Digitisation program - current priorities

In 2009-10 the Library will digitise approximately 14,550 collection items. Below is an overview of the digitisation program including routine digitisation, an outline of the Australian Newspaper Digitisation Program, and the Australian Women’s Weekly Digitisation Project.

As items are progressively digitised they are made accessible primarily through the Library's catalogue, as well as national resource discovery services, such as Music Australia, Picture Australia, Australia Dancing, Maps of Australia and Australian Newspapers. For information about what has been digitised in the previous years see the Digital Collections webpages, and particularly Digitisation - overview and Pictures, Maps, Sheet Music, Manuscripts, Books and Serials and Oral History for information on progress with digitisation of the individual collections.

Pictures Collection – target 9,945 items

The Pictures material selected for digitisation in 2009-10 includes both recent and previously acquired collection materials. It is anticipated that digitisation of the following Pictures collections will be completed in their entirety this year:

In addition a selection of items from the following collections will be digitised:

Maps Collection – target 1,175 items

The maps material selected for digitisation in 2009-10 includes:

  • Rare Map collection
  • Ferguson Sales Plans
  • Braga collection
  • Selected 1900-1950 Australian thematic mapping, including road, rail and transport maps
  • Selected cadastral road maps of NSW/ACT
  • Royal Australian Survey Corps Plane table surveys
  • PG Taylor collection
  • Several rare atlases
  • Parish and property mapping

Printed music collection – target 210 items

Printed music selected for digitisation in this year is from 1930-1940. Current acquisitions will continue to be digitised, as well as a small number of items for special projects.

Australian Books and Serials Collection – target 120 items

120 selected items from the ephemera and poster collections will be digitised under a trial to inform workflow requirements for this type of material.

Overseas Books and Serials Collection – target 150 items

Digitisation of London Missionary Society Collection, which totals 683 items, will be finalised this year. This rare and fragile collection is being digitised primarily for preservation purposes.

Oral History and Folklore collection – target 1,400 items

A selection of analogue recordings from the Oral History and Folklore Collection will be digitised under the Library's long term plan to convert the whole of its audio collection into digital format.

Newspapers

The Library will continue working on newspaper digitisation under the Australian Newspaper Digitisation Program undertaken in collaboration with the Australian State and Territory Libraries. The 2009-10 target is 1.8 million pages. More details on the newspaper titles selected for digitisation are available at http://www.nla.gov.au/ndp/selected_newspapers/ .

Australian Women’s Weekly digitisation project

The Library has commenced working on digitisation of the Australian Women’s Weekly. The project involves digitisation of the magazine from inception to when it changed frequency to monthly, i.e. from 10 June 1933 to 15 December 1982. The magazine will be scanned and processed through Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The Library is developing systems to support the workflows and management of the digitised content and make the content available to the public via a search and delivery interface.  

Back to the top