National Library of Australia


The Bradman digital library

Project participants: State Library of South Australia
Contact officer/s: Peter Jenkins, Manager Digital Library Group (Jenkins.Peter@slsa.sa.gov.au, phone 08 8207 7315 or fax 08 8207 7351)
Project description: Digitsation of:

  • 740 pages selected from Sir Donald Bradman's personal scrapbooks of photographs, letters, telegrams, newspaper cuttings, etc;
  • approximately 140 photographs of Sir Donald Bradman's cricketing memorabilia comprising cricket bats, balls, stumps, apparel, writing and recording aids, ceramic and silver objects, artworks, mementos, scorecards, newspaper banners, posters and photographs; and
  • 28 views of the Bradman Collection exhibition at the State Library of South Australia.

These images will be added to a redesigned Bradman website. (and also catalogued and accessable through the Library's OPAC.

URL of site: http://www.bradman.sa.com.au/
URL for project information:
Content: Cricket memorabilia of Donald George Bradman comprising cricket bats, balls, stumps, cricket apparel, writing and recording aids, ceramic and silver objects, artworks, mementos, scorecards, newspaper banners and posters, photographs and duplicate volumes of the 52 Bradman Scrapbooks. Includes handwritten as well as typewritten materials.
Digitisation policy and priorities: http://www.slsa.sa.gov.au/library/2020.htm
Timetable: Continuing - since 3 Novmeber 1998.
Budget and funding: In-kind sponsorship by EDS Australia estimated at approximately $80,000.
Staff resources:
Technical standards: Master digital images: 600 ppi bitonal, 300 ppi 256-level greyscale and 300 ppi 24-bit colour uncompressed TIFF Image capture: IBM PC, A4 flatbed scanner/Adobe Photoshop with TWAIN plug-in.
Cataloguing and indexing: Indexing via DEC Alpha 300/Innovative Interfaces Inc Innopac. Uses the Library's catalog system, with digital objects linked to the library catalog through MARC field 856. Some information exported from the catalog incorporated into the web pages.
Comments: Letters, telegrams, newspaper cuttings and similar "line art" which were scanned as 600 ppi bitonal images and converted to GIFF web surrogates appear inferior to 300 ppi 8-bit greyscale images converted to JPEG surrogates. Will probably stick to the latter in future.

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.