This month the National Library of Australia launches a new service to the nation the remarkable image gallery on the World Wide Web. Visitors can explore a gallery of online images from paintings, drawings, objects and photographs to rare prints. Expert cataloguing enables people searching for a particular image to find it quickly and easily.
Viewers can print the online order forms and then request reproductions by mail.
It is a pioneering, exemplary model to be followed by other institutions. The great strength of the online collection is in Australian historical images - native flora and fauna, voyages of Captain Cook, prime ministers, famous and ordinary Australians, historical events and the Australian way of life. There are also many contemporary images as well as pictures on the exploration of New Zealand and the Pacific. Australian and overseas publishers, art historians, students, curators, journalists, scholars and the general public will no longer have to visit the Library to discover the rich diversity of our collections.