2022-23 Snapshot

Map of Australia showing distribution of Library visitors around the country in 2022-23
Graphic symbols and statistics about the Library's people, collections, buildings, access and usage, social media, and visitor numbers

Our People

  • 341 staff (average full-time equivalent)
  • Median age of staff is 47 years
  • 54.1%% of ongoing staff have worked at the Library for over 5 years
  • 29 registered volunteers
  • 1,462 Friends of the National Library

Our Collections

Physical

  • Total 273 shelf kilometres housing the collections

Digital

  • Total 2.96 petabytes of digital material
  • 18,716 new items acquired in digital format (excluding individual issues of magazines and journals, and individual files from archived websites )

Access and Usage

  • 21.7 million visits to the National Library online
  • 12.9 million visits to Trove
  • 45,908 physical items delivered to users either in reading rooms or offsite via interlibrary loan or document supply
  • 36,245 reference and information inquiries answered by Library staff
  • 17 billion Australian and online resources available
  • 27.1 million newspaper pages freely available online
  • 466.6 million lines of text corrected

Social Media

Note: Social media reporting relies on a third-party algorithm tool, which may be adjusted from year to year.

  • Facebook: 695,857 engagements
  • Twitter: 40,473 engagements
  • Instagram: 42,844 engagements

Locations

We operated from five buildings:

  • the main Library building
  • three offsite collection storage repositories
  • an office in the Australian Embassy in Jakarta

We operated three reading rooms and two galleries in the main building:

  • Main Reading Room (including Newspapers and Family History Area)
  • Special Collections Reading Room (including the Petherick Reading Room)
  • Asian Collections Reading Room
  • Treasures Gallery
  • Exhibition Gallery

Visitors

  • 399,045 onsite visitors
  • 266,686 offsite visitors (total visitation to third party exhibitions, which include one or more online exhibitions)

Our staff delivered onsite and offsite programs including:

  • 67public events
  • 260 volunteer-led tours
  • 101 organised school programs
  • 10 learning programs

There were:

  • 184,097 reading room visitors
  • 68,673 visitors to our exhibition galleries
  • 14,182 visitors to events
  • 4,356 school students
  • 42 online events
  • 78,505 online event attendees.

The National Library of Australia acknowledges Australia’s First Nations Peoples – the First Australians – as the Traditional Owners and Custodians of this land and gives respect to the Elders – past and present – and through them to all Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

Cultural Notification

Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are advised that this website contains a range of material which may be considered culturally sensitive including the records of people who have passed away.

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