Australian Libraries Gateway (ALG): Help

How library and cultural institution details are displayed

When you search on the Gateway, results may be presented in two formats:

Summary details display (including sort order)
Full directory details of a library or cultural institution

The details are also displayed in associated services maintained by the National Library such as Libraries Australia and Trove.

Summary details display

The results of any ALG search will be presented in a table with a summary of your search statement together, the number of libraries and cultural institutions found to match your query and the date of the search.

If only one institution is found to match your query, the full directory details for that institution will be displayed.

For a search which finds more than one library or cultural institution, the following the details will be provided (in a table) for each:

the name of the institution's parent organisation;
the name of the institution;
location (ie the state/territory or "off-shore"); and
a link to the full directory details of an institution via the a red 'More Details' icon.

If an institution has reported the URL of it's Web page (or that of it's parent organisation), hyperlinks will be provided from the name/s in the summary results table. Likewise, if a library has a Web-accessible or telnet catalogue, a direct link will be provided to each within the summary results - look for the red 'Web Catalogue' and 'Telnet Catalogue' icons in the table:

Parent organisation	Library	Location	Details	Web catalogue	Telnet catalogue
Organisation XYZ	Library XYZ	state/territory overseas

Display Tip

Instructions for login and use of a institution's telnet catalogue are available via the 'More Details' link.
Found a hyperlink which fails? Advise the institution (follow the 'More Details' link to find a contact phone, fax or email address) so that they can update their entry on the Gateway.

The summary details display is only varied within the subject searches, where the first left column lists collecting level (refer to our definitions).

Collecting level	Parent organisation	Library	Location	Details
Level - see definitions	Organisation XYZ	Library XYZ	state/territory overseas

The results of a 'Map search' will appear with a map as you progress. For example, a search of 'NSW' from the map of Australia will return the summary details display together with a map of New South Wales, from here, the results of a search on the 'Sydney' region will appear with a map of the Sydney metropolitan region.

Sort order

Where more than one library or cultural institution is retrieved from a search, the summary results are sorted and displayed alphabetically by parent organisation name. The secondary alphabetic sort element is library or cultural institution name and thirdly, the location (ie Australian Capital Territory ('ACT'), New South Wales ('NSW'), Northern Territory ('NT'), Queensland ('QLD'), South Australia ('SA'), Tasmania ('TAS'), Victoria ('VIC'), Western Australia ('WA') or 'Overseas'). Institutions located "overseas" will always be presented after those in Western Australia.

The following filing rules also apply:

Libraries and cultural institutions that have more than one parent will be listed alphabetically under each parent name.
Organisations with names that start with a numeric value (for example 3M) will be displayed ahead of the alphabetic sequence.
Names in capital letters will appear before those in lower case (for example, CSIRO will appear before CSL, CRS and Caboolture etc.).

The results of subject searches on the Gateway, however, are presented in ranked order by descending level of reported collecting level (definitions of these collecting levels are available):

Research
Study - Advanced
Study - Intermediate
Study - Basic
Advanced basic
Basic
Minimal
Nothing in this category
No details provided

The secondary sort element for subject-based searching is the parent organisation's name (arranged alphabetically) and thirdly, the institution's official name.

Full directory details of a library or cultural institution

Every library or cultural institution in the Gateway has a full directory entry. Where your search found only one match, you will automatically get the full directory details display.
The red 'More Details' button in the summary search results will take you to the full directory details of an institution in the Gateway.

An institution may include the following information about itself within ALG (see 'How to update your library or cultural institution details' for more information about where to find the fields for data input):

parent organisation name and URL;
institution name, logo and URL;
National Union Catalogue (NUC) symbol (NUCs are the keys to Australian InterLibrary Resource Sharing (ILRS) Directory and inter-library lending in Australia);
abreviations, former, short and other names/terms;
library type/s (a library or cultural institution may be assigned one or more of the following available types: Agricultural, Art, Audio-visual, Corporate/Business, Cultural organisation, Defence/Military, Government, Health/Medical, Joint use, Law, Local/Family history, Mobile, Music, National/State/Territory, Parliamentary, Public, Religious, School (K-12), Science/Technology, Special, TAFE/College, University and Toy);
street and postal address, including a link to any online map showing the street location;
email address;
telephone (including telephone typewriter (TTY), mobile and toll-free 1800 phone numbers), facsimile and DX numbers;
the institution's Australian Business Number (ABN);
links to the main, branch and/or other related institutions within ALG;
URL of Web catalogue;
URL of telnet catalogue as well as any login instructions;
instructions for dial-up catalogue access;
URL of frequently asked questions (FAQs) or a 'Read me' about the library's catalogue/s;
automated library system in use;
classification scheme in use (eg Dewey Decimal Classification);
other access aids for the collection (eg microfiche, local online system, indexes and guidebooks etc.);
library subject collecting levels (refer to the definitions of these collecting levels);
comments on subject collecting areas and highlights of the collection;
nature and conditions of public access, including opening hours;
URL of online reference enquiry services;
URL of online exhibitions;
URL of 'Friends' organisation;
URLs of policy documents for collection development, digitisation projects.
other general comments.

Libraries and cultural institutions can also indicate within their ALG entry whether or not they contribute the Australian National Bibliographic Database (NBD) (including the number of records and percentage of library holdings on the NBD).

Associated Services

The information in your ALG entry is used to provide system information to Libraries Australia and Trove. This includes your institution's parent name, official name, the URL of your institution (if you are not deep-linked), short name and collection access conditions.

Within Trove the short name of an institution is used in the following context:

on the results screen when only a single institution holds an item
on the results screen when an item is held in one of the institutions selected in 'My Libraries'

Access conditions express whether the general public can get an item from the institution's collection. Trove determines access conditions by looking at the holding NUC symbol's ALG entry or entries. They are then displayed in Trove in the following way:

If the ALG entry has no branches, the access conditions of that institution are shown.
If the ALG entry is for a library or cultural institution (the only entry with a NUC symbol) and has branches/related entries, the most open level of access will be displayed. For example the parent institution might have the access level 'Not open to the public'. One branch might have 'Open to the public', while another has 'Restricted'. 'Open to the public' will be displayed as this is the most open level of access.

Access conditions are displayed within Trove in the following context:

Within a user profile on the 'Libraries' tab

On the work display next to the holding library name

Last modified: June 21 2021.