Digitising Queensland’s historic photographs at Queensland University of Technology
As part of Wikimedia Australia’s Partner Projects, Jill Rogers, Digital Collections
Librarian, Queensland University of Technology (QUT) has been leading a project to upload and describe historic photographic material relating to rural Queensland.
QUT Digital Collections began in 2012 and include 15 collections of photographs taken in Australia and across the world.
As part of the project with Wikimedia Australia, QUT has been adding images to Wikimedia Commons, the media file repository making freely licensed images available to everyone.
So far, Jill and her team have uploaded 153 images that are now available under an open licence so they can be included on relevant Wikipedia articles and elsewhere.
These images have a focus on rural and regional Queensland, such as Cathedral Hill at Alexandra Headland, Seal Park in Buderim, and the Big Pineapple tourist train in Woombye.
To do this, they are using Pattypan, a tool to upload multiple files to Commons at once along with their metadata, with the guidance of Kerry Raymond who has provided invaluable assistance along the way.
One of the additional outcomes of this project will be documenting their process of digitising collections, and the many steps included before they’re available on Wikimedia Commons.
This has included removing dust and mould for slides, scanning images, restoring them with minor edits in Photoshop, and adding metadata, before they are ready to be added to the digital collections.
The project is due to be completed later this year, and we look forward to sharing the full outcomes from the fantastic work being done by Jill and the team at QUT’s Digital Collections.
[Gallery of four images]
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