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ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 49| February 2001


Winning images

Since its launch in September 2000, the PictureAustralia service has been going from strength to strength. At the Australian Financial Review’s Australian Internet Awards 2000 in November, PictureAustralia won the Arts category (details available at www.webawards.com.au/). It was competing against two other finalists; the National Library’s own web site The George Raper Collection, at www.nla.gov.au/exhibitions/georgeraper/ and the ABC’s Headspace e-magazine.

PictureAustralia won because the judges considered it an ‘excellent portal for Australian cultural material of a pictorial nature’, it ‘seamlessly integrates multiple multimedia databases into an elegant visual experience for the customer’, and its ‘use of metadata is excellent’. The ongoing collaboration and commitment of the inaugural participating agencies made this achievement possible. They are the State Libraries of New South Wales, Tasmania and Victoria, the Australian War Memorial, the National Archives of Australia, the Fryer Library at the University of Queensland and the National Library of Australia.

At the Australian Internet Awards Ceremony

At the Australian Internet Awards ceremony.
From left to right: Helen Kon, Danielle Freeman, Jenny Underwood, Nicki Mackay-Sim,
Noel Wendtman, Linda Groom, Gunther Glesti and Debbie Campbell

Agencies planning to join PictureAustralia early in 2001 include the Powerhouse Museum, the Australian Heritage Commission, the State Library of South Australia, the Northern Territory Library Service, and the ACT Library & Information Service. Participation by these agencies will extend the coverage of PictureAustralia by providing access to many new images of regional life and significantly more high quality images for learning and teaching purposes.

At the Australian Internet Awards Ceremony

From left to right: Danielle Freeman, Robbie Braithwaite (Australian War Memorial),
and Debbie Campbell (Coordination Support Branch at the National Library)

Some trials with smaller numbers of images will be conducted with the National Portrait Gallery, the Nolan Gallery, and the National Library of New Zealand. A feature of the National Portrait Gallery’s collection is the only major portrait of Captain James Cook RN in an Australian collection. Twenty-four of Sir Sidney Nolan’s paintings, which form the Foundation Collection at the Nolan Gallery, will extend the representation of the Ned Kelly logo used by PictureAustralia service. The National Library of New Zealand has digitised more than 300 images of Australia as part of their Timeframes service, and access to these images will be facilitated through PictureAustralia.

The trials will explore both practical and technical issues. The outcomes of this work will be shared across the cultural sector. PictureAustralia plans to identify more collections located in a wide range of agencies over the next 12 months, and expand the service to one million images by the end of 2001.

All comments about the service are welcome at www.pictureaustralia.org.
—Debbie Campbell

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Please address any comments and enquiries to The Editor, Gateways: dthomas@nla.gov.au

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