collections for use at a local library or supply a copy directly under the provisions of the Copyright Act 1968 (see www.nla.gov.au/dss).
  • acquire material on loan from other libraries for use in our reading rooms upon request (see www.nla.gov.au/copiesdirect).
  • interpret our collections and make them accessible through onsite, travelling and online exhibitions, publications, public events and education programs.
  • ensure that our services comply with accessibility standards and requirements.

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Our service standards

You can expect a quick, effective and courteous response whenever you approach us. To satisfy your information needs using the most current and authoritative sources, we strive to:

  • deliver 90% of items stored onsite within 45 minutes
  • deliver 90% of items requested from our rare or secure collections within 90 minutes of designated cut-off times
  • deliver 90% of items requested from our offsite store, within 90 minutes of designated cut-off times (see www.nla.gov.au/infoserv/stacks.html)
  • (Waiting times can be minimised by pre-ordering material accessible through the electronic callslip system prior to visiting the Library (see www.nla.gov.au/catalogue/infosheet.html.)
  • respond to 90% of general reference enquiries within a week of receipt; more complex enquiries may take up to four weeks
  • dispatch items requested through a local library or copies of documents requested directly within four working days of receipt of request for the standard service or within two hours to one day depending on the level of the priority service required
  • ensure that the Library’s main website at www.nla.gov.au is available 99.5% of time (24 hours a day, 7 days a week)

When visiting the Library in person you can use the reading rooms and access our collections during the following hours for most of the year:

Main and Petherick Reading Rooms

Opening hours

  • Monday to Thursday, 9 am – 9 pm
  • Friday, Saturday & public holidays, 9 am – 5 pm
  • Sunday, 1.30 – 5 pm

Book delivery times

  • Monday to Thursday, 9 am – 5 pm
  • Friday, Saturday & public holidays, 9 am – 3.45 pm
  • Sunday, no book delivery service

Please note that these delivery times refer to material from print collections held onsite. For offsite storage and material held in special format collections please refer to www.nla.gov.au/infoserv/stacks.html

Newspapers and Microforms Reading Room

Opening hours

  • Monday to Saturday & public holidays, 9 am – 5 pm
  • Sunday, closed

Items may be requested until 30 minutes prior to closing time.
After-hours access to some collection material is possible by prior arrangement.

Other Reading Rooms

Opening hours for Maps, Manuscripts, Pictures and Asian Collections

  • Monday to Friday, 9 am – 5 pm
  • Weekends & public holidays, closed

After hours access to some collection material is possible by prior arrangement.
All reading rooms are closed on Good Friday, Christmas Day and Boxing Day.
For up-to-date information on the opening times and the availability of book delivery services for all our reading rooms, please telephone (02) 6262 1111  or visit our website at www.nla.gov.au/hours.html.

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Help us serve you better

You can assist us in serving you more effectively by:

  • providing us with the information relevant to your enquiry in an accurate and concise manner
  • requesting items you wish to access prior to your visit; registered readers can do so directly from the catalogue at www.nla.gov.au/catalogue. — register online at www.nla.gov.au/getalibrarycard
  • handling all collection items with care to ensure that the material will be preserved for future generations
  • acknowledging the National Library and citing sources accurately in your work
  • treating our staff courteously and respecting the rights of other Library users
  • being mindful of the need for staff to balance the information needs of all Library users, and recognising the Library cannot provide ongoing or detailed research assistance
  • letting us know how we can improve our services by contacting us

Tell us what you think

It is important that you are satisfied with our service. Your criticism and comments help us to improve. We will take all complaints seriously, treat all parties to a complaint with impartiality and confidentiality, and provide reasons for the decisions we make. All complaints will be acknowledged and the majority responded to within one week of receipt. For more complex issues, a resolution or explanation will be provided as soon as possible.

  • When you have a complaint, please contact the staff member you have been dealing with in the first instance.
  • If you believe the complaint cannot be resolved by that person, contact the manager responsible for the service.
  • If you feel that the issue has not been resolved by either of these actions, please contact the Director-General at:

National Library of Australia
Parkes Place
Canberra ACT 2600
tel: (02) 6262 1262
fax: (02) 6273 1133
online: www.nla.gov.au/contact

  • If you are dissatisfied at any time with our handling of your complaint, you may write to the Commonwealth Ombudsman:

Commonwealth Ombudsman
GPO Box 442
Canberra ACT 2601

online:  www.comb.gov.au

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Performance reporting

The Library’s performance against the service standards is continuously monitored. It is reported in our Annual Report.

How to contact us

By mail:

National Library of Australia
Parkes Place
Canberra ACT 2600

Telephone and fax:

tel: (02) 6262 1111
telephone typewriter: 1800 026 372
fax: (02) 6257 1703

Online:

www.nla.gov.au/contact

Review of this charter

We are committed to ensuring that this Charter reflects your needs and expectations. So that we can continue to improve our services we welcome all feedback, both positive and negative. We encourage you to contact us by one of the methods outlined above.
Each year we report on the effectiveness of the Charter in our Annual Report and conduct a review of Charter standards to ensure they remain relevant and in line with other key Library performance measures. Every three years we undertake a major review of the Charter in consultation with staff, stakeholders and those who use our services.

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Last updated: 5 November, 2009

While the Library has made every effort to present information on its website that is accurate, the Library does not accept any responsibility or liability for any damage or loss incurred as a result of any person’s use of that information.