National Library of Australia


Imaging project

Project participants: Powerhouse Museum
Contact officer/s: Mitra Bhar, Systems Manager (email mitra@phm.gov.au, phone 02 9217 0153 or fax 02 9217 0175) or Margaret Rafferty (email margaret@phm.gov.au)
Project description: To digitise the museum's object and non-object collection of photographs for use on the museum's Web site, staff and public access, publications, public programs, information booths etc. The images will also be linked to the Collections Information System. There is also a document imaging component to digitise documents and link to the records management system.
URL of site:
URL for project information:
Content: Photographs and film
Digitisation policy and priorities: No digitisation or online policy. Approximately 60-80% of the Museum's entire collection is involved in this digitisation project. 40% has already been digitised; 50% is planned to be digitised by the end of 1998 and 60% by the end of 1999.
Timetable: Current project: 1 July 1995 - 30 June 2000.
Budget and funding: State government funding - over $A1,000,000.
Staff resources: Outsourced to private company. Internal staff training planned - specific to the use of digital equipment, databases, scanning, CD ROM burning etc. Private collaboration for their expertise in the area of imaging, however the museum is paying for their services. The museum intends to make available its expertise gained to others, if they choose to take it up.
Technical standards: Full resolution colour images (24 bit colours), thumbnails 8 bit colour. Captured in TIFF format using JPEG compression. Full resolution B&W images stored in 200dpi and compressed using CCITT Group 4. Image resolutions are between 384 x 256 and 6114 x 4096 pixels, with thumbnails being stored in 384 x 256 pixel resolution. Principal software used: Photoshop IXOS jukebox software Access database Capturing equipment: Fujitsu document scanner (M30976) Kodak digital cameras: DC50; EOS DCSI, DCS3 Kodak scanner RFS 5570 Nikkon scanner LS 1000 UMAX flatbed scanner Mirage.D-16L Storage devices: SCSI Corporation's MSM Jukebox Currently digital images are stored on tapes and CDROMS so that these could be converted to the next generation of technologies when the need arises.
Cataloguing and indexing: The museum is setting up an image management system with cataloguing information (sample copy of fields and records available on request).
Comments: Technical difficulties primarily occurred due to inadequate knowledge of the equipment, incompatibility with software versions, printing and scanning problems etc. These were resolved by getting contract staff in to fix problems, training staff in equipment usage and resolving software incompatibilities by standardising all versions of software.
The major lesson learnt is the vulnerability of the project to outside influence, losing staff once they have gained relevant expertise in the area. Archive backup and storage facilities required which had been underestimated when the project began, and the steep learning curve required to come to grips with the size and complexity of the task.

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

Last modified: October 20 2009.