NSW Local Studies Librarians meeting

Local Studies Librarians’ Meeting 18 November 2022

Shellharbour Library and online

18 November 2022 Shellharbour City Library 76 Cygnet Avenue, Shellharbour City Centre and online

Minutes

25 participants onsite, 46 online

Margie Kirkness, Library Manager, Shellharbour City Library welcomed us and acknowledged that we are on Dharawal country and acknowledged the country that each of the libraries participating are on. Margie highlighting the importance of hybrid meetings.

The video below is the recording of the presentations at the meeting.

Paul Rowe, Vernon Systems Ltd. Product Overview: Using eHive to catalogue and share your collection online.

• ehive system, hosted by Vernon Systems
• can use to manage the collection in private, but can share publicly, or only have it private
• ehive.com/info.ehive.com (includes pricing)
• has facets to refine searches (base on search results options)
• can include multiple images per catalogue record
• clear rights management, can include cultural permissions and creative commons
• option to permit community to add comments/tags
• tag cloud for most popular categories in your collection
• visual summary of items available – browsable access
• can have multi-user access with different levels of access for different staff members
• can generate reports – for example can download all your ehive records
• there are public and private views of records (so can have information you don’t want to be public
• can clone records
• some analytics – number of visits and popular items
• all New Zealand museums have collections in ehive
• can style the layout to match local style guides
• integrated with Trove

questions

• high resolution images will use storage space faster (they count in the storage volume)
• Vernon CMS has more advanced systems, used by larger organisations
• Parramatta uses Veron CMS
• North Sydney uses ehive

Celebrated author, Rachel Franks, An Uncommon Hangman: the joy and challenge of research

• A presentation of thanks to those who carefully nurture local studies collections
• The common hangman as a term rather than executioner, and Robert Howard is uncommon in what he does
• Difficulty of finding information, possibly about shame in having executions
• Gives overview of Rober Howard’s life
• Trove research and verifying what was said by different journalists
• State Archives special bundles – provide information about gaols and information about people executed
• The information about Robert Howard was often the stories of people he worked with, the story of abolition and hard to get information about him
• For example the Louisa Collins special bundle had petitions for abolition
• Research about the science/process of hanging (example of table of drops from Public Records Office Victoria – the one for NSW no longer exists)
• Used Waverley local studies collection – key useful resources, but some of the people were in other local studies collections
• From the local studies collections and staff this helped with different connections – example of meeting year 9 history teacher
• Importance of understanding distributed nature of research
• Reminder to ask researchers for their stuff, to fill gaps (Rachel provides information back to places where she has researched)
• Example of subdivision plans for research, and Robert Howard buying locations at Bondi
• Dictionary of Sydney still a resource, but it is archived from 2021

Local Studies in A Flash 10 slides in 5 minutes

Saluting their Service: DVA grants as a source of funding. Kimberly O’Sullivan, Cessnock

• Grant called Saluting their service https://www.dva.gov.au/about-us/overview/consultations-and-grants/grants-and-bursaries/saluting-their-service
• Broad criteria – can keep applying, rolling grant rounds
• ANZAC community grants https://www.veterans.nsw.gov.au/commemoration/anzac-community-grants-program/ Rolling grant rounds

Phive: the new Parramatta Library. Neera Sahni, Parramatta

• Providing a history of Parramatta Library – local studies now part of library (was separate until last year)
• Phive (is pronounced five) The address is 5 Parramatta Square
• Permanent exhibition for local studies – people, place and gathering
• 2 dedicated local studies computers (unlimited time other computers have time limits)
• Has a sound studio on another level of the library, local studies potential – however there is a fee to use https://www.cityofparramatta.nsw.gov.au/phive
• You can see the presentation slides here

DIY Large Format Digitisation: when all else fails, you might just have to give it a go yourself. John Johnson, Canada Bay

• John taking through the experience of digitising large map and other large flat items (watch the video for the detail)
• digitising in sections and then digitally stitching together

Local Solicitors Records. Michelle Nichols, Hawkesbury

• Local solicitor records – at the State Library of NSW and at Hawkesbury Library
• Collecting challenges and opportunities

via chat Goulburn has an index to local solicitors papers which is an important access point for these

