Overseas Published Collections collecting plan
Find out about collecting and priorities for the Overseas Published Collections.
Purpose
The purpose of this collecting plan is to describe the extent of collecting to be undertaken and any subject priorities for the non-New Zealand and Pacific component of the National Library’s General Collections during the period 2021 to 2023.
This collecting plan was developed in accordance with the collecting principles outlined in the National Library of New Zealands Collections Policy.
National Library of New Zealands Collections Policy
The National Library’s General collections are available for use both onsite at the Library’s Wellington premises and through New Zealand and overseas libraries via inter-library loan.
Scope of the collection
The collections covered by this plan include the non-New Zealand and Pacific components of the National Library’s General Lending Collection, General Serials Collection and General Reference Collection.
National Library General Collections
Since 2003 the National Library has increasingly been focusing its collecting of published resources to those relating to New Zealand and the Pacific. This is in accordance with its purpose as defined in the National Library of New Zealand (Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa) Act 2003.
The current collecting areas for the National Library’s Overseas Published Collections are:
Family history
Library and information science
Music
Print disabilities, and
Works for ready reference in the Library’s Reading Room.
Exclusions
Excluded from this plan are overseas publications covered in other collecting plans.
Alexander Turnbull Library General Collection
Cartographic
Children’s literature
New Zealand and Pacific Published Collections
Music
Rare Books and Fine Printing
Schools Collection
Collection strengths
Resources for New Zealand family history research.
Collecting principles
The National Library of New Zealand collection policy provides a suite of principles that guide all collecting across the published and unpublished collections by the National Library and Alexander Turnbull Library.
National Library of New Zealands Collections Policy
The relevant principles from the collection development policy are provided below, with an explanation of how they will be realised for the National Library’s overseas published collection.
Principle 3
The Library has an important leadership role in collaborating and coordinating collection related activities across institutional and national boundaries to enable New Zealanders to connect to information important to their lives and to support a strong documentary heritage and tāonga system for all New Zealanders.
Action
Continuing support for New Zealand’s EPIC (Electronic Purchasing in Collaboration) consortium.
Principle 6
The Library takes into account the cost of acquiring, storing, managing and making accessible collection items when building its collections.
Action
Determining retention of existing overseas publications in the National Library’s General Collections by their alignment with the Collecting Plan.
Principle 7
The National Library’s General Collections will increasingly focus on published resources relating to New Zealand and the Pacific, with only selected areas of collecting outside this.
Action
The National Library will acquire a very limited number of non-New Zealand and Pacific publications and will develop new retention and weeding policies to manage these.
Principle 8
For content in the National Library’s General Collections other than New Zealand and the Pacific focus area, the Library will facilitate access for users in preference to acquiring and owning such content.
Actions
Continuing preference for subscription electronic resources over hard copy for overseas material selected for the National Library’s Overseas Published Collection.
The provision of online audio books and e-books to support the National Library’s Print Disabilities Service.
The Library will investigate options to deliver purchased digital resources directly to users.
Collecting priorities
Family history
Monographs and serials to support New Zealanders’ family history research
Specialist family history tools, including birth, death and marriage indexes, census indexes, probate indexes, monumental transcriptions, shipping passenger lists
Historical newspaper databases
Reading Room Collection
A small collection of titles including reference works and other bibliographic resources for ready reference in the Reading Room
World issues affecting New Zealand
A small selection of monographs about significant global issues, events and topics which directly affect New Zealand.
Library and Information Science
Titles with a focus on emerging issues
Titles which support the Library’s leadership role in the New Zealand library sector
Print Disabilities
Recreational reading, both fiction and non-fiction, in a wide range of genres for adults, young adults and children with print disabilities.
Selected curriculum support material and NCEA texts for literature-based subjects.
Contact
Dale Cousens, Team Leader, Collection Development (Acquisitions Team), National Library of New Zealand
Email — dale.cousens@dia.govt.nz
Felicity Benjes, Print Disabilities Service Librarian, National Library of New Zealand
Email — felicity.benjes@dia.govt.nz
Download the Overseas Published Collections collecting plan
Overseas Published Collections collecting plan (pdf, 185KB)
Last updated 2016