Books and Serials digitisation - progress so far
Selecting material for digitisation
General selection criteria for the National Library’s digitisation program can be found in our Collection Digitisation Policy. Items from the Library’s books and serials collections have been digitised for a number of reasons, including:
Progress as of
30 June
2010
3 517 books and serials, consisting of 117 081 images have been digitised.
Examples of Books and Serials items already digitised
- Selected works relating to Cook’s South Sea voyages:
- The 1796 playbill, the earliest surviving Australian printed document and an artefact associated with the First Fleet
- New South Wales Pocket Almanack and Colonial Remembrancer, 1806
- George Johnston’s Proclamation, 1808
- Natural history of lepidopterous insects of New South Wales. collected, engraved, and faithfully painted after nature by John William Lewin, 1805
- Birds of New Holland with Their Natural History Collected, Engraved and Faithfully Painted after Nature by John William Lewin, 1808
- The Birds of Australia by John Gould, 1848
- Mammals of Australia by John Gould, 1863
- The English and Australian Cookery Book: Cookery for the Many, as well as for the Upper Ten Thousand by Edward Abbott, 1864
- Selected children’s books:
- Selected items of Australian printed ephemera including such subjects as airlines, Australian federal elections campaigns, festivals and geography.
- Legislative materials related to the AIATSIS project To Remove and Protect: Laws that changed Aboriginal Lives:
- London Missionary Society Collection - a significant collection of rare 19th century Chinese works printed on fragile and deteriorating paper, digitised for preservation purposes
- [Conquetes de l'empereur de la Chine] ,
1783-1788
- Bilderbuch fur Kinder – German children's encyclopedia, published during 1798-1830, on natural history with several handcoloured engraved plates relating to Australia
- The little red school book, 1973
Future digitisation plans
Only a fraction of the books and serials collection is expected to ever be digitised. This is due to a number of factors including the large number of items in the collection, likely demand for the material, and copyright legislation. The forward planning includes the following initiatives:
- Continuation of selective digitisation of items in the books and serials collection for inclusion in the Library’s forthcoming Treasures Gallery.
- Continuation of the Australian Newspapers Digitisation Program, undertaken in collaboration with Australian State and Territory libraries, aiming to digitise Australian metropolitan and regional newspapers.
- Consideration of mass digitisation of Australian journals in the future, following digitisation of the Australian Women’s Weekly which has commenced in 2009-10 (see Current priorities for more details).
- Consideration of mass digitisation of Australian printed ephemera, broadsheets and posters, following a 2009-10 trial comprising 120 items.