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PictureAustralia Participants’Annual Meeting
One Search—Many Collections

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Photograph by Monika Szunejko, State Library of Western Australia
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On 5 April the National Library hosted the fifth PictureAustralia Annual Participants’ Meeting. As a federated collection, PictureAustralia relies on the ongoing cross-collaboration between museums, galleries, archives, and state and local public libraries. The annual PictureAustralia meeting is a vital forum, enabling individuals from these participant agencies to contribute ideas for future initiatives, and share in the collective success of the PictureAustralia service.

Morning presentations included ones on the National Library’s Newspaper Digitisation Project, software and archiving programs, and an update on the Libraries Australia Free Service, available to anyone with an internet connection. Snapshot presentations were provided by PictureAustralia’s new members: the Public Records Office of Victoria, the Monash University Centre for Gippsland Studies, and the Camden Council Library Service. These new collections cover the full gamut of image culture, from official records of the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games and portraits of Ned Kelly held in the Public Records Office of Victoria, to family snapshots, farming history and documenting of the community of the Camden district (New South Wales). The addition of images from the Centre for Gippsland Studies provides PictureAustralia with an excellent visual history of this particular region.

In the afternoon there was a lively exchange of ideas on the service’s future directions. This year’s meeting was planned to coincide with the Library’s Innovative Ideas Forum, on 3−4 April, and a dinner was held for those participants also attending the Forum.

Over 30 representatives attended the participants’ meeting, including people working in all three tiers of government, and one international representative from the National Library of New Zealand. The attending national institutions included: the National Archives of Australia, the National Portrait Gallery, the Australian War Memorial and the Australian National University. Most state libraries sent representatives, as did the City of Sydney Archives, Melbourne Archives, the Museum of Victoria and the Powerhouse Museum (Sydney).Three university libraries and public libraries from Queensland and New South Wales were also represented.

A summary of the service’s achievements over 2005−2006 was presented by Fiona Hooton, PictureAustralia’s manager. Fiona outlined the seven new picture trails created in 2005. The six new member agencies joining in 2005 have brought over 26,000 new images to PicturesAustralia, pushing the total number well over the 1.1 million mark. Fiona spoke about the initiative between the National Library and Yahoo!7’s flickr (a global photo-sharing service). Individuals can now contribute to PictureAustralia through two PictureAustralia groups on flickr. This initiative has raised the profile of PictureAustralia through a national cross-media marketing campaign. 

The meeting sought participants’ feedback on current enhancements to PictureAustralia, including the new model ‘request a copy’ system. All participants unanimously agreed that the new system will greatly improve the services provided to researchers seeking image copies and copyright clearances. It will also increase the potential for participants to gain revenue from the sale of images directed through PictureAustralia. The new request a copy system will be operational in late June 2006.

Other proposed enhancements for 2006 were presented by PictureAustralia’s staff, including a marketing plan for 2006−2008 that keys into events and activities planned for the 2008 Photography Festival, http://www.nla.gov.au/pict/photofestival.html.  Lucy Carson, PictureAustralia’s administrator, presented ideas for refreshing current picture trails, and for new trails in 2006. Participants had an opportunity to make their suggestions for picture trails and promotion of the service to attract both new users and new contributing agencies.

The planned redesign of PictureAustralia’s website was considered and participants offered ideas and expertise to further improve the service’s look and function. This input, along with recommendations provided from a PictureAustralia Usability Survey conducted by Nielsen Net Ratings, will be incorporated into PictureAustralia’s redesign, beginning in June 2006.

Issues in relation to the flickr initiative were presented by Tony Boston, Assistant Director-General of the Library’s Resource Sharing division. Tony highlighted how metadata such as titles and tags impacts on the effective retrieval of images in PictureAustralia. He also showcased a system for geo-tagging place searches used in flickr, which could be investigated for use in PictureAustralia. This would enable much greater accuracy for place-searching images, using GeoScience Gazetteer maps to create a clickable map of Australia populated with relevant images.

This year’s PictureAustralia Participants’ meeting renewed the collective commitment to promote, develop and expand the reputation of the service as the pictorial online service about Australia and Australians. PictureAustralia provides researchers with the ability to traverse time and space from one central gateway, http://www.pictureaustralia.org/index.html , conducting one image search of many collections simultaneously. They can navigate both the past and present on the country’s largest and richest pictorial resource.

Fiona Hooton