Regional archives go digital

Dec 12, 2003

Former University of Wollongong Archivist, Cunninham Federal Member Michael Organ paid a visit the University to launch the Electronic Regional Archives Digitisation Project this week.

Mr Organ was one of the original applicants for the funding of the project known as "Unlocking Regional Memory".

The project began in 2002 and has involved a variety of tasks such as the identification of high-demand archival holdings, digitising of archival holdings, the re-writing of existing archival guides to international protocol standards and the installation of equipment and website design.

"A year later, readers are able not only to know the holdings of distant archives but summon the actual texts of documents to their own computer screens," according to the principal investigators in the project the Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Professor Andrew Wells, and Professor Jim Hagan, also from the Faculty of Arts.

"We eventually hope to make international archives available to Australian scholars," they said.p>They said evaluation results by potential users of the site have so far been extremely positive.It is a joint project involving the universities of Wollongong, Newcastle and New England. Australian Archives has also co-operated in the overall project.

Funding for the project came from an Australian Research Council Linkage, Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities Grant.