< Experience

State Library of New South Wales - DXLab
Poetry in Motion

In 1907, David Scott Mitchell, one of Australia’s greatest cultural benefactors and collectors of Australiana, gave his incomparable set of books, manuscripts, maps and pictures about Australia and the Pacific to the people of NSW.

The collection is so vast, and still mostly unexplored, that the State Library of New South Wales in constantly in the process of digitising it using OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology. While OCR offers better and faster access to information the library is often looking for new and interesting ways for audiences to discover texts.

You can experience the project at the State Library's DXLab here

Medium. Experience
Client. State Library of New South Wales - DXLab
Title. Poetry in Motion

Poetry in Motion is an interactive experience created by Collider as part of the Library’s Digital Drop-In. Imagined by Creative Director, Andrew van der Westhuyzen, and developed and produced by Andrew Wright and Annabel Stevens of AX Interactive, the aim was to explore how to present large volumes of text that comes in the form of OCR (Optical Character Recognition) data digitised from the Mitchell Library collections. This large collection focuses on Australia, documenting the history and society of Australian people that includes European exploration and discovery. The collection includes a wide range of formats, books, maps, works of art, photographs, coins, stamps, magazines, ephemera, sound recordings and electronic resources. It is the pre-eminent collection of Australiana in the world.

A big challenge with data from large-scale digitised collections is that it can be difficult to explore via the traditional search-and-return catalogue experience. This experiment is looking for a different and more visually appealing way to view the data, which in this case is purely text.

Initially, this experiment was conceived as an in-gallery experience via a large-scale projection that would immerse the visitor in text. However, due to COVID-19 and lockdowns, The State Library decided to release it first as a browser-based experience. We hope it will be possible to review the in-gallery option later.

A Collider Project in collaboration with AX Interactive and State Library NSW.

State Library of New South Wales - DXLab Poetry in Motion

State Library of New South Wales - DXLab
Poetry in Motion