News archive 2000

As of today, Picture Australia postcards are available across Australia through Avant Card free postcard outlets in every state. Look for the postcards at your local cafes, community centres, cultural institutions, theatres, etc., over the next few weeks. If you miss out, please contact us and we will be happy to forward some postcards to you.

Picture Australia is well on the way to providing access to half a million images. The latest figures for the image contributions from each participating institution are below.

Institution	Number of images
Australian War Memorial	17,722
National Archives of Australia	7,449
National Library of Australia	23,556
State Library of NSW	264,215
State Library of Tasmania	2,938
State Library of Victoria	159,813
University of Queensland Library	73
Total	475,766

Picture Australia today won an Australian Financial Review Australian Internet Award 2000 in the Arts Category.

Picture Australia is very proud to be the recipient of an award granted by over fifty judges from every sector of the community; an acknowledgement of the value of the service to all Australians.

Picture Australia won because it is an:

• "Excellent portal for Australian cultural material of a pictorial nature
• Seamlessly integrates multiple multimedia databases into an elegant visual experience for the customer
• Use of metadata is excellent."

The award ceremony was broadcast live over the Internet (webcast, that is) from the Sydney Convention & Exhibition Centre.

Picture Australia is one of three Arts category finalists in the Australian Financial Review Australian Internet Awards 2000. The award ceremony will be held at 7 pm on 28 November 2000 at the Sydney Convention & Exhibition Centre. Stay tuned for details.

The database has also been updated and now includes 472,388 images:

Institution	Number of images
Australian War Memorial	17,720
National Archives of Australia	7,428
National Library of Australia	21,978
State Library of NSW	264,204
State Library of Tasmania	2,938
State Library of Victoria	158,070
University of Queensland	48

Picture Australia has reached the semi-finalist stage of this year's Australian Financial Review Australian Internet Awards 2000 in the Arts category.

The Picture Australia service is formally launched by the Minister for Veterans' Affairs, Mr Bruce Scott, in a ceremony at the National Library of Australia. Publicity materials are on their way around the country and the word is officially out that the service is available to all. The latest statistics on the number of images contributed by the participants are:

Institution	Number of images
Australian War Memorial	17,190
National Archives of Australia	7,428
National Library of Australia	21,978
State Library of NSW	264,213
State Library of Tasmania	2,644
State Library of Victoria	157,602
University of Queensland Library	36

The Queensland University Library starts the process of joining Picture Australia with a contribution of around 40 photographs from the Images of early Brisbane collection at the Fryer Library. They are the first university to contribute to Picture Australia.

The National Archives of Australia become the first archives to join the Picture Australia service. They contribute over 7,000 images from their Australian Overseas Information Service collection, including many wonderful images of Australian life in the 1950s.

An article on Picture Australia appears in The Australian, pending the countdown to the launch of the service.

The current number of images in the service is 461,805. The breakdown of contribution by the image providers is as follows:

Institution	Number of images
Australian War Memorial	17,720
National Library of Australia	21,975
State Library of NSW	263,010
State Library of Tasmania	2,653
State Library of Victoria	156,447