NSW Archaeology Online: Image Archive

The NSW Archaeology Online: Image Archive contains digitized photographs, metadata and some support documents related to historical places in NSW, and some beyond, recorded by Ian Jack and Judy Birmingham for archaeological research and heritage consultancy projects conducted mainly between the 1960s and 1990s. The Ian Jack Image Collection comprises thousands of photographs and slides of NSW industrial sites in regions including Bathurst, Lithgow, Mudgee Shire and Evans Shire. The Judy Birmingham Image Collection contains slides taken between the 1960s-1990s at a large variety of archaeological sites and locations in NSW, plus some from elsewhere in Australia and the South Pacific. The images are of public interest and have research value for documenting and understanding places and landscapes of historical and archaeological importance to NSW, including many which have now changed significantly or no longer exist. The NSW Archaeology Online Image Archive was funded by a 2011-13 Community Strategic Products and Services grant awarded to Sarah Colley and Martin Gibbs (Archaeology, University of Sydney) by the NSW Heritage Council and the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage. Annika Korsgaard took major responsibility for archive implementation. This Image Archive extends the NSW Archaeology Online Grey Literature Archive (hosted by University of Sydney Library at: http://nswaol.library.usyd.edu.au or via Research Data Australia at: http://researchdata.ands.org.au/nsw-archaeology-online-grey-literature-archive) as part of a larger project initiated in 2009 to conduct, support and advocate research and public education about archaeology and heritage in the state. A key component is to create open access online archives of important information about historical archaeology and heritage in NSW which has been previously hard to access, undervalued and sometimes at risk of being lost (Gibbs, M. & S. Colley 2012. Digital preservation, online access and historical archaeology ‘grey literature’ from New South Wales, Australia. Australian Archaeology 75: 95-103.). Information written on the back of photographs was also scanned and included here using the same filename as the image. Information on slide casings has been transcribed into datasets in Excel spreadsheet format. To use the slide collections either search the appropriate dataset for specific words to find correlating image names or browse through the images and lookup associated metadata in the dataset. The ‘NSW Archaeology Online Image Archive - Methodology’ document – also available here – contains further information, conditions of use and contact information and users are advised to read it.