National Library NZ

Pictures Online Project

The National Library is planning to digitise a large part of its photographic archive. Over the next two years, hundreds of thousands of photographs will be digitised and made available online.

Over the next few years the Library plans to undertake a large-scale digitisation project called Pictures Online. This initiative will add to the preservation work completed to date and will also increase access to otherwise inaccessible collections during the Wellington building redevelopment. This project will add to the 70,000 images that have already been preserved in perpetuity and are accessible online.

There are over 4.9 million photographs and negatives held in the Alexander Turnbull Library that capture moments in New Zealand and Pacific history and that show lives once-led.

As the photographs are digitised they will be showcased online through the Library’s digital collection websites such as Timeframes (digitised New Zealand and Pacific images from the collections of the Alexander Turnbull Library).

Timeframes website
Project phases

Pilot phase

Starting in February 2010, a pilot phase of digitisation will begin that will test all the processes in the digitisation of the photograph collections.

Production phase

From the beginning of April 2010 the project will be in full production, and it is expect that close to 6,000 photographs will be digitised and made available online each week throughout the duration of the project.
Collection selection

Over 50 photograph collections totalling over half a million images have been selected from the Alexander Turnbull Library’s photographic archive. These collections have been identified as having high interest and in demand by picture researchers, iwi, publishers, educators and individuals. These include, Whites Aviation photographs of New Zealand and the Pacific from the 1920s-1980s, K E Niven and Co. commercial photographers of Wellington, John Pascoe photographs of mountaineering and the New Zealand war effort and Thelma Kent photographs of New Zealand wildlife and scenery 1930s.

The first collection to be digitised will be the Crown Studios photograph collection. This collection consists of close to 18,000 photographs of individuals and groups of sports people, and covers New Zealand pastimes and culture.