The National Library of Australia’s Trove search engine project has taken out the 2011 Excellence in eGovernment Award and the Service Delivery Category Award at the CeBIT 2011 ICT Celebration Dinner in Sydney last night.
Trove searches through millions of pieces of archived information – from photos to books – and the recently released version 4.0 of the search engine now crawls millions of journal articles as well.
The director-general of the National Library of Australia, Anne-Marie Schwirtlich, said the Library was honoured by the awards and paid tribute to the Trove staff who had worked on the project since it began last year following many years of planning.
“We are delighted that Trove, which boasts content from more than 1000 libraries and other cultural institutions around Australia, has been acknowledged in this way,” Schwirtlich said.
“We believe that a free discovery service like Trove, which allows its users to access millions of items in one go, has to be a winner. It is a vital service both for Australia and Australians and as an exemplar for the national digital economy.”
Senator Kate Lundy presented the awards in place of Special Minister of State, Gary Gray.
Writing about the awards on the AGIMO blog, Gray said the Trove search engine shows how government is harnessing digital technology to improve service delivery, linking Australians to millions of resources available online.
See photos and all the action from the event.
Schwirtlich said Trove was created because the National Library recognised that today’s users wanted more than just a passive information service.
“Trove gives them that opportunity by allowing its users to not only uncover hard-to-find information but also for them to contribute through sharing ideas and information,” she said.
Kym Charlton from the Queensland Police Service won the Gov 2.0 Innovator Award for her Gov 2.0 leadership during the floods and cyclones in Queensland in 2010 and 2011. And the ICT Professional of the Year Award was won by the team from J6 Branch, of Headquarters Joint Operations Command in the Department of Defence for its work in delivering ICT support for defence operations in Afghanistan.
Trove is online at: http://trove.nla.gov.au/
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