Publishing policy | Terms and conditions

The Internet is State Records' primary focus for publication.  In line with NSW Government policy and its goals for electronic service delivery, all of State Records' publications are available on our World Wide Web site.

Publishing online brings many benefits:

• it makes our publications available to anyone with an Internet connection, anywhere and at any time of day or night
• it is good for the environment because it avoids the need to consume large quantities of paper to distribute information
• it is cost effective because it eliminates printing and distribution costs, enabling us to use our resources instead to produce further useful materials and provide better services
• it ensures that the latest version of any of our publications becomes available quickly and conveniently via our Web site, and
• it enables us to produce rich, dynamic documents with hyperlinks to a wide variety of other online resources, both on our Web site and elsewhere.

Most of our publications for the general public are also available in hard copy format. We will continue to produce versions of these publications in hard copy, both for equity reasons (many people in our society do not have ready access to the Internet) and because some of the materials we produce (such as leaflets about our services) are intended for distribution in hard copy.  Naturally the online versions of these publications will have Web functionality, such as hyperlinks, not possible in the hard copy versions.

From July 2001, most of our publications for the NSW public sector are available only in electronic form.  This includes components of the Government Recordkeeping Manual, such as standards and guidelines.  We advise public sector bodies about the issue of new or revised publications by e-mail.  Publications consisting of more than one Web 'page' are generally available both in a format suitable for reading online and in a downloadable (though still HTML) format suitable for reading and distributing off-line.  Some publications for the NSW public sector are also intended for distribution in hard copy and are therefore available in that form as well as online.

See the Order Form for information on how to purchase hard copy publications.

Versions

The definitive and most current versions of our publications will always be those on our World Wide Web site.

Formats

HTML is our standard format for publishing on the Internet, rather than PDF or a word processing format. HTML was selected as the standard format because of ease of use, speed of download and its non-proprietary status.

Publication available electronically on the World Wide Web site are freely available conditional upon fulfilment of the terms and conditions stated below.

These terms and conditions for use are designed to protect the interests of State Records in its online publications. These terms and conditions do not apply to the National Archives of Australia's Archives advice series within the Government Recordkeeping Manual. The Archives advice series cannot be copied or distributed without the express permission of the National Archives.

Copyright

Copyright in the publications is reserved by the Government of New South Wales. All rights reserved. No part of these publications may be reproduced by any method without the prior written consent of State Records.

Rights

The user is granted the right to use the publications within and throughout the user's organisation in the manner described below:

You may:

• make available the publications to your organisation through your organisation's computer systems/networks
• produce printed copies of the publications for reference use within your organisation.

You may not:

• pass any copy of the publications or any part of them, in any form, out of your organisation
• make any changes, alterations, amendments or additions to the content, text or structure of the publications, without the express permission of State Records
• continue to distribute or otherwise make available outdated, superseded or withdrawn publications
• delete any section or part of any publication (ie a publication should be made available internally as a complete and true copy), or
• use any part of these publications in or as the basis of a commercial product, without the express permission of State Records.