News

Contribute to a valuable national resource.

Upload your festive photos to Picture Australia.

The Pictorial Canterbury collection showcases 11,000 photographs dating from the 1800s to the present day. 

A feature of this collection is the inclusion of personal stories contributed by the public that are being linked to images on the site.

This is a unique local history collection depicting the development of the diverse and vibrant community of the City of Canterbury. 

A welcome new resource, the Newcastle Region Library have added 7,488 images to Picture Australia.  

Their collection includes primarily historical & contemporary photographs, paintings and drawings that document the people, events, landscape and social history of the Newcastle and Hunter Region.

Pip‘s colourful contributions to the Re-Picture Australia group are a great example of the sort of contributions we are seeking.

One example Industry demonstrates how Pip has reworked, public domain images from the State Library of Queensland and the State Library of South Australia to create a montage with new meanings.

View other examples of Pip's images on Picture Australia.

(Outstanding Picture Australia Flickr members are selected monthly and receive a gift in thanks for their efforts.)

View highlights from contributors to Picture Australia's Flickr groups during November.
Read report (57.3kb PDF)

This scheduled outage, is to allow for routine maintenance of the National Library's network infrastructure. As a result, all of the National Library of Australia's IT systems, including Picture Australia, will be unavailable between 5pm Saturday 6/12/2008 until 10am Sunday 7/12/2008 (Australian Eastern Daylight Savings Time).

We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.

You can find some of the earliest images of aviation and flying machines in Australia by searching Picture Australia.

View images of Lawrence Hargrave’s box kite experiments at Stanwell Park in the 1890s, to the mass transport Boeing 747’s of today.

Why not add your own images of magnificent flying machines to Picture Australia, and contribute to the nation's aviation history.

View Catherine Martin discussing her research using Picture Australia for the production design of the film 'Australia'.

Scoll to time code 4.35 in the Picture Australia video to see the interview.

This year celebrates the 90th anniversary of Armistice Day. Why not add your own images of family members in the forces to Picture Australia, and contribute to the national visual record of Australia.

Lisa Gervasoni’s images capture the colourful events taking place in rural towns and are a great example of the sort of contributions we are seeking for Picture Australia.

Lisa also provides contemporary views of historical photographs already in Picture Australia. By carefully captioning her photographs with the image number of the historical image, it is easy to compare the two images. Parma House is a wonderful example.

(Outstanding Picture Australia Flickr members are selected monthly and receive a gift in thanks for their efforts.)

View highlights from contributors to Picture Australia's Flickr groups during October.
Read report (61.0kb PDF)

Do you need links for your searches that you can reliably cite in Wikipedia, articles or essays?

Use the following URL in front of your search term to create a search you can return to: http://www.pictureaustralia.org/search/

For example: http://www.pictureaustralia.org/search/opera+house

This keyword and search return results relating to the Opera House in Picture Australia.

New images that match your search terms are constantly being added so your search results are always current.

See our FAQs page for details on how to create simple, linkable searches on Picture Australia that always return results.

Gervo's image of 'Wombat Hill, Daylesford’ is a great example of the sort of contributions we are seeking for Picture Australia:Ourtown. Gervo has taken this shot from the same angle as a much earlier image held in the State Library of Victoria's collection.

Gervo has added over 1,200 images to Picture Australia. Check out Gervo’s images to see the great tags and captions he adds to make it easier to search for in Picture Australia.

(Outstanding Picture Australia Flickr members are selected monthly and receive a gift in thanks for their efforts.)

You can now access Randwick City Library's entire collection of 3, 300 digitised images through Picture Australia. This is a unique visual record of the Randwick area dating from the 1880s.

The collection features photographs of events, industry, people and places in the Randwick City area.

View highlights from contributors to Picture Australia's Flickr groups during September

Read report (71.8kb PDF)

Did you know that you can discover thousands of images of Australian animals on Picture Australia?

On World Animal Day find out about endangered and extinct animals.

Follow the Australian animals trail to see bear-like creatures living in trees and animals that hop.

You can also add your own images of Australian animals to Picture Australia.

We want to recognise the outstanding contributions of Picture Australia’s Flickr members, so we are introducing an award.  Once a month an outstanding contributor from one of our three groups will be selected and receive a gift in thanks for their efforts.

Our first ‘Outstanding Contributor’ award winner is Brian Yap (葉) , Flickr alias Yewenyi.

Yewenyi has made the most contributions to the Picture Australia People, Places and Events and the OurTown groups.
Check out Yewenyi’s images to see the great tags and captions he adds to make them searchable in Picture Australia. http://www.pictureaustralia.org/search/yewenyi

View highlights from contributors to Picture Australia's Flickr groups during August.
Read report (90 kb PDF)

Did you know that you can search Picture Australia for more than historical and cultural images?

