National Library of Australia


John Curtin memorial lectures

Project participants: John Curtin Prime Ministerial Library
Contact officer/s: Kandy-Jane Henderson, Archivist (email jcpml@boris.curtin.edu.au, phone 08 9266 4205 or fax 08 9266 4185)
Project description: The JCPML is the official repository of the John Curtin Memorial Lectures and this project was undertaken to test how the JCPML could best enhance client access to one of its own collections.
URL of site: http://john.curtin.edu.au/jcmemlect/index.html
URL for project information:
Content: Photographs and typed 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 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: Completed project: 15 January 1997 - 23 February 1998
Budget and funding: Funded internally - total budget less than $A20,000
Staff resources: Digitisation done with inhouse facilities with assistance from external project staff. There will be upgrades to software and changing software and hardware that will require staff training.
Technical standards: Photographs 72dpi digital records converted to HTML scanning resolution 200dpi using Adobe Pagemill Microsoft Word Adobe Photoshop on Apple Macintosh. Capturing equipment: UMAX scanner. Storage devices: Alpha server.
Cataloguing and indexing: The lectures are arranged chronologically. Dublin Core metadata elements are attached.
Comments: The OCR software was not accurate enough in dealing with many of the older documents we had to scan (1960 onwards). The process was used successfully with more recent documents.
Lesson learnt: the necessity of being selective in deciding on the appropriateness of using OCR technology to improve the accessibility of archival documents.

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.