To mark the centenary of World War I, the State Library is in the process of digitising material relating to this conflict. Items include photographs, books, letters, diaries, greeting cards and more.

Approximately 11,000 volumes of letters and diaries of WW1 Australian soldiers have been collected by the Library. For the WWI Centenary Commemoration we have committed to making them accessible to all through digitisation and transcription.

The Western Australian Biographical Index (WABI) is a highly used resource at the State Library of Western Australia. A recent generous contribution by the Friends of Battye Library (FOBS) has enabled SLWA to have the original handwritten index cards scanned and later transcribed. The transcription was crowd-sourced and we are aware that there are some data quality issues including: * Some cards are missing * Transcripts are crowdsourced so may contain spelling errors and possibly missing information * Some cards are crossed out. Some of these are included in the collection and some are not * Some of the cards contain relevant information on the back (usually children of the person mentioned). This info should be on the next consecutive card * As the information is an index, collected in the 1970s from print material, it is incomplete. It is also unreferenced. It is still a very valuable dataset as it contains a wealth of information about early settlers in Western Australia. It is of particular interest to genealogists and historians The dataset contains: several csv files with data describing card number, card text and url link to image of the original handwritten card. Work began on WABI in the early 1970s when information was sought on people who lived in Western Australian prior to 1914. Publicity was sent out through local libraries, historical groups and in publication such as the West Australian. Western Australians were asked to provide genealogical information, not only on prominent identities, but also from their family records including the arrival in Western Australia, occupations, dates of birth, marriages and deaths of their ancestors. Historical material such as diaries, letters, business records, minute books, maps, family trees and photographs, were also sought for copying. Entries for the index closed in December 1979, and were filed at the Battye Library for reference.

This dataset contains bibliographic records and persistent URLs for the digitised maps held within the State Library of Western Australia’s map collection, including cadastral and town-site maps across the state of Western Australia. The maps range from the early 1840s to the mid-1980s and include land use, zoning, lot numbers, boundary measurements, terms of sale, and locality plans; as well as distances from utilities, landmarks and businesses. Highlights include the Lindsay J. Peet Collection of Cadastral Maps; town-site maps from the WA Department of Lands and Surveys; the Australia Soviet Military City Plans, Perth; and the Polus Antarticus states, which show the South Pole and Australia prior to the discoveries of Tasman in 1642 and 1643-44. This set also includes the Historic map series 1880-1890 which has been captured as its own dataset.

Collection of "In Memoriam" cards with photographs of West Australians killed during the First World War, with brief biographical notes.

Bibliographic data and links to persistent URL of Lands & Surveys Western Australian Historic Map Series of the 1880-1890s, showing State Land Divisions, pastoral leases with number, lessee, area, boundary length, location numbers, tracks, roads and their gazettal date.

Heroes of the Great War Indexing Project - over 17,000 references to notices published in the South Australian newspaper The Chronicle between 1915 and 1919 under various headings including 'Heroes of the Great War', 'Heroes of the Empire', 'Died on Active Service' and ‘Biographical’. The notices were placed by relatives and friends of World War I service personnel who died, or were wounded, or were decorated. Some newspaper printing errors have been corrected using official sources. This is a subset of the Heroes of the Great War data limited to those entries (3062) that contain a portrait. Data set also includes the reference (date, page and column) within The Chronicle, brief biographical details including name, age, rank, battalion and occasionally place of death. Also included are names of relatives and place of residence in South Australia by street address, suburb or town. For the full data set, see Heroes of the Great War Chronicle Newspaper 1915-1919.