In less than a decade, most people won’t be able to play a VHS tape anymore. Let’s farewell the humble tape, and celebrate the archives finding their way to digitisation and YouTube.
With Freedom on the Move, historians hope to reveal patterns of escape and capture, while giving anyone the chance to learn about the individual heroism of runaway slaves.
There are hundreds of different languages spoken in the Pacific region that could be lost. So it’s important to safeguard what recordings we have in a digital archive available to all.
“The internet is forever.” So goes a saying regarding the impossibility of removing material – such as stolen photographs – permanently from the web. Yet paradoxically the vast and growing digital sphere…
Digital networks and databases appear to crush historical distance. Archives of war increasingly come to us. A simple YouTube search throws up a chaotic mix of official and unauthorised, user-generated…
From the Domesday Book to modern government papers, the National Archives’ collection of more than 11m historical government and public records is one of the world’s largest. It includes paper and parchment…
Visits to websites of Australia’s museums now exceed the number of visitors attending exhibitions, events or programs at actual bricks and mortar museums. Across the 62 museums that make up the Council…
Just as we have become accustomed to two worlds of consumption – online and “location-based” retail (what we used to call “shops”) – the concept of museums and galleries as solely physical repositories…
Australian’s museums, galleries and other cultural institutions must adopt more of a digital strategy with their collections if they are to remain relevant with audiences. Only about a quarter of the collections…
Earlier this month, the University of Wollongong announced that it would house the digital archive of OZ magazine, meaning the iconic counterculture magazine will be available to a new audience – some…
In 2014 it is hard to remember how isolated research on art in Australia used to be. Before the web, when we were all in hard copy, it used to be almost impossible to find information on Australian art…
Attitudes and policies relating to Australian Indigenous languages are in a state of flux. The Northern Territory government is reportedly again aiming to banish Aboriginal languages from the classroom…
Honorary (Senior Fellow) School of Culture and Communication University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne