Images of Australiana – cultural agencies cooperate to bring their pictorial collections

together at the one web site

www.pictureaustralia.org

An elderly couple celebrating the breaking of the drought on

Mt. Fraser Homestead …

[Museum Victoria]

Customs House

[State Library of New South Wales]

Uluru (Ayers Rock) - Kata Tjuta National Park

[National Archives of Australia]

Olympic rings on the Sydney Harbour Bridge,

19 September 2000 …

[National Library of Australia]

PictureAustralia – the concept

• Need for a national discovery service as users do not know where images are located

• Cross-sectoral approach: images are provided from museums, archives, galleries, libraries, universities or historical societies

• For consistency in searching and locating images,

proposed a central repository of descriptive information based on standard metadata

Six 'Miss Australia' finalists relax on a launch trip on Fremantle Harbour

[National Archives of Australia]

Fremantle Lighthouse/ North Mole

[Australian Heritage Commission]

Fremantle, WA [State Library of New South Wales]

Fremantle with Rottnest Island in the distance, 1859…

[National Library of Australia]

IN AND AROUND FREMANTLE, WESTERN

AUSTRALIA. [State Library of Victoria]

Praxis presents The Found Object…

[National Gallery of Australia]

Elder Building [Australian Heritage Commission]

The collection

• Currently 37 agencies contributing to PictureAustralia

• Images from libraries, museums, archives, galleries, universities, historical societies and other agencies

• 4,212,359 hits in May with 36, 000 new visitors

• Over one million images are available through PictureAustralia at present

ACT Heritage Library National Portrait Gallery

Australian Maritime Museum Nolan Gallery

Australian National University Northern Territory Library

Australian War Memorial Powerhouse Museum

Brisbane City Council Redcliffe City Library

Campbelltown City Library SCRAN

CSIRO State Library of NSW

Dept. Environment & Heritage State Library of Queensland

Gold Coast Library Service State Library of SA

James Cook University State Library of Tasmania

John Curtin Library State Library of Victoria

Lake Macquarie Library State Records of NSW

Maroochy Libraries Swinburne University

Museum Victoria Thuringowa Library

National Archives of Australia University of Melbourne

National Gallery of Australia University of Queensland

National Library of Australia Vision Australia Foundation

National Library of NZ Wollongong City LibraryAustralia [picture] : Great Barrier Reef,

Queensland /National Library of Australia

Australia (The Great Barrier Reef)National Gallery of Australia

Millionth Image

Vivan Bullwinkel, AO, MBE (1915-2000) c.1941[Australian War Memorial]

The benefits of PictureAustralia

For users

– single web access point to many collections

– simple searching – access to a wide range of images– trails

For participating agencies

– increased visibility and use of collections

– diversity of users– collaborative approach– possible source of revenue

Blue Mountains National Park [Australian Heritage Commission]

1915 Edwards, Mary c.1915 [Lake Macquarie City Library]

The service architecture

• Low technical investment is required by participants

• A harvester copies metadata in the Dublin Core format from participants’ web sites

• Software platform - TeraText by Inquirion

• A central metadata index is created at the National Library

Hybrid model of harvesting metadata• OAI

http://www.openarchives.org/organization/index.html

• Full web harvests

PictureAustralia homepagewww.pictureaustralia.org/

•

 

Who is PictureAustralia for?

• All Australians with an interest in our culture and history

• Overseas users interested in Australia

• Researchers, family historians, writers, publishers, students, teachers, architects etc.

• To make the service generally accessible there are no special software or hardware requirements for use, just a standard PC, web browser and modem

Miranda Coney and Albert David in a study for Stephen

Page's "Rites", 1997[National Library of Australia]

Moreton Bay Fig growing through bench - New farm Park; 1994

[Brisbane City Council Library]

PictureAustralia users

•Demographics

•Accessing the Service

• Searching for:

Places, people, architecture, events, animals, artefacts, fine arts

nursing sisters of the Canberra Community Hospital

PictureAustralia promotion

• Individual postcards distributed nationally through universities, cafes, galleries, community centres and other public places

• Promotional materials materials mailed out to all Australian schools, public libraries, historical societies, galleries and museums

• Additional promotion includes:- web links from other sites - articles and advertising in journals- presentations at conferences and other demonstrations

Promotion of the service

The way forward

• Development of new technologies

• Additional picture trails – increasing user involvement

• Continue to target potential new collections to strengthen the service

• Collaboration with educational institutions

Junior girls cooking class, 1957Swinburne University of Technology

Miss Pacific finalists Mary Clifton Smith, Pamela Jansen and Judy Worrad, stand in front of surf boards on Bondi Beach, Sydney, New

South Wales, 1952[National Archives of Australia]