The Age Pictorial Library and Photo Sales Department.
A day in the life...Pic Library.

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Purpose:
The purpose of the collection is to provide easy access to archive photos for publication in the daily Newspaper and other Fairfax publications. A bi-product of this is the ability to sell "Age" and "Sunday Age" photos to the general public or for re-publication in books and journals.

Collection:
The collection reflects the needs of the newspaper in each era. On the whole the newspaper has not been a pictorial newspaper until relatively recently. The 1950s and 1960s collection related mostly to sport with great strengths in the areas of football and cricket. Major events and famous people are the other major collections.

Currently, an average of 150-200 images are addd to the collection each day. The collection is in hard-copy (for older images), digital images on a computer database (from April 1995), negatives (filed from every shoot) and some transparencies.

Daily activities:
On a daily basis negatives are archived, as are daily published images on the computer system. Reference services are provided to section editors and sub-editors.

Librarians spend a considerable period of time enhancing and classifying electronic images to aid retrieval. Supplied or transparencies are also filed from business, film, TV and other publicity agencies.

Photo Sales staff serve customers from publishing houses and advertising agencies as well as members of the general public find historic or current pictures as required.

All staff must be au fait with newspaper photograph copyright laws and how it applied in terms of republication or sale of images.

Email: cryan@theage.com.au
50 Spencer Street
Melbourne 3000
Australia