With the National Library of Australia and several state libraries leading the list of contributors, the PictureAustralia online gallery of images of Australian life was formally launched as a cooperative, nonprofit service September 4. The site already contains almost a half-million images and is searchable.
The site is organized into “trails,” categories such as Australians and the Olympics, art, authors, wildflowers, birds, and various aspects of Australian history, from the construction of the Sydney Harbor Bridge to the 1952 Miss Pacific finalists posing at Sydney’s Bondi Beach. PictureAustralia organizers expect that the site will be used by school groups as well as historians and other researchers.
Debbie Campbell, the National Library’s manager of infrastructure projects, told the August 29 Australian that the service was established to provide a single location for all of Australia’s cultural institutions’ digitized works. Participants also include the University of Queensland and the state libraries of New South Wales, Tasmania, and Victoria. Campbell said PictureAustralia has “an aggressive plan to include more image providers.”
Posted September 11, 2000.