Through this proof of concept project, a range of handwritten documents were run through Clio and through a range of checks and balances, the results of the AI transcription far exceeded the expectations that were set by QSA, with around 80% of the transcriptions being above average or better.

The resultant transcriptions were then passed on to the Queensland State Archives team, where they were able to integrate the results into their existing crowd-sourcing program to further check and review the results.  This reduced the time it took to transcribe the archives, and made it possible to include more materials in the launch of the Frontier Wars material.

You can read more about this project in our blog.

The post Transcribing Archives with Artificial Intelligence appeared first on Gaia Resources.

The internal Archival Management System (ArchivesSpace) went live at the end of June 2020, along with a new public interface for searching the archives (ArchivesSearch), and a new system to support Queensland agencies (ArchivesGateway).  While some of these systems are restricted access (ArchivesGateway and ArchivesSpace), ArchivesSpace can be directly accessed by the public.

Gaia Resources continues to maintain a presence in supporting the operational side of these systems through an ongoing support contract, whereby we provide support, maintenance, enhancements and an evergreening service to keep the systems up to date.

You can read more about this project in our announcement blog.

The post Queensland State Archives Archival Management System appeared first on Gaia Resources.

After the program concluded there were a number of iterations, design improvements, and customer testing rounds which led to the development of Q-Album, which went live with a soft launch in late 2019. Q-Album hosts over 500 historic collection items from the collection, and has now been opened to community groups across Queensland to contribute their historic items to build a community resource. The platform includes comparisons between historic photos and modern street views; digitised archival materials; publishing workflows between community groups and QSA; mapping tools; tag-based taxonomies of content; organisational profiles; and cross-referencing to TROVE and other historic data sources.

View Q-Album

The post Q-Album appeared first on Gaia Resources.

Gaia Resources provides support to the Bureau around their publicly available AtoM implementation, which contains a range of archival descriptions, authority records and digital objects.

Through the block support approach that Gaia Resources provides, this service is able to be delivered to the Bureau in a cost-effective manner.

The post Pacific Manuscripts Bureau appeared first on Gaia Resources.

A final “roadmap” report was provided to help the Office to work through these challenges, and to give them additional guidance to work through the challenges that they were facing – while capitalising on the opportunities that this also presented.

The post Archival support for the Office of the Auditor General appeared first on Gaia Resources.

We have worked with Public Records Office Victoria (PROV) to migrate their archival management system (to CollectiveAccess), as part of a wider Digital Archive renewal project that they are running.

Our role in this project has centered around the implementation of the new Archival Management System, migration of the data from one system to another, and the subsequent testing and integration of the system with the staff within PROV. It has involved a lot of preparation work, understanding data models, and migration to a new data model.

This project was first written about in our blog on the “Managing Archives with PROV” blog post, which can be found at https://archive.gaiaresources.com.au/managing-archives-prov/.

The post Public Records Office Victoria appeared first on Gaia Resources.

The 12 week project involved setting up a Drupal website, and then undertaking a range of work to enable us to present modern Google Street View photographs to be juxtaposed with the archival photos to show a “now and then” of the photos and give some historical context.  This was done to a high degree of spatial accuracy, and the mapping interface becomes an entry point into the archival collection – viewing the photo acts as an anchor to related links in archives and series.  Further work on this project is scheduled for late 2017.

You can also read about this project via the blogs below.

• Announcing the project
• Showcasing the project (and how the TWiG project supports businesses)
• Reflections on the project

The post Discovering Queensland appeared first on Gaia Resources.

In 2018, we worked with the University of Tasmania to implement a Digital Preservation System, based on the Archivematica software.  This involved setting up Archivematica on the University’s NECTAR Infrastructure and configuring the system in conjunction with training for the staff at the University.  This then was added to the support arrangements for the University and we continue to support both their Digital Preservation and Archival Management systems.

The post University of Tasmania Archives appeared first on Gaia Resources.

The post St Aloysius’ College Archival Support appeared first on Gaia Resources.

The workshop ran in a similar fashion to the University of Melbourne project, where the current and future states for the Heritage Centre were mapped out, along with a discussion around the potential roadmap.  As a result of this one-day workshop, a four-phase plan was created and delivered to the Geelong Heritage Centre that will be used, in conjunction with other material, to move them forward with this important project.

The post Geelong Heritage Centre Digital Repository Planning appeared first on Gaia Resources.

The workshop involved determining the current state, the future state and the roadmap for the Archives unit to move into Digital Archives. A range of preparation work was done prior to the workshop, which was run in one day.  The workshop itself covered a range of topics, and included interactive exercises designed to build understanding and collaboration between the stakeholders as well as with the project team.

A formal plan was developed after the workshop and was delivered to the Archives unit and forms the basis for their ongoing Digital Archives roadmap.

The post University of Melbourne Digital Archive Planning appeared first on Gaia Resources.

WANMA is an interactive web portal presenting a collection of content related to the history of new music in Western Australia. It includes audio and video recordings, images, and a range of documents, drawn from a wide range of different sources, including Tura New Music and the ABC Classic FM archives.  The portal also allows for bands and individuals to submit their own works to WANMA.

We took on this project as part of our Collections stream and have build a custom solution for WANMA to cater for their requirements, as our other open source collection platforms didn’t meet the brief.  This has resulted in the development of a highly responsive application (consisting of a storage engine, an API, data importers and a Single Page Application) that takes advantage of cloud computing (through Amazon Web Services) to ensure that this video, audio and other media content is replicated across the world, at a minimal cost to the project.

Gaia Resources continues to host, maintain and support WANMA over the next few years.

The post Western Australian New Music Archive appeared first on Gaia Resources.