culture.gov.au

Connecting you with Australian culture online

Interpretation of the website collection policy

Website collection policy | Application of the policy

Access policy and filtering of online content

The primary objective of the Culture and Recreation Portal, as defined in our Mission statement, is to improve and develop online access to, and participation in, Australia's cultural and recreational activities. While we do apply selection criteria to decide which websites to list, index and link to, we do not use any filtering software in providing these services.

Consequently, users who may be concerned about retrieving and viewing material which they think may be offensive to them - or who exercise a supervisory role with others - should consider installing suitable filtering software on their computers to avoid downloading potentially offensive material.

The Portal is obliged to provide you with information about complaints and classification of content.

Policy development

The process for developing guidelines for the collection of websites involved examination of the website collecting policies of other Australian Government portals, the significance assessment principles used by the key collecting institutions (archives, galleries, libraries and museums) as well as other comparable website selection frameworks, such as the Pandora website archive.

Multiple categories

We categorise websites mainly according to their primary function (see our Thesaurus definitions) but also to their most closely related categories. For example, 'Cinema Papers' is primarily 'print, radio and tv' but is closely related to 'film and video' and can also be found under that category.

Rationale

We are generally applying these criteria with some flexibility and some variation from site to site. The prime purpose of the Portal is to provide access to information and services which may be of value to the user, so where possible an appropriate judgement will be made on this basis.

Listing and indexing

'Listing' means website names and brief details will be listed in our search results, with a direct link to the website. 'Indexing' means that, in addition to listing, all text content of a website will be indexed to enable searches of content via our search engine.