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The Pictorial Collection of the National Library of Australia comprises original works of art and photographs which document Australian history and society. There are more than 40,000 original works, including oil paintings, watercolours, drawings and rare prints, and over 500,000 photographs in the Collection. The majority of the original works were executed in the nineteenth century and include works relating to New Zealand and the Pacific as well as Australia. The photographic collection dates from the 1850s to the present and, while predominantly Australian, includes works on Papua New Guinea, New Zealand, the Pacific and the Antarctic.
The staff of the Section are responsible for the selection of items for the Collection, for accessioning incoming material, and for providing reference services to the public. In the past the cataloguing of the collection was carried out spasmodically as time allowed, and for many years much of the Collection remained uncatalogued.
In early 1982 a team of Task Force assistants was made available to the Pictorial Section for the purpose of clearing some of the long-standing backlogs. It was decided that the backlog in cataloguing was the most serious one, and that instead of following the former practice of preparing catalogue entries for addition to the card catalogue of original works of art, the Task Force should begin a project of entering Pictorial records onto the Australian Bibliographic Network (ABN) database, which was by this time being used for the cataloguing of all newly-received books.
Under the supervision of the Pictorial Section librarians the Task Force made records on ABN using the information available on accession sheets. From the beginning of the project all major decisions were made in consultation with the staff of the Cataloguing Section of the Library and the staff of the ABN office.
Standard cataloguing tools such as AACR2 were used, although it was discovered that many of the problems that were to arise could not be solved by reference to printed sources. However it was decided to cope with each problem as it appeared, rather than try to foresee future difficulties. This way the obstacles did not seem insurmountable, and one by one they have been overcome.
When modifications of the approved standards were thought to be desirable, the ABN Standards Committee was consulted, and usually the suggestions were approved. Librarians and curators from other institutions such as the State Library of New South Wales, the State Library of Victoria and the National Gallery of Australia were consulted. Their reactions to the project were mixed. Some were doubtful about the value of the project, while others were very constructive and enthusiastic. The advice and recommendations of these colleagues have been taken into account, and have proved extremely valuable.
It was decided to begin the project with the oil paintings in the Collection. By September 1982 interim records for all the 540 oil paintings had been entered. Later, these were upgraded. Despite the doubts of many colleagues from other institutions, it was found that the Library of Congress Subject Headings were suitable for most of the needs of the Library's Pictorial Collection, bearing in mind the documentary purpose of the Collection and the particular types of demands made by users. Institution-specific subject headings were created in those cases for which no provision had been made by the Library of Congress, in most cases in order to bring together particular groups of material such as sketchbooks, and to separate pictorial material from the book collection. For example, an institution-specific subject heading "portrait -- oil" was created. All material from the Rex Nan Kivell Collection (one of the most important collections in the Library) that has been entered on ABN has been given a series entry under the name of the Collection.
In 1987 the Task Force was disbanded and the Special Materials Cataloguing Unit created. Two cataloguers from this Unit have worked in the Pictorial Section ever since. In March 1993 there were over 20,000 National Library pictorial records on ABN. All the oil paintings, watercolours, and drawings have entries on the database, and the cataloguing of the prints is almost completed. Several collections of photographs have been catalogued on ABN, some individual photographs have been catalogued, posters have mainly been entered under subject groups, and all the objects in the Collection have been entered individually on the database. As items are acquired each original work is immediately catalogued onto ABN. Most individually purchased photographs and photographic collections are also entered as they are received.
The General Material Designation (GMD) chosen for all works in the Collection was [picture], as this term covers paintings, watercolours, drawings, prints and photographs. It is taken from the list of possible terms in AACRII Chapter 8.
The Pictorial staff compiled a standard list of terms which could be used for the Specific Material Designation (SMD) which falls within the Physical Description Area. This list received the approval of the ABN Standards Committee. This is not claimed to be an exhaustive list, and it could be expanded if required. The SMD is not searchable on ABN, but it is on Supersearch, a sub-system of ABN, and so it is necessary to keep to a standard set of terms.
On ABN the access points to pictorial records are:
On Supersearch the records may also be searched on:
Most of these are secondary searches, that is to say refinements of the initial search.
It is possible to include information such as provenance, price, vendor, donor, inscriptions, and exhibition history in the various note fields. The National Library chooses not to include all of these in the cataloguing record as a matter of course. Full records are kept in the Accession Registers, which are in book form, and further information about a particular work can be obtained from this source. The accession number for an item appears in the Holdings Statement.
An example of the cataloguing details as given on ABN for the well-known painting of Bourke Street, Melbourne, by Tom Roberts appears as an Appendix.
It has always been acknowledged that a bibliographic description alone is not enough for people doing picture research. They need to see the image as well. Therefore after years of investigation the Library produced its first, experimental, videodisc in 1992, called "APOLLO VIDEODISC 1992".
This videodisc reproduces a sample of the Pictorial Collection. It contains 12,000 images: half are of original works and half of photographs. The original works on the disc are mainly the best-known, including paintings and watercolours by such artists as Tom Roberts, Conrad Martens, S.T.Gill, William Westall and Ellis Rowan. The photographs chosen for this disc are those in important formed collections, such as the Cazneaux Collection, the W.H. Corkhill Tilba Tilba Collection, and the Butcher and Bell Gundagai Collections.
The videodisc is used in conjunction with a personal computer through which the corresponding cataloguing data for each image is presented. The bibliographic records have been down-loaded into a system called "Just Imagine", for use with the videodisc. The "Just Imagine" software is user-friendly, with free-text searching. Enquirers may search for a work under any word or number in the cataloguing record, whether it be an artist's name, a word or phrase in the title, the name of a collection, a subject, an accession number, a Nan Kivell number, a medium, or a note about an exhibition in which the work was shown.
At present, APOLLO VIDEODISC 1992 is only available for use at the National Library, but in time copies may be available for sale, and eventually it is hoped to be able to link videodiscs with ABN so that anyone with access to ABN would also be able to call up images. Future videodiscs are planned to increase the accessibility of other aspects of the Pictorial Collection and to share this rich cultural resource with all Australians, wherever they may live.
ABN Record for Tom Roberts'
Bourke Street,
Melbourne COLLECTION ID. 3 o m
Roberts, Tom, 1856-1931.
Bourke Street, Melbourne {picture} / Tom Roberts. {ca. 1886}
1 painting :
oil on canvas lined on composition board ; 51.2 x 76.7
cm.
Originally
named: Allegro con brio.
On loan to NGA.
1.
Streets--Victoria--Melbourne. 2. Carriages and carts--
Victoria--Melbourne.
3. Bourke Street (Melbourne, Vic.) 4. Melbourne
(Vic.)--Buildings,
structures, etc. 5. Melbourne (Vic.)--History--
1834-1900. I. Title:
Allegro con brio. II. Title.
ANL abn83-046530
7 June 1993.
NATIONAL LIBRARY OF AUSTRALIA, Canberra, ACT 2600,
AUSTRALIA, ABN: 28 346 858 075
Telephone + 61 2 6262 1111; Facsimile +61 2
6257 1703; TTY: 1800 026 372