National Library of Australia


Pictoria

Project participants: State Library of Victoria
Contact officer/s: Phone 03 9669 9888
Project description: Creation of a videodisc which was later (in 1994) digitised and made available for public viewing via workstations in the La Trobe Reference Centre, Picture Collection and Reference and Information Centre. Access to the Pictoria database is provided through the Multimedia catalogue.
URL of site: http://www.slv.vic.gov.au/slv/pictures/pic.htm
URL for project information:
Content: Pictoria contains whole collections and individual items covering such subject areas as Melbourne and Victorian street scenes, buildings, ships, country views, costume, portraits, Australian Aborigines, political and social events particularly of the nineteenth century, aerial views of Melbourne, factory interiors, domestic architecture, furniture, household goods and appliances, topographical, geological, botanical, agricultural and mining scenes, Federation commemorative arches and Boer War celebrations. Artists and photographers represented include Edward La Trobe Bateman, Nicholas Caire, Richard Daintree, Allan C. Green, Eugene von Guerard, W.F. Liardet, Charles Nettleton, Charles Norton, Elizabeth Parsons and Charles Rudd amongst many others. Formats include: most glass negatives and lantern slides; unprinted flexible base negatives; most postcards; photographs from albums and large collections; some oil paintings, watercolours and drawings; some prints and posters.
Digitisation policy and priorities:
Timetable: 1989-
Budget and funding: 1989 Sidney Myer Fund, through a donation to the State Library's Renaissance Appeal, provided the Library with $309,000 to undertake the videodisc project. These funds provided for the copying onto videodisc, over a five year period, of over 104,000 images from the Library's Picture Collection, and the cataloguing of those images. As of October 1996 access to Pictoria has been enhanced through the development of the Multimedia Source Project funded through the Victorian Government's Victoria 21 Multimedia policy. Through this project the 104,000 images can now be seen via the world wide web, thus making this unique collection available not only to those Victorians previously disenfranchised by distance, but also to the world.
Staff resources:
Technical standards:
Cataloguing and indexing:
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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.