Initiatives

The State Library of Queensland is providing Wikimedia Commons, an online repository of free-use images, sound and other media files, with over 50,000 copyright-free Queensland images from our collections. This is the fourth largest collection of content made available to Wikimedia Commons since its establishment and the largest collection donated by an Australian cultural institution.

State Library is working with Wikimedia Commons representatives on a range of initiatives with regional public libraries to increase regional content on Wikipedia.

The Edge provides the opportunity, inspiration and resources for young people to explore creativity across art, technology and science. The Edge offers spaces for collaboration and learning, from the versatile auditorium and window bays through to a sound recording studio and a lab of Mac computers outfitted with suites of creative software to work across sound, image, film and code. A largely free, rolling program of workshops, events and initiatives explore the creativity in the digital realm, catering for learners and pros alike.

To keep up to date with all that is happening at The Edge, refer to The Edge website

The State Library is working with sixteen partnering organisations to deliver A State of Writing (ASW) - a project designed to get people around the state connected with writing, reading and ideas.
The partners include a diverse range of writing, publishing and arts organisations, universities, government entities and libraries and they are collaborating on new projects, sharing ideas, and working to extend interest, activity and participation across the state.  A social networking website has been established.
The State Library is the home of ASW and has begun the establishment of a writers, readers and ideas hub on Level 2 with the Queensland Writers Centre, Queensland Poetry Festival, Children’s Book Council of Australia and Book Links now in residence and more organisations to join them in the future. 

The Online Public Access in Libraries (OPAL) Program allocates resources to various projects that contribute to building Queensland content on the web and to fostering "information rich" communities. The program is focused on ensuring that regional and remote communities have access to Queensland heritage content, information and learning opportunities; and unique and valuable local community content is made available to a global audience.

The OPAL Program was funded by Queensland Treasury (and managed the the State Library) under the auspices of  Blueprint for the Bush for 12 years until 30 June 2009. Since then, the OPAL Program has been funded from base public library grant funds to the amount of $600,000 per annum.

The Queensland Business Leaders Hall of Fame celebrates, records and retells the past and present stories of outstanding Queensland business leaders, leading businesses and their contribution to Queensland. These success stories are shared in the Hall of Fame through a joint partnership between the State Library, Queensland University of Technology's Faculty of Business and the Queensland Library Foundation. The Hall of Fame will serve as a central repository of digital stories and accompanying historical data, which both highlights and recognises those who have made a significant contribution to the development and wellbeing of Queensland, through its economy, industries, businesses, organisations, professions, services or particular products.

The Queenslander is a significant publication that is in high demand by library users researching Queensland and Australian history. It particularly gives extensive documented and pictorial insight into the First World War and Boer War along with the best state-wide coverage of Queensland at the time. It also contains substantial articles and is highly illustrative with photographs and line drawings.

The digitisation of The Queenslander newspaper for access via the Australian Newspapers Service was completed and is now available on Trove. 

The next phase of this project was the digitisation and ingestion of the colour content of The Queenslander 1866-1939. These were produced by extraction of the colour front pages and supplements contained within the publication and ensuing digitisation from these hard copies by State Library.

The 988 colour image versions made up of front pages and supplements and the entire series of The Queenslander online, look for ‘Queenslander’ in One Search on the State Library website. 

State Library is currently investigating options and negotiating with the Australian Newspapers Digitisation Program (National Library of Australia) for the potential integration of the colour content into the entire Queenslander series available on the Australian Newspaper Service on Trove.    
The Library of Congress released a new photostream on their Flickr site of illustrated newspaper supplements.

The scanning and ingestion into digitool of The Queenslander colour pages has been completed.

The aim of this project is to support the work of all community-based Indigenous language programs throughout Queensland, to encourage the participation of new communities in language preservation, and to generate awareness of the endangerment of languages to a broad state and national audience. Much of the success of the project is linked to the delivery of practical skills training to Indigenous language workers, and to the innovative steps taken to link a range of services and facilities of the State Library and 300 regional libraries with the people in communities whose programs can benefit from the alliance.

Some of the main activities covered by the project include language recording training workshops; technology training; liaison and support for language centres and project teams; resource development; digitisation of old recordings; community outreach meetings to increase awareness of language endangerment and participation of new language groups; collation of language resources held in the State Library and other institutions; and information sharing, networking, and promotion.

In 2009, State Library became a member of The Commons of Flickr, joining such organisations as the Library of Congress, the State Library of NSW and the National Galleries of Scotland.

The key goals of The Commons on Flickr are firstly to show some of the hidden treasures in the world’s public photography archives, and secondly to show how public input and knowledge can help make these collections even richer.

Picture Queensland images uploaded to The Commons show a glimpse of Queensland life through the themes of early Australian aviation, the Queensland house, famous visitors to Queensland, bathing beauties and more. The photographs, all from the John Oxley Library collection, are added on a regular basis. If you know something about the images or you just like them, you are invited to add tags or leave comments.