Stephen A. Schwarzman Building > Celeste Bartos Education Center

Schedule

[Print This Page | Tell a Friend]

Of Maps and Metadata: Explorations in online access at the National Archives of Australia

Monday, April 6, 2009
12:00 PM - 2:00 PM

South Court Auditorium, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, 5th Avenue and 42nd Street, New York, NY 10018-2788 (directions)

The National Archives of Australia provides online access to 1.6 million fully-digitized files, totaling more than 20 million digital images. Another 6 million are described in its online database. This represents only about ten per cent of the Archives' total holdings, but it's more than enough to challenge the skills of even the most experienced researcher. As these numbers continue to grow, issues of access, findability and visualization will become increasingly pressing. How will we orient researchers within this mass of data? How will we help them find what they want? How will we help them use what they've found? In November 2008, the National Archives of Australia launched Mapping our Anzacs, a Google Maps based interface to the 376,000 World War I service records in its care. Through this site, users can browse places around the world where service people were born or enlisted, following links to digitized copies of their records. They can also contribute notes and photos through an online scrapbook. Mapping our Anzacs provides a wholly new way of accessing and interacting with the collection and has proved very popular, but how can the ideas underpinning its development be applied more broadly? Check out the website here: http://mappingouranzacs.naa.gov.au/ Join Dr. Tim Sherratt as he discusses the past and future of Mapping our Anzacs and introduce some of the other online initiatives being explored by the National Archives of Australia.

Cost:  Free

Program Information:
Celeste Bartos Education Center
These programs are free and open to the public, and are presented in the Library's South Court (enter from Astor Hall). Seats are available on a first-come, first-served basis. Rooms will be opened 10 minutes prior to the class beginning. For questions, send an e-mail to SouthCourt@nypl.org or call (212) 930-9284.