During National Science Week 16 - 24 August 2008, find pictures of your favourite ‘–ology’ on Picture Australia or try a search for astronomy, forestry, meteorology, solar panels or even microscopic spongiform encephalopathies to start delving into the wealth of science images available.

Do you want to find historical images, articles, cartoons or maps printed in Australian newspapers?

On 25 July 2008, in collaboration with the State and Territory libraries, the National Library of Australia launched the Australian Newspapers Beta service which makes available out-of-copyright digitised Australian newspapers. This exciting new online service enables the full-text searching of newspaper articles from newspapers published in each state and territory from the 1800s to the mid-1950s. The first Australian newspaper, the Sydney Gazette published in Sydney in 1803, is included in the service. The Australian Newspapers Beta service already contains over 90,000 newspaper pages from 1803 onwards, with more pages being added daily. The National Library of Australia welcomes your feedback on the service and will continue development of the service over the next few months.

Discover the wealth of Australian Newspapers online at the Australian Newspapers Beta service.

View highlights from contributors to Picture Australia's Flickr groups during July

Read report (57.8kb PDF)

Researchers can now access Warringah Library Service's entire collection of digitised images on Picture Australia.

The local indigenous people of the area are the Guringai. 'Warringah' is the Guringai word for Middle Harbour. Today, Warringah is a diverse community with a population of 140,000 people covering 152.5 square kilometres.

Best Contributor awards

Congratulations to the State Library of South Australia for the award of the most images contributed to Picture Australia. The addition of 40,000+ images greatly assisted in Picture Australia surpassing the milestone of 1.5 million images.

Congratulations also to the State Library of Western Australia for the best data quality award. Good data is essential for searching and retrieving image records on Picture Australia.

Flickr Contributor awards

Ross and Veronique from R&V Photographers received the awards for the high quality and quantity of work they have contributed to Picture Australia’s Flickr groups. The award also recognises their assistance in promoting and supporting the project goals.

Their prizes of digital books have been generously provided by Life Design.

View highlights from contributors to Picture Australia's Flickr groups during June

Read report (76 kb PDF file)

In association with the Vivid, the National Photography Festival, Picture Australia will be launching a DVD. See selected works from Picture Australia Flickr groups (146kb PDF file)

Celebrate images, history and invention (419kb PDF file)
6.30 pm, Monday 14 July 2008
National Library of Australia
Screening: LG1 Theatre,
Parkes Place, Canberra

Join image makers, private collectors, national, state and regional picture curators in conversation on their passion for image collections. Find out about the collective image network that makes up Picture Australia and the opportunities for you to contribute. View exciting new artworks produced by creative Australians and from the collections of key museums, galleries, libraries and archives across the country.
Free event, open to the public.
Bookings are essential: bookings@nla.gov.au or 02 6262 1271

View highlights from contributors to Picture Australia's Flickr groups during May

Read report (14 kb PDF)

Researchers can now access the National Gallery of Australia's entire digitised Australian Art collection on Picture Australia.

The Australian Art collection at the National Gallery of Australia incorporates art made in Australia or about Australian subjects since European settlement in 1788, with the greatest strength in the 20th century. The collection encompasses paintings, sculpture, prints, drawings, sketchbooks, posters, photographs, decorative arts and installation art.

Do you want to be able to search Picture Australia directly from your organisational or personal website?

A Picture Australia search is as easy to add to your webpage as a simple copy and paste.

Placing the search box on your organisational or personnel website will help your visitors find and get items from the collections of Australia's libraries, museums, galleries and archives.

View highlights from contributors to Picture Australia's Flickr groups during April

Read report (14.6 kb PDF)

The Australian War Memorial in 2003 appointed David Dare Parker as its official photographer and Lewis Miller as its official artist, to document the role of Australian Defence Force personnel deployed to the Second Gulf War. The artists have produced a vast array of paintings, sketches and photographs about the every day lives of Royal Australian Navy, Royal Australian Air Force, and Australian Army personnel in the war zone.

The Australian War Memorial also holds a large range of contemporary images relating to the Afghanistan conflict. These images produced by artists Peter Churcher, George Gittoes, and Sean Hobbs, document the involvement of the Australian Air Force and Australian Army. The Australian War Memorial has a long history of official war artists documenting conflicts, going back to the First World War.

On Anzac Day, we commemorate all New Zealanders and Australians who have served in a military campaign.

View Picture Australia’s Anzacs at Gallipoli trail.

View highlights from contributors to Picture Australia's Flickr groups during March.

Read report (15.2 kb PDF)

View highlights from contributors to Picture Australia's Flickr groups during February.

Read report (17kb PDF)

Do you want to return to particular picture searches so you can reliably cite them in Wikipedia, articles or essays? See our Search Help page for details on how to create simple, linkable searches on Picture Australia that always return results.