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“What stops libraries from descending into chaotic funhouses of messy bookshelves and unreturned titles? Where do the rules come from? Who makes them? How are they enforced 🤔💭⚖️?”
Listed here are the laws and regulations and other legal sources which are relevant to libraries in Australia, which I’ve been learning about throughout the TAFE library courses. I’ll also try to provide context by including counterparts from other countries to help put things into context.
It also try to mention other pieces of legislation that exist but which are NOT relevant to libraries, and will attempt to explain why they don’t apply (you can play with ideas and gain insight into an object or concept by understanding what it is and what it definitely is not).
Even though the different aspects of law are not taught in the TAFE Library course (budget and time constraints seem to plague adult/tertiary education), I know that Law is divided in to different fields based on which aspect of society is encompassed. Some fields are Administrative Law, Intellectual Property Law, Taxation Law, Criminal Law, Labour Law, etc, and these often correspond to units in a university course. Therefore, I will try to organise the legislation named and described on this page according to these fields and indicate which level (federal, national, local) of jurisdiction they have.
From what I’ve seen, Legislation can be accessed by members of the public on the federal or state registers, or on other platforms such as AustLII (Australasian Legal Information Institute).
Note: Government is split into 3 branches (explained concisely by the Parliamentary Education Office and by SLNSW’s ‘Hot Topics: Australian legal system’)
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