Ipswich Libraries is preserving the first draft of history
29 June 2020
Picture Ipswich is playing a vital role in preserving records of daily life in the area for three decades, thanks to a collaboration between Ipswich City Council Libraries and The Queensland Times.
The Queensland-Times has given hundreds of thousands of photographic negatives to Ipswich Libraries for digitisation.
Ipswich Mayor Teresa Harding said Ipswich Libraries will play an important role in ensuring that the stories of the community are safely kept so they could be enjoyed by future generations.
“The Queensland Times photographers have captured countless defining moments for three generations of Ipswich families and it’s important that these pieces of our city’s history are preserved.”
The collection includes boxes of negatives dating from 1977 to the early 2000s which were used in The Queensland-Times, Ipswich Advertiser and Ipswich Satellite and include baby pictures, sports, general news and advertising.
Copies of the paper are routinely sent to the Queensland State Library, and now individual photographs are able to be preserved as well as a result of the partnership.
“I’m looking forward to seeing the scanned negatives and no doubt, some familiar faces, when they are made available to the public on the Picture Ipswich website.” Mayor Harding said.
Picture Ipswich is a database of historical images, books, letters, documents, oral stories and videos from the Ipswich region freely available to the community.
Picture Ipswich has been scanning negatives since 2010 but as the last print edition of The Queensland-Times publishes on Saturday, 27 June, an agreement was reached allowing the full collection to be digitised before eventually being passed onto the Ipswich Historical Society.
The collection includes:
5 boxes of negatives, late 1970s
122 boxes of negatives, sorted by date, late 1970s to early 1980s
135 folders, 1980s to early 2000s
600+ CD/DVD ROMs, 2000s
10 bound volumes of The Ipswich Advertiser, 1990s