University Digitisation Centre Highlights

The University Digitisation Centre (UDC) is part of Research & Collections (University Library) and provides expert advice, training and a range of digitisation services to the University community.  It has been an eventful year for the UDC, with the completion of several long term projects and some interesting digitisation challenges.

Major Achievements

Our top two major achievements have been the completion of the Farrago and Australian Education Curriculum digitisation projects. Both projects are the culmination of many years hard work across multiple teams at the Library. Please note that for copyright reasons you will need to be logged in to Digitised Collections to view some of the collection. 

Farrago – What’s available: 1665 issues from Volume 1, no.1 1925 until Volume 94 no.4, 2018 are online and ready to be perused for teaching classes, research projects or general interest. A big thanks to the Rowden White Library Archive which provided issues missing from the SPC collections to scan and the current Farrago editorial team for their assistance and championing of this project.  

Australian Education Curriculum and Teacher Education collection – What’s available: 4,406 items across 8 collections of prominent curriculum and teacher resources published in Victoria and South Australia, Australia from 1848 to the 1970s.

3D scanning 

We love a challenge at the UDC and an interesting one this year was 3D scanning the World War 1 uniform buttons of University of Melbourne alumna and medical doctor Vera Scantlebury Brown, held in the University of Melbourne Archives. The scanned buttons will be 3D printed and cast in bronze for a statue of Vera by the artist Lucy McEachum (https://lucymceachern.com/) 

 More about the very accomplished Vera can be found here: https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/scantlebury-brown-vera-8350 

The 3D scans of the buttons can be found online.

Projects highlights from the team

Across the team, favourite projects have included:

• Digitising photographs from the University of Melbourne Archives’ Malcolm Fraser Collection – Stacey
• Assisting a Geography graduate student with 3D scanning of seashells for their research project – Ben
• Completing the collection of Goold’s first Paris edition of Piranesi’s works – Silvia
• Finding fun bootleg Batman comics in the Valery Garrett collection (not yet online) – Adrian
• Discovering the French fashion journal Tres Parisien 1921 (not yet online) – Anna

Find out more

More information: https://library.unimelb.edu.au/digitisation

Enquiries: digitisation-enquiries@unimelb.edu.au

Author: Anna Clatworthy, Manager University Digitisation Centre and Digitised Collections. 

Images:
1. Xiaoju Liu, Senior Librarian, Chinese & Asian Studies and Lucy Willet, then Coordinator, Collections Management, arranging stone rubbings from the Harry Simon Collection for photogrammetry capture at the UDC. Photo by Ben Kreunen.
2. Silvia digitising a bound volume of Piranesi. Photo by Anna Clatworthy.
3. Farrago header
4. page 174 of Tres Parisien 1921