Searching our photo collections without words

Wollongong City Libraries is collaborating with the University of Wollongong and the Illawarra Museum & Historical Society to provide a new way to explore regional archival photo collections through an interactive website – ImageLink.

A team from the University’s Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences has developed software to match photos across the three collections based on how they look, not  the words that may be used to describe them.

Manager Library and Community Services Jenny Thompson said: “We are proud to partner with the University and the Historical Society to provide this tool to search the thousands of images held in our combined databases.

“This takes the saying ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ to a new level. ImageLink enables the community to explore our social, cultural, environmental and economic history through our collection of images.”

Community members can explore and discover local content from across the three collections with a simple click of the mouse. ImageLink may also be used to identify and recognise images of landscapes and buildings uploaded by users. The database does this by comparing similar images and descriptions within the database to the unidentified image.

Project Leader for ImageLink, Associate Professor Lei Wang of the Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences, University of Wollongong said: “It is a scalable, sustainable and long-term project that can be continuously improved and expanded to link regional, state and national photographic collections.”

The project was developed with funding from the UOW Community Engagement Grants Scheme.  You can access ImageLink from Wollongong City Libraries website.

If you’d like to know more about the project, contact Council’s Customer Service Team on (02) 4227 7111.

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