Joint submission to the Standards Distribution and Licensing consultation

Standards Australia should recognise the importance of public access to Standards information.

The Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA), National and State Libraries Australia (NSLA) and the Australian Libraries Copyright Committee (ALCC) made a joint submission in response to Standards Australia‘s Distribution and Licensing Policy Framework Discussion Paper.

ALIA, NSLA and the ALCC are supportive of Standards Australia’s move to a non-exclusive model for the distribution of Standards information in Australia. However, we argue that SA should go further to recognise the strong mandate to ensure public access to the Standards in the new licensing model.

Ideally, the Standards should be made publicly available under a Creative Commons (CC) licence. In addition, SA should provide separate licences for non-commercial users such as libraries, TAFEs and universities, designed to meet the needs of these users and meet the public access mandate. Finally, we propose that SA partners with libraries and archives to make archived Standards freely and easily available to professionals and the general public.