‘Due to its size and physical structure, the Official Record had not been digitised in its entirety, until now.
Powerhouse digitisation team undertook this significant digital preservation project knowing the outcome would be of great benefit to the national and international research community.
Converting the Official Record of the Sydney International Exhibition 1879 into a digital format demanded a meticulous approach to achieve a faithful digital representation of the original.
Under the guidance of the archives team, all 1398 pages of the book were photographed in carefully controlled lighting conditions, minimising exposure variances and ensuring uniformity from one edge of each page to the other. One of the inherent challenges of photographing a bound volume like this is the distance between the lens and the object changes with each turning of a page. This movement, along with potential distortions, was carefully factored into the digitisation team’s image corrections.’
- Powerhouse Museum
“The traditional printing press methods used to create the book and slight warping of the volume over time meant the image for each page demanded individual attention to ensure a true-to-original digital representation.”
88/731: Catalogue, 'Official Record of the Sydney International Exhibition', leather / cardboard / paper, issued by NSW Government Printing Office, printed by Thomas Richards, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, 1881
‘The Sydney International Exhibition of 1879–1880 was one of the most significant public events in colonial Australia and the first World’s Fair held in the Southern Hemisphere. The Exhibition was mainly staged in the Garden Palace Exhibition Building in the Inner Domain, now part of the Royal Botanic Garden, Sydney.
It featured 9345 exhibitors from 34 counties and colonies including New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania, and was attended by more than 1.1 million visitors during its seven months of operation.
Sadly, in the early morning of 22 September 1882 the entire structure burned to the ground, taking with it the museum’s initial collection as well as other irreplaceable records and objects. Items lost in the fire included returns from the 1881 Census (the first simultaneous Censuses of all the Australian colonies) and many First Nations objects held by the Australian Museum.
But one very important item related to the exhibition remains: the voluminous Official Record of the Sydney International Exhibition 1879 published by the Government Printer in 1881. Several copies are now held in public libraries and archives throughout Australia and always in demand from researchers of the period, including family historians.’
- Powerhouse Museum
