Memorial's digitisation project shortlisted for cultural award
The Australian War Memorial’s Bean diaries digitisation project was short listed for the Manning Clark House National Cultural Awards – 2009. The Award recognises outstanding contributions to the quality of Australian cultural life in 2009.
The digitisation of these fragile bound diaries represented a significant achievement for the Memorial. Personal records are not always presented in a logical or chronological order. The challenge for the Memorial's Research Centre was to digitise all of Charles Bean's 286 volumes of diaries, notebooks and folders without damaging them and to make the digital images of the records accessible and usable in the online environment without interfering with the integrity of the original documents.
Our intention of displaying this valuable collection online means that the original records are now preserved and this historically significant and unique collection is available to all researchers across Australia and the world.
The records can be viewed on the Memorial’s website here: /collection/war_diaries/cew_bean/