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Pandora : Australia's Web Archive National Library of Australia and Partners
Home > About PANDORA > An Overview

pandora overview

The purpose of the PANDORA Archive
The purpose of the PANDORA web site
Collecting responsibility
Discovering the contents of PANDORA
Legal deposit
Partners
PANDORA Digital Archiving System (PANDAS)

PANDORA Fact Sheet (colour brochure)

PANDORA, Australia's Web Archive is a growing collection of copies of Australian online publications, established initially by the National Library of Australia in 1996, and now built in collaboration with nine other Australian libraries and other cultural collecting organisations.

The purpose of the PANDORA Archive

The purpose of the PANDORA Archive is to collect and provide long-term access to selected online publications and web sites that are about Australia, are by an Australian author on a subject of social, political, cultural, religious, scientific or economic significance and relevance to Australia, or are by an Australian author of recognised authority and make a contribution to international knowledge.

The purpose of the PANDORA web site

The purpose of this web site is to provide access to the contents of PANDORA Archive itself, as well as to provide information about it: why we have established it, what we have done, and how.

Collecting responsibility

As a national library, the National Library of Australia has a responsiblity to develop collections of library materials, regardless of format, which document the history and culture of Australia and the Australian people. When in the mid-1990s unique Australian information began to be published on the World Wide Web, the Library realised that it would be necessary to extend its collecting activity to this new domain. It also realised that, because of the volume of material being published and the complexity of the task of collecting it, it would be impossible to build an archive of sufficient depth and breadth alone. It therefore invited other deposit libraries with similar responsibilities, namely the State libraries, and other cultural collecting agencies (PANDORA participants) to join it.

Discovering the contents of PANDORA

There are a number of different ways to find resources in PANDORA. All archived titles are catalogued and a record is included in the National Bibliographic Database (Libraries Australia), as well as in participants' online catalogues. Access is provided via hotlinks in the catalogue record.

Access is also provided via a search facility and subject and title lists on the PANDORA Home Page.

Search services, such as Yahoo! and Google, index the Archive down to the level of individual titles, but not the contents of the titles.

Legal deposit

In building its print collections, the National Library relies on the legal deposit provisions of the Copyright Act 1968, which requires publishers to deposit one copy of each edition of a work with the Library. These provisions do not yet cover electronic publications. Most of the States also have legal deposit legislation, some of which include provisions for physical format electronic publications, such as CD-ROM and DVD. Of the deposit libraries contributing to PANDORA, only the Northern Territory Library has legislation which specifically includes online publications. In the absence of legal deposit provisions for online publications and web sites, most PANDORA participants are obliged to seek the permission of publishers before copying a title into the Archive.

Participants

In 1998 the State Library of Victoria was the first to join the National Library in contributing to PANDORA and a total of ten participants now identify, select, seek permission from publishers, archive and catalogue publications and web sites for the Archive.

The National Library stores the Archive centrally on its server. It takes responsibility for maintaining PANDORA on behalf of the other participants, backing it up according to standard Information Technology management practices, and taking preservation action over time as required.

PANDORA Digital Archiving System (PANDAS)

To support the acquisition and management of increasing volumes of data, as well as to support more efficient archive building for participants at remote work stations, the Library developed the PANDORA Digital Archiving System (PANDAS), the first release of which took place in June 2001, with version 2 being released in August 2002. A considerably enhanced and completely re-engineered version of the software, PANDAS 3, was released into production at the National Library in July 2007.

PANDORA Fact Sheet

A downloadable colour brochure (Word document) summarising the PANDORA Archive is availabe here.

For more detailed information about the background of PANDORA, see History and achievements.