National Library of Australia


PICMAN: an index to pictures & manuscripts

Project participants: State Library of New South Wales
Contact officer/s: Richard Neville (email rneville@sl.nsw.gov.au)
Project description: PICMAN is a database of pictures, manuscripts, oral history, and some posters held in the Pictures, Manuscripts and Oral History collections of the Mitchell Library catalogued since 1992. In 1999, over 300,000 photographic images formerly on videodisks were attached to records. Small numbers of pictorial images which are digitised for other purposes such as exhibitions or publications are periodically added (for an example, search by topic for "colonial art"). Digitised manuscript material will also be added (see James Fairfax Matthew Flinders Electronic Archive project). Since 2001 signficant quantities of the Library's most important pictorial, photographic and manuscript collections have been digitised to a high level, and added to PICMAN. This is an ongoing project, whose procedures and protocols are being continually refined.
URL of PICMAN site: http://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/picman/about.cfm
Content: The Pictures and Manuscripts collections of the Mitchell Library represent some of the largest and most significant holdings of research material for original materials in Australia. They provide visual and written records of the life, people, culture, activities, fauna and flora, and of the built and natural environments of Australian and Pacific subjects. Although older parts of the collections have a wider geographical focus, today the collecting area is restricted to New South Wales.
A variety of formats are represented in the collections: oil paintings, prints, drawings, watercolours, miniatures, photographic prints and negatives, architectural plans and realia for pictorial material; and private archives and personal papers, with literary papers being a particular strength, for manuscripts.
As well as text-based records for all pictorial and manuscript item catalogued since 1992, PICMAN also contains 335,000 images about New South Wales from the early days of settlement and exploration through to the present day.
Digitisation policy and priorities: The State Library has a digitisation policy but it is not yet available on the World Wide Web.
Timetable: Continuing project.
Budget and funding: Funded through recurrent funding and significant support from the Library Foundation.
Staff resources: Nearly all digitisation takes place in house.
Technical standards: Majority of files are captured as TIFF at c.35 mb, and derivatives made from these. Digitisation is for access rather than preservation. However file sizes and procedures vary depending upon nature of material. PICMAN is an Awairs database, a product of Civica.
Cataloguing and indexing:
  • Anglo-American cataloguing rules, 2nd ed., 1988 revision
  • HENSEN, Steven L. Archives, personal papers, and manuscripts : a cataloguing manual for archival repositories, historical societies, and manuscript libraries, 2nd ed., Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 1989
  • BETZ, Elisabeth W. Graphics materials : rules for describing original items and historical collections, Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1982
  • ZINKHAM, Helena & PARKER, Elisabeth Betz. Descriptive terms for graphic materials: genre and physical characteristic headings, Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1986

Thesauri include APT and LSCH.

Project managers wishing to update the details of their Australian digitisation projects, should send the changes to ALG Administration.

Last modified: October 16 2009.