General collections

General information collections at the State Library of Queensland complement the heritage component of our collections, with books, magazines, audiovisual, music and eresources which focus on Australian and international content.

We offer resources in all subjects, with strengths in visual arts, music, history, family history and automotive technology.

Our geographic coverage has traditionally been focussed on Australia and regions where emigrants to Australia originated from such as the British Isles. More recently we have developed collections from the Asia-Pacific area.

Development of the general information collections will continue to be based on usage and will respond to changing information needs.

Ebooks and other eresources

The State Library has responded to the rapid growth in the availability of electronic resources by providing access to about 130,000 ebooks through its discovery service OneSearch. Our policy is to lease rather than purchase the titles and pay for use as a title is lent out. This has the immediate benefit of providing access to the largest range of titles from which clients can self-select, and represents a significant departure from the more traditional purchase model.

In addition to ebooks, we provide access to a range of eresources which connect our clients with journal articles, magazine and newspaper archives, sound libraries, online music scores, family history data and company information. Our preference is to subscribe to eresources which can be licensed for use away from the State Library building.

Collaborative lending

The State Library is a partner in the National and State Libraries Australasia (NSLA) Collaborative Collections initiative. Each State Library and the National Library will share their retrospective print collections and make them available to clients via inter-library lending.