PICTURE DIS: THE NATIONAL ONLINE ALBUM of JAMAICA
The National Library of Jamaica1 offers one of the region’s most extensive collections of Jamaican and West Indian reference materials including photographic, print and digitised images. In 2008, a partnership with the Power Broker International Placement strand of the Cultural Leadership Programme (CLP)2 has enabled the National Library to make some of its content more accessible with the creation of Picture Dis: The National Online Library of Jamaica. Picture Dis is a digital image collection of the people, places and products of Jamaica, organised by parishes. The collection has been established in keeping with the aims and objectives of the National Library of Jamaica, “…to collect, preserve, document and facilitate access to the nation’s cultural heritage…” Picture Dis will also provide a forum for information, education and debate.
Picture Dis is a template – due to the time constraints of the Placement Project, we have initially digitised between forty-two and fifty images. The National Library of Jamaica has countless more images for potential digitisation and welcomes potential collaborators and partners as Picture Dis continues. Selected images were chosen from throughout the National Library of Jamaica’s collection – Special Collections, monographs and audio-visual material –to establish the Picture Dis digital collection. Initial parameters were set as:
These parameters were further tightened by more detailed selection criteria, outlined below, which resulted in our final selections3:
Considering the complications which often arise where copyrighted photographs are used, we chose to use primarily those images that fell outside of copyright for our template5. We have provided rights information throughout this website. Attractive visual images that would elicit comment and opinion The National Library is particularly interested in how people react to these images and the implicit potential in soliciting comments such as: Why this photograph? Who are these persons? Why that particular focus? Why not that product? We have included a Feedback section on this website so that we can interact with relevant, engaged comments which can constructively impact on Collection Development and other library services at the National Library. We have also registered Picture Dis with Flickr to facilitate social networking and potential additions to our metadata – especially the search terms we use to make our material more accessible online. Please search Flickr for “National Library of Jamaica” or “Picture Dis” to find all the images for this collection and leave your comments. The National Library of Jamaica welcomes all donations to our collections. We would like our users to consider donating any images they may hold but cannot look after adequately to the National Library of Jamaica. To this end, we have included NLJ Preservation Guidelines on the Picture Dis website so that our users can make informed choices about preserving their own images or donating them, if professional care is needed.6 If you wish to donate material please contact: Mrs. Yvonne Clarke We are delighted to invite you to share and engage with Picture Dis – to use it, make comments, and above all ENJOY it!
Maxine Miller
1 National Library of Jamaica www.nlj.org.jm 2Cultural Leadership Programme (Arts Council England) www.culturalleadership.org.uk
My thanks to Yulande Lindsay, Digital Resources Librarian, National Library of Jamaica, for points on selection criteria for Picture Dis in her contribution to the Project’s Seminar Day “Developing Photo Dis: The National Library of Jamaica Online Photo Album”. Seminar - Developing Picture Dis: The National Library of Jamaica Online Album, PCJ Building Petroleum Company of Jamaica, 5 August 2008. 4See Picture Dis homepage for Guidelines for Preservation http://www.nlj.org.jm/pd/guidelines.htm 5" Copyright material Daley, Dianne, “IP ownership in Jamaica” in Intellectual Asset Management June/July 2005. p.52-54 www.iam-magazine.com (Jamaican Copyright law iam-magazine.com) 6See Picture Dis homepage for Guidelines for Preservation http://www.nlj.org.jm/pd/guidelines.htm
© 2008 National Library of Jamaica |