Overview
Minimum
Requirements for Accessing the Site
Technical Details
File Structure
Statistics
References
The Australian Periodical Publications 1840-1845 component of the Australian Cooperative Digitisation Project (ACDP) provides web access to digital copies of Australian serials first published between 1840 and 1845. The digitised copies were produced from microfilm. In most cases, new microfilm was produced so that a suitable digital image could be produced.
Fiction published during the same period has also been digitised. These titles are available as searchable text from the University of Sydneys SETIS site.
You will need to use a browser that supports Frames to access the browse lists and digitised files that have been made available on the site. However, the Australian Periodical Publications 1840-1845 home page and the search and help pages are accessible to any browser. If your browser does not support frames, you may wish to download and install a browser such as Netscape; Opera or Internet Explorer so that you can fully utilise the site. There are also other browsers and earlier versions of Netscape and Internet Explorer available. Both the CNET Internet Browsers page and Stroud's CWSApps page provide access to a wide range of these.
As some of the digitised files are very large you will need a PC with sufficient memory to download and view the files. It is recommended that a PC with a Pentium processor or equivalent be used to access the site. In addition, you should note that it may not be possible to print the PDF files as some older printers do not handle the printing of PDF files very well - for instance, the page may not print at all, or it may take a very long time to print.
In order to view the digitised files you will need to have access to the Adobe Acrobat Reader. The Reader can be downloaded free of charge from the the Adobe Acrobat website which contains step by step instructions for downloading, and includes information about the system requirements you will need to have available to support the Reader. More instructions on using the Adobe Acrobat Reader for accessing the Australian Periodical Publications 1840-1845 site is also available on the Help - Using Adobe Reader page.
The digital files produced for the project are bitonal digital files scanned from 35 mm microfilm at an effective resolution of 400 dpi (based on size of the original) to TIFF version 6.0, compressed using ITU Group 4 compression.
The TIFF files were converted to Multipage PDF using locally developed procedures in combination with Adobe Capture software. The locally developed procedures were also used to automatically generate parts of the site e.g. the Volume Content List that is provided for each title. Other pages, such as those listing the bibliographical details for the journals were generated manually.
The file structure used on the site is based on the ISSN of the journal then uses the date and volume numbering of each issue to create a series of directories for storing the PDF files.
Title |
ISSN |
Date of issue |
yyyymmdd |
issue(s) |
00010001 |
Pages/PDF files (groups of up to 10 pages) |
1-10.pdf |
For example:
Colonial literary magazine ... ISSN 1327-6646. Issue for Volume 7, number 25 (January 1842)
/ferguson/13276646/18420100/00070025/1-10.pdf [11-20.pdf, etc.]
There were approximately 75 journal titles identified as being of Australian interest or origin and which commenced publication between 1840-1845. Of these, a handful of titles were not digitised for the project - See Colin Webb's paper Australian Cooperative Digitisation Project 1840-1845 for more information about these.
There are currently 25 periodicals available on the site and additional titles are being added to the site progressively as they are checked for quality and converted.
Australian
Cooperative Digitisation Project 1840-1845 an update
Paper by
Colin Webb, July 1999
The Australian
Cooperative Digitisation Project 1840-45 - A Progress Report
Article by
Ross Coleman and Alan Ventress which appeared in the March 1997 issue of LASIE
- Library Automated Systems Information Exchange, vol. 28, no. 1 (ISSN
0047-3774).
Electronic Alchemy: The Australian Co-operative
Digitisation Project 1840-1845
Paper by John Thompson
The Ferguson
Project: A Hybrid Approach to Reformatting Rare Australiana
Paper
written by Colin Webb, 1996.
Australian Cooperative Digitisation Project (ACDP) 1840-1845. Progress
Report.
Project Steering Committee, 1996
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