National Library of Australia


John Curtin: a prime minister and his people

Project participants: John Curtin Prime Ministerial Library and National Archives of Australia
Contact officer/s: Kandy-Jane Henderson, Archivist (email jcpml@boris.curtin.edu.au, phone 08 9266 4205 or fax 08 9266 4185)
Project description: This is an on-line project which highlights Curtin's relationship with the Australian public during WWII. The focus of the project is on the viability of providing electronic access to material held in remote locations.
URL of site: http://john.curtin.edu.au/letters/cover.html
URL for project information: http://john.curtin.edu.au/letters/cover.html
Content: Altogether there are nearly 600 separate documents which have been stored as more than 570 individual images. These documents have been drawn from the personal records of John Curtin held at the National Archives of Australia.Handwritten 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 longterm 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: 1 November 1995 - 15 July 1997
Budget and funding: Internal and corporate sponsorship - total budget less than $A20,000.
Staff resources:
Technical standards: Individual documents were first photographed onto 35mm colour transparencies by the National Archives and these transparencies were then transferred to a digital image by Scott Four Colour Print, using Kodak Photo CD technology. Each digital image was scanned in a range of resolutions. For this project the chosen file size of the images is 512x768 with a resolution of 72 dpi, stored in JPEG compression. The format chosen to present this information is HTML (Hyper-Text Markup Language) using the Netscape Navigator. HTML was chosen because of its universal ability to transfer between different media and platforms. The physical sizes of the original documents vary. However, at the time of photographing each image filled the 35 mm frame. A scale is therefore included with each image to indicate its true size. Scanning resolution 2400 api converting material from Kodak CD to gif files using Adobe Pagemill, Microsoft Word, Adobe Photoshop, Prelude 1.6 Graphic Converter and Netscape Navigator Fetch on Apple computers. Capturing equipment: Kodak CD-ROM. Storage devices: Alpha server and CD-ROM.
Cataloguing and indexing: Content is searchable by broad category or by a key word index. Dublin Core metadata elements are attached.
Comments: Material located in a remote site does not prevent it being digitised.

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.