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Case Study: JCU Picture Archive

Featuring: James Cook University, Cairns - Library
Speaking with Dagmar Parer, Librarian
WWW address: http://digitalarchive.jcu.edu.au - gatewayed through http://www.pictureaustralia.org

The Background. James Cook University offers excellence in teaching and research in a unique tropical setting. It has developed rapidly over the past thirty years to become one of Queensland's premier universities and an internationally renowned tropical university. JCU has campuses hundreds of kilometres apart - in Cairns, Townsville and Mackay as well as specialist research, teaching and learning sites throughout Queensland and northern Australia. Providing web access to library resources as an aid to offsite learners & researchers was one of the challenges.

Now, photographs documenting the history of Townsville and the conflict over the Daintree rainforest are accessible on the World Wide Web due to collaboration between James Cook University and the National Library of Australia.

The Picture Service. In March 2003, JCU Cairns campus-based library became the first regional university to make part of its image collection available, not just locally on JCU's site, but on PictureAustralia - an initiative of the National Library of Australia to provide Internet access to digitised documentary images held by major cultural organisations.

Dagmar Parer, Librarian and manager of the Project, described the typical challenge for such an ambitious project as financial - "project funding was limited so we wanted to get best value for money". Canto's Academic program provided a significant discount on the initial purchase. Thus Cumulus Workgroup and the accompanying Web Publisher Option proved a cost effective and easy to implement platform for JCU to create and publish their collection.

The Cumulus solution. The Library used the Cumulus University Starter Pack comprising Workgroup, Web Publisher and Viewer to catalogue and publish the 3 collections that make up the digital archive. The Cumulus information windows displays the Dublin Core metadata that make the collection fully searchable. There is a simple and an advanced search interface and users can search within selections. The search results are thumbnails with the option for full size preview. Researchers can search by collection category and an online shopping cart facility is linked to the Library ordering system.

The Technical challenge. Melbourne web integrators, AIMTec and John Baker of Infinite Systems helped JCU in linking Cumulus Web Publisher with the PictureAustralia gateway. Canto's product training program has produced six of the highest level certified companies (CCSIs) in Australia and many consultants to help end users implement and customise their resources for web discovery. "The technical challenge we had to face was integrating the JCU LINUX OS environment with the Cumulus dynamic data source." This is still a challenge for Dagmar. AIMTec are enthusiastic about the Project and committed to working with JCU to perfect the service. The library plans to digitise more photos from its archives and so augment the information resources available to researchers.

The Collections: JCU's first contribution to PictureAustralia is a collection of photographs from the Daintree blockade of 1983 and a selection from the North Queensland Photographic Collection held at JCU in Townsville, showing life in that city in the early 19th century.

The Daintree blockade collection images show the intense political action around the protests of 1983, and give researchers studying tropical rainforests an insight into the social, political and community issues which were prevalent, in addition to the environmental ones.

The PictureAustralia Project. The Project commenced in 2000 with seven participating organisations. PictureAustralia provides access to over 1 million images that document Australia's history, people, places and events.

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Technical Platform

Daintree Collection

Police, protestors and the media at the Greater Daintree National Park blockade (thumbnail)

Rock Arch and Taxi Service, Arcadia, Magnetic Island (thumbnail)

Link to PictureAustralia