National Library of Australia's Digital Future

The National Library of Australia (NLA) has undertaken an innovative digital library program to redevelop its infrastructure in order to manage its huge digital collections and provide access to collections from hundreds of libraries across its network. The library is expanding its online and mobile services for Australian and international users. More than 70,000 people use its Trove service each day and 22 million users were clocked up last year.  Over 3 petabytes of content is being accessed online and through mobile devices. This content includes more than 13 million digitised newspapers and hundreds of thousands of digitised Australiana items. Access to the Library’s digital content is through Trove, a free discovery and engagement service that also integrates content from more than 1000 libraries, museums, archives and research organisations. Trove offers online access to a vast catalogue of online books, newspapers, maps, music and journal articles. Trove has more than 7000 Twitter followers and tweets feature items of interest in the national collection. The NLA’s main twitter account has more than 23,000 followers. The NLA is the fourth most followed Australian government organisation and the most followed cultural institution. Using social media has proved an effective way of getting the NLA collections to online users, as increasingly, library users are online or using mobile and smart devices to download or share content. You can read more about this project at http://www.cio.com.au/article/556019/national-library-australia-invests-digital-future/

Australia's History in Glass

Fairfax Media has donated a collection of about 13,000 photographic glass plate negatives to the National Library of Australia. The photographs, taken by Fairfax photographers between 1908 and the mid-1930s, will be restored and put into digital form in a partnership between Fairfax Media, the National Library and the government's National Cultrual Heritage Foundation, which contributed $425,000. This is Australia's rarest collection of photojournalism and provides an insight into times long past including images of depression-era dole queues, the first Anzac Day march, life on Sydney's streets, as well as the intricate art of glass plate photography. The collection is particularly significant for Australians' understanding of the early 20th Century, as it provides a complete archive of photojournalism during the era. Cataloguing the collection will offer a better opportunity to access and appreciate the collection, which will be available from mid 2013.
Photograph: Spit Bridge c. 1935.