Since I was beaten to the punch on the national archives exhibition of "Running for Office," How about a completely different take on the political process? Advance Australia: South Australian and Federation is a production of the South Australia State Library and is notable mostly for it's uselessness.Collection Principles: The website is intended mainly as a bibliographic resource for the Australian Federalist movement in the late 19th century, with additional digitized material, namely photographs, cartoons, posters and fliers, as well as some sample text documents. Thus most of the content they're conveying isn't even on the site. However, if a source relates to a digital document, there is a link - but most of the links are broken.
Object Characteristics: Objects are contemporary images and photographs relating to the people, places and issues surrounding the federalist movement in Australia and the emergence of the Australian constitution. It's difficult to say how many images there are, since they're linked different places and there seems to exist to comprehensive image index. Most come in a single resolution, making some that contain text completely illegible. The site is searchable, but only to a point. Images are not separately searchable, although the can be viewed by topic section.
Metadata: Extremely minimal - Images usually only include a title and an or
iginal source, i.e. for cartoons the original paper of publication and date. No where could I find any information for most images about the original artifact digitized, it's author, its place of holding, etc, etc. Many broken links, but a few images did link to catalogue records in the Mortlock Library of South Australia, the Rare Books and Named Collections of the Library of South Australian, and the South Australia Parliamentary Papers. However, there is no way of telling whether most other images belong to any of these collections.
iginal source, i.e. for cartoons the original paper of publication and date. No where could I find any information for most images about the original artifact digitized, it's author, its place of holding, etc, etc. Many broken links, but a few images did link to catalogue records in the Mortlock Library of South Australia, the Rare Books and Named Collections of the Library of South Australian, and the South Australia Parliamentary Papers. However, there is no way of telling whether most other images belong to any of these collections.Intended Audience: Those with an interest in Australian political history, students, teachers, etc. Honestly, I had previously been completely unaware that Australian had had a contentious constitution making of it's own, or that Women in South Australian could vote in 1897. I just wish they had included more resources!
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