Issue 135

Olivia Lanchester, Chair of the Public Lending Right Committee

At present, there are 9,847 Australian schools in Australia, and it is estimated that at least 80% of them have a physical library.

Thank you for your continued participation in the ELR Great Aussie Book Count, a school library survey that takes place each year between September and November.

The Australian Lending Right Scheme is an important program that ensures Australian authors and publishers receive compensation for the free use of their books in Australian public and educational lending libraries.

Why is it important to survey Australian library content?

As Olivia Lanchester, chair of the Public Lending Right Committee, puts it: ‘Australian authors need to fight to be read in a global market, increasingly shaped by algorithms, so the challenges are there – but compelling beautiful stories always win. So we must back our authors, because they are the ones that will produce the material that will draw in readers and listeners.’

2025 marks 26 years of Education Services Australia (ESA) delivering the survey to Australian school libraries on behalf of the Australian Government

The scheme, managed by the Australian Government’s Office for the Arts, has two components: Educational Lending Right (ELR) for school, TAFE and university libraries, and Public Lending Right (PLR), for public libraries.

 

Each year, we receive data from close to half of all Australian school libraries, across primary, secondary and F–12 Government, Catholic and Independent schools in all states and territories.

To break it down, the Great Aussie Book Count is the yearly campaign for the ELR school survey, but it is not surveying your school or your school’s student body. Instead, it is a book count estimating how many books by Australian authors are held across Australian school libraries. It starts with a list of eligible book titles, which are then cross-referenced with the book counts from participating school libraries, and this is then extrapolated to find out how many copies of that title there would be across all schools.

This benefits school libraries in that the ELR Scheme helps financially compensate Australian content creators so they can continue to create more amazing books to help shape the minds of future generations.

For 2024–25, $13.1 million was paid to publishers and creators through the ELR Scheme. Together we are strengthening the Australian creative industries.

The success of the ELR survey is due in no small part to the valuable industry collaboration, from writers, creators, publishers, library management system vendors, Government and peak bodies across Australia, as well as principals, schools and library administrators.

Thank you for your continuing participation. We will report the survey results in the Term 1 edition of Connections. Please send any feedback on the ELR Survey to [email protected].

Together we are strengthening the Australian creative industries.