National Library of Australia


Electronic research archive

Project participants: John Curtin Prime Ministerial Library with Digital Corporation and various collecting and government archives that hold John Curtin related material.
Contact officer/s: Kandy-Jane Henderson, Archivist (email jcpml@boris.curtin.edu.au, phone 08 9266 4205 or fax 08 9266 4185)
Project description: To create an electronic archive of material relating to John Curtin to enable access to users on-site and worldwide. This necessitates the digitisation of material in the JCPML Collection and material held by others. Aims being to enhance collection management, provide improved public access to the collection and enhance preservation techniques.
URL of site: http://dtl.lis.curtin.edu.au/
URL for project information: http://dtl.lis.curtin.edu.au/
Content: Photographs, handwritten and typed texts, 3-D objects and other materials.
Digitisation policy and priorities: The JCPML digitisation policy was devised as part of it's strategic and information planning process. No online policy. The JCPML Electronic Archive Management Framework, November 1997 outlines the responsibilities of the JCPML for the preservation and long term access to digital objects. Digitisation of John Curtin related material is ongoing. 90% of the JCPML collection is available as a digital reference if not as full content.
Timetable: Current project: 1 November 1997 - ongoing
Budget and funding: Funded internally and with corporate sponsorship - total budget $A150,000 - $A250,000.
Staff resources:
Technical standards: TIFF file format. Our standard scanning resolution is 300dpi, but this is variable dependent on nature of material to be digitised. Software used: Excalibur Efs Kofax on a Digital PC. Image capturing done on Fujitsu and HP scanners. Storage on Alpha server.
Cataloguing and indexing: The Excalibur RetrievalWare Search Engine searches the content of text files and intellectual control metadata for images and text. Technical metadata is attached to each image and text file.
Comments: Technical difficulties when resolving issues of interface between the software components and the hardware.

Note the importance of environmental scanning to find out what others are doing and what we can learn from them to advance projects and the importance of technical and systems support when taking on a project of this magnitude.

Project managers wishing to update the details of their Australian digitisation projects, should email the changes to alg@nla.gov.au.

Last modified: August 09 2004.