Opening a Treasure Trove - The Historical Aerial Photography Project

Explore the Historical Aerial Photography project in this conference talk from linux.conf.au 2020. Dive into Geoscience Australia's efforts to digitize and make accessible a vast collection of aerial photographs spanning over 70 years, from the 1920s to the mid-1990s. Learn about the challenges of preserving degrading negatives, the importance of this archive for understanding Australia's changing landscape, and the collaborative approach with Data-61 to create an open, standards-based platform for discovering and accessing these images. Discover how this project bridges old and new technologies, from century-old handwritten documents to modern cloud deployment and geospatial data discovery APIs. Gain insights into the potential for federated discovery across state and federal archives, and witness a demonstration of the project's progress in making this valuable historical resource more accessible to researchers and the public.