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Digitisation program - current priorities

In 2010-11 the Library will digitise approximately 14,550 items from several of its collections as detailed below. In addition, the Library will continue digitising newspapers through the Australian Newspaper Digitisation Program and journals through the Australian Women’s Weekly Digitisation Project.

As collection items are progressively digitised they are made accessible primarily through the Library's catalogue, as well as national resource discovery services, such as Trove, Picture Australia, Music Australia, Australia Dancing and Maps of Australia. For information about what has been digitised so far 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 10,595 items

The Pictures material selected for digitisation comprises both recent and previously acquired collections, including some collections already partially digitised:

Maps collection – target 1,554 items

The maps material selected for digitisation includes:

  • Rare Map collection
  • Ferguson Sales Plans
  • Braga collection
  • Selected 1900-1950 Australian thematic mapping, including road, rail and transport maps
  • Selected cadastral county, parish & town plans from each state and territory
  • Early 20th century planning / pastoral maps
  • PG Taylor collection
  • Several rare atlases
  • PNG - WWII set (series mapping)
  • Topographic maps (series mapping)

Printed music collection – target 300 items

Printed music selected for digitisation includes:

  • Early serialized Australian music publications
  • Current acquisitions
  • Pre-1940 items that have not been digitized in previous years
  • Small number of items for special projects

Australian books and serials collection – target 165 items

The following items from the Australian books and serials collection will be digitised:

  • 100 posters
  • Selected current acquisitions of ephemera and broadsides

Overseas books and serials collection – target 186 items

The following items from the Overseas books and serials collection will be digitised:

  • Japanese woodblock prints (ukiyo-e) from 19th & early 20th century
  • Japanese board games (sugoroku) from 19th & early 20 century
  • Large format single colour prints on paper
  • Griffin collection of 19th century photographs of Burma
  • Chinese punishment series from early 19th century
  • Thai cigarette cards from 1920s-1930s

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.

Collection materials digitised to fulfil client orders – target 250 (estimate)

Users may request a copy of the entire item or a portion of the work listed in the catalogue. Digital copies of items that are out of copyright are retained and made accessible online through the Library’s catalogue.

Newspapers

The Library will continue working on newspaper digitisation under the Australian Newspaper Digitisation Program  in collaboration with the Australian State and Territory Libraries. 2010-11 is the final year of phase one of the program and will enable 4 million newspaper pages to be made freely available by the end of June 2011. 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 digitisation of The Australian Women’s Weekly. The project will digitise and make freely available the first 50 years 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 to enable keyword searching as well as browsing. It is expected that The Australian Women’s Weekly will be available online by the end of 2010.