Community Heritage Digitisation Offer: Frequently Asked Questions

Authors and publishers participating in the Community Heritage Digitisation Offer will receive significantly increased exposure for their publications and as a consequence, the opportunity to share their work with a much wider readership.

Digitised works will be discoverable from within SLQ’s online catalogue, One Search. In addition they will automatically acquire a record on the Trove database whose contents are harvested by Google. There is a good chance that these records will appear in relevant Google search results.

In relation to the titles digitised through the Community Heritage Digitisation Offer it is expected that e-publication will offer a new lease of life for a number of out-of-print publications whose revenue stream has been exhausted. It is also likely to lift the profile of those publications whose initial distribution was limited to a small group.

Initially you need only complete and submit an Expression of Interest (EOI) which steps you through the essential requirements for participating in this offer.

If you have answered yes to Question 1-6 in the form, your application will be assessed and you will be advised as to whether the title you have suggested is suitable.

If your application is successful we will ask you, as the copyright holder, to complete and sign a Non-Exclusive Copyright Licence Agreement.

If the publication under consideration is held in a State Library collection you need do nothing further until we contact you. If the publication is not already held by SLQ we will arrange for you to provide us with a copy.

Copyright may reside with the author of your publication, a group of contributing authors or with the society or organisation who commissioned the work.

The default rule in the Copyright Act is that copyright in a work is owned by its creator or maker. However, this basic position can be changed in various ways:

• Copyright owners can transfer their copyright in instances where an author assigns copyright to a publisher.
• If a creator made the work as part of his/ her job, the employer will generally own copyright.
• For some commissioned items, the commissioner is deemed to be the copyright owner.
• If a copyright owner dies, his/her copyright forms part of their estate and can therefore be bequeathed by will.
• If copyright is held by an organisation or society, the current president is able to sign the licence agreement.

More information is available on our copyright for publishers page.

This form grants permission to State Library to digitise the full text of your publication and to provide online access to its content. The agreement allows for the not for profit use of material by State Library in publication, reproduction and communication in a capacity limited to scholarship, education or promotion.

Because this is a non-exclusive licence, the agreement does not prevent you from granting permission to any other person or organisation to reproduce your work.

A signed agreement does not involve any transfer of copyright ownership to State Library and it does not imply any change to your status as copyright holder of the relevant publication.

No. Please see the previous question.

The physical requirements for publications involved in the Community Heritage Digitisation Offer are determined by the capacity of our automated scanning technology. Considerations relating to scanning suitability include size, page margins, inclusion of inserts, binding, paper thickness and other factors.

Probably not. In the majority of cases individual contributors are likely to hold copyright in the articles they have written. It will not be feasible for your organisation to obtain all of the necessary copyright permissions.  However if your organisation holds the copyright for a specific serial publication it may be considered for this offer.

Scanned publications are produced as searchable PDFs. State Library’s One Search catalogue provides access to a range of digitised publications and a number of scanning technologies have been involved in their production.

Examples of titles which have been scanned via the automated scanning technology which will be used for this initiative include Cherrie Nicholson’s: White wings on Waterloo Bay : a history of local sailing clubs in the 20th century and Lota - through local eyes : stories of a little-known Brisbane suburb and the people who call Lota home.

No the scanning and processing of publications associated with this initiative are provided free of charge by SLQ.

The access available in relation to all publications involved in this offer would be State Library’s default access option, described as "Open Access."  

This means that, in contrast to a physical item held by the John Oxley Library which can only be accessed within the State Library building, the full text of your publication would be immediately available to anyone who discovers its record in State Library’s One Search catalogue.

Your publication could also be discovered in Australia’s national online database, Trove. Because Trove content is harvested by Google, it has the potential to appear in Google search results.

It is anticipated, given our longstanding interest in obtaining any published work whose content relates significantly to Queensland, that the majority of publications assessed as being suitable for this initiative are likely to have been acquired by the John Oxley Library via purchase, donation or legal deposit. If you have authored a publication that is not held by us, we would be interested in acquiring a copy for the JOL collection.

Not necessarily. However if your publication is available for sale to the general public, then the free access we would provide to its content through this initiative is likely to have a negative impact on sales revenue.

Regardless of their suitability in relation to subject content, unpublished documents are out of scope for this particular initiative which is limited to published works.

Yes, there is a likelihood that sales revenue would be affected. Please see the response to the question above.

Not for this offer. The goal of the Community Heritage Digitisation Offer is to expand the audience reach of Queensland publications whose access to date has been limited to State Library’s onsite visitors.

Born digital publications which have been published in Queensland are acquired by State Library under legal deposit and are accessible via the One Search catalogue. PDF documents with a legal deposit obligation can be deposited via our Legal Deposit wizard form.

No there is no limit. Providing you hold the copyright, you may nominate any title which meets the requirements identified in the Expression of Interest form.

If you need more information the number to contact us at legaldeposit@slq.qld.gov.au.