National Library of Australia - Gateways

ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 58| August 2002


Picturing the Alphabet: The Portrait Collection Online

Portrait of Reginald Ansett with the original Studebaker service car, Maryborough [c.1930]
Portrait of Reginald Ansett with the original Studebaker service car, Maryborough [c.1930]
gelatin silver photograph; 19.7 x 24.4 cm
Pictorial Collection  PIC 4180
nla.pic-an22593106

As any Gateways readers with the surname Wilson or Young will know, the alphabet is a tyrant. From their first days at kindergarten, people with surnames at the end of the alphabet have been sent to the back of the queue.

This impartial tyranny has been enshrined for centuries in the organisation of libraries. The most obvious symbol was the card catalogue, with its neatly labelled drawers declaring a hierarchy in which the Zofreas could never approach the Abbotts. In the National Library, as in most libraries, card catalogues have been replaced by an online catalogue. Most people using online catalogues search directly on a term, and, unless they are a programmer, usually do not know or care how the data is arranged inside the computer. Modern technology has brought liberation. Each one of us can search on our surname and go straight to the top of the list. Each one of us, in fact, has become a good sort.

Portrait of Dorothy Brunton
Portrait of Dorothy Brunton
hand-coloured photograph;
24.4 x 13.7 cm
on mount 38.7 x 25.7 cm
Pictorial Collection PIC 6411
nla.pic-an23259659

A leading example of the new technology is the Library’s Catalogue, which is so thoroughly modern that pictures appear alongside many of the catalogue entries. Friendly and encouraging bits of text invite you to save or print the pictures for research, or order high-resolution copies, or simply ask for more information. Behind this inviting accessibility, however, lurks a disturbing echo from the past: if you are searching for images of famous Australians, you are more likely to find them if their surname begins with a letter from A to G.

To find the reason for this, you will need to move in your imagination from keyboard and screen to a corner of the Pictorial stacks, on the second floor of the Library. Here, in 48 drawers and 41 boxes, are photographic portraits of significant, or otherwise interesting, Australians. Not all the Pictorial Collection portraits are here, but a significant number are, and they have been neatly arranged from A to Z.

In 2001 the Library began cataloguing these portraits, as part of a program to eliminate backlogs of uncatalogued material. Despite limited resources, steady progress has been made, and nearly 2000 portraits have been catalogued and digitised. Without any intention of a discriminatory nature, and for simplicity only, the cataloguers began with the As.

The results can be seen in the Pictures Catalogue; early arrivals included businessman Reginald Ansett, Olympic Equestrian Kevin Bacon and founding member of the Liberal Party Dame Beryl Beaurepaire. The predictable parade of distinguished bearded men, such as Prime Minister Alfred Deakin and Tasmanian politician Sir Philip Fysh, was interrupted by contralto Essie Ackland and the lace-clad actress Dorothy Brunton. Some portraits were informal, such as the photograph of Prime Minister Ben Chifley meeting Ingrid Bergman (since the National Library collects from an Australian point of view, this had naturally been filed under C rather than B). Some portraits were a little surprising, such as a portrait of Sir Redmond Barry in which he appears to have borrowed some of Dorothy Brunton’s lace.

With perhaps as many as 40 000 portraits to be catalogued and digitised some time will elapse before these Australians can be liberated from their alphabetical drawers to the Pictures Catalogue. In the distance is the lure of the final drawers, where Gough Whitlam presently rests cheek-to-cheek with Googie Withers. Appropriately, the final person to be freed from the tyranny of the alphabet will be a poet—Fay Zwicky.
—Linda Groom

To view portraits, connect to: Catalogue and type in a search term, such as Reginald Ansett or Redmond Barry. Pictorial Section staff may be contacted on 02 6262 1370 or pictorial@nla.gov.au

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