At one level it is a permanent cultural and documentary record of a country's publications recording the accumulated knowledge, activities and achievements of its citizens in all fields of human endeavour. National bibliographies aid libraries in the selection and acquisition of new materials and serve as current awareness and reference sources for librarians, researchers and bibliographers. Universal bibliographic control sees each country as responsible for the bibliographic control of its own publications. The twin foundations of national bibliography remain an effective legal deposit framework, and the use of widely acceptable bibliographic standards. The first ensures a comprehensive listing of the nation's published output, and the second enables the sharing of national bibliographic records among libraries both within and outside the producing country.
Legal deposit is vital for national bibliographies.
There are countries that manage national bibliography well without a legal deposit framework, but in such cases it is because relations between the publishers and the libraries are well developed and the publishing scene is compact and well defined. For many countries in the Asia-Pacific region, including Australia, this is not the case. In a number of countries publishers and libraries do not have close relationships, while in others the decentralisation of publishing and extensive distances are barriers. Even where there are provisions for the deposit of published material, there is a need for the laws to be kept up to date. Australia's legal deposit law is a good example of this.