National Library of Australia


Infocus Online: linking people and information

Project participants: State Library of New South Wales
Contact officer/s: Paul Scifleet, Digital Projects Officer (email pscifleet@sl.nsw.gov.au, phone 02 9273 1515 or fax 02 9273 1248)
Project description: An innovative service that links students studying for the NSW Higher School Certificate with information from the State Library of New South Wales. HSC Resources are made available by providing clients with reproductions from the State Library of New South Wales' collection of books, periodicals, newspapers and heritage materials such as photographs, ephemera and diaries. Over the last five years Infocus clients have used an annotated Topic List to select items for purchase. The concise annotations and syllabus and subject indexes provided in the Topic List make choosing resources easy. Most resources are provided as high quality photocopy reproductions of the source material.

Infocus is currently expanding the service to provide Library clients with direct access to the collection of resources via the World Wide Web. Any one, anywhere will be able to access, select, order and purchase Infocus resources over the World Wide Web, for delivery into their own home, school, office or library. Resources will be available online or by post and fax in electronic or paper format.

The project's implementation includes:

  • The creation of digital images from Infocus resource masters
  • The modification of the existing Infocus database for online delivery
  • Development of the Infocus Web interface
  • Development of digital copyright policies and procedures
  • Development of electronic document display and delivery mechanisms
  • Development of shopping basket mechanisms for the selection and purchase of resources
  • The incorporation of e'commerce facilities for payment online
  • Ongoing resource development for Infocus' online services
URL of site: http://infocus.sl.nsw.gov.au/
URL for project information: http://infocus.sl.nsw.gov.au/
Content: Infocus resource items are selected specifically for the NSW Higher School Certificate curriculum and come from a wide range of original source materials in a variety of formats. The majority of Infocus resources are scanned from high quality photocopy masters of printed materials including books and journal articles. Includes photographs.
Digitisation policy and priorities: The State Library has a digitisation policy but it is not yet available on the World Wide Web.
Timetable: Continuing project. August 2000 -
Budget and funding: Budget not available at this stage. Funded by sponsorship and Library contributions.
Staff resources: Scanning is outsourced. Staff resources contribute to project management, resource description of the collection, preparation of masters, batch control, quality control, database design, data entry, web design and IT infrastructure.
Technical standards:

24 bit bitonal TIFF Master files are captured at 400dpi and stored in multi-page Tiff file format. A number of derivative file formats are being created for the project including, including a version of the document in PDF format. Infocus has also tested Cartesion Products CPC and CPI compression formats with a high degree of success. Storage devices: CD-ROM and image file server.

Cataloguing and indexing: Local file naming schema for digital objects based on Library of Congress & RLG models is applied. A digital objects database table resolves file locations and manages basic administrative metadata for the digital files. Catalogue records are created on the Infocus Online database.
Comments: Infocus resources must be deliverable online, and readable both on screen and in printed format. Infocus has worked closely with the vendor responsible for scanning to achieve a suitable resolution at a manageable file size for all digital resources. As many Infocus resources include graphical materials the quality of photocopy masters is essential for ensuring good bitonal reproduction.

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

Last modified: April 13 2005.