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.
Social media is creating an archive that will shape the way we see our past.
Eastman Johnson’s ‘A Ride for Liberty’ (ca. 1862) depicts a family of slaves galloping for the safety of the North in the early morning light.
Brooklyn Museum
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.
John Z'graggen’s tapes from Madang.
Nick Thieberger
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 ancient site of Palmyra, parts of which have reportedly now been destroyed by Islamic State.
Reuters/Mohamed Azakir
“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…
You never know what you’ll find when you rifle through a box of war diaries.
PA
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…
Kilometres of these now fit in a few cubic inches of digital storage.
merlin1487
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…
Spotswood primary school students build their future city using touch screen technology in Scienceworks’ Think Ahead exhibition.
Museum Victoria
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…
Sol LeWitt left behind detailed instructions that today enable galleries to realise his art for exhibition.
Chris Beckett
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…
An image of Australian shearers taken on glass plate negative is now preserved in a digital collection.
Powerhouse Museum Collection/Flickr
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…
Fifty years after the counterculture magazine burst into life, it has been archived online.
Richard Neville/University of Wollongong
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…
Researchers using the Design and Art Australia Online database no longer need to trek across the country to examine works such as Jean Goldberg’s “Wheels”.
Powerhouse Museum
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…
The resources housed in the Living Archive of Aboriginal Languages include educational materials for children.
Fiona Morrison/Living Archive of Aboriginal Languages
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