Treasures from the Rare Book Room Kerrie Shaw, Newcastle

• Use of magic box for combined display of items, and digital content
• Can obtain detailed statistics for the magic box
• Have a podcast about each time the magic box changes and may have events at digital branch (where magic box is located)
• You can see the presentation slides here

Weaving Community with History: our common threads storytelling. Megan Crook, Shoalhaven

• Our common threads – book about textile artists in the south coast area and connected to the history week theme this year
• 9 copies donated to the library including for local studies
• Ran an event – 8 speakers, and the 2 book editors
• 31 attendees
• Connected to a show and tell of the textile items as part of the event at Nowra Library
• Strong networking event and connecting to networks

Gilgandra Shire Library, Warren Road 2022. Sally Nalder, Gilgandra

• New to libraries and local studies
• Recent local studies training, and participated in the podcasting workshop
• From the local studies training – the importance of collecting the information now and documenting the current library as new library is planned
• Importance of sounds which won’t be around any more like the sound of the current door
• Importance of permission and publication forms
• watch the video here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiVpeLpCDBg&feature=youtu.be

2022 History Week and Family History mornings at Shellharbour City Library. Carmelina Nunnari, Shellharbour

• Mini explorers – partnership with museum and children’s programs, run each month for toddlers, playful, exploratory and immersive with dressups
• School visits and tours – connect with the museum, using round robin format
• Family history help program – monthly training session Find my past, Ancestry and Discover Shellharbour – starter packs for family history as part of the training

Lunch

Tamara Hynd, Curator, Shoalhaven City Museum, Discover Shellharbour: Shellharbour City Museum’s new online platform

• Research as well as collect
• Lots of events
• Tread Shellharbour app – walking tours
• Does Flashback Friday on council facebook page, and Throwback Thursday on the airport page (fortnightly)
• Recollect as museum and local studies platform, digitisation of items and photography of museum items was substantially done during lockdowns
• Sounds a lot of teamwork
• Tagging turned on for site
• High resolution photographs important for research so have zoomable information
• Using the connection links on Recollect (Blacktown does this too – via chat)
• Uses volunteers to add new museum items to Recollect site
• Aim for comprehensive additions rather than partial (see March minutes for Fairfield having a selection of items rather than comprehensive
• Council archives also on Recollect – rate and minute books have been digitised
• Can download the images, but not high resolution, must be logged in to download

Matt Bell, Library Liaison and Martin Drewe, Head of Customer Experience Quartex Australia, Digital Archives to Celebrate Your Community’s Heritage

• https://www.amdigital.co.uk/create/am-quartex
• includes handwritten text recognition – supports Latin character sets (90ish% accuracy)
• example site from Texas Wesleyan University https://archives.txwes.edu/ and Baylor https://digitalcollections-baylor.quartexcollections.com/ and Harris Park Public Library https://www.digitalarchive.hcpl.net/

3.30 - 4 pm General Business 1. Protecting local government photographs - What is the protection after 7 years? How do you ensure items are retained?

• Need to make sure you have the items before they are deleted/removed, plus make sure you have permissions
• People need to investigate what category of records the photographs go into
• Possible future speaker from State Records on record deletions especially photographs

2. TROVE: Is there value in being harvested by TROVE? Which libraries are currently on TROVE? If not why not?

• Northern Beaches – referrals via Trove so increases local use
• General discussion about the discoverability from Trove as a positive things
• Value in adding items to Trove

3. Local Studies enquiries

• Research can be quite involved and take a great deal of time. Do any libraries let clients know the dollar value of this work?
• Discussion of quotes for professional research
• Question of cross charging in council – some have tried, but most no charging for internal research

4. Do house history workshops generate more research/questions from clients?

• Small follow up on the research – from Mosman
• Some increase in Goulburn (training provided between Goulbourn and Queanbeyan)

5. Oral History Australia Biennial Conference 2022.

• Feedback from Fran and Julie – good feedback from the panel session they presented in, wonderful opportunity to showcase their work, ideas to think about from other sessions - how to create new history with the Aboriginal community, and thinking about how to do this. Crisis oral history collecting –

Question about significance assessment – wanting to know how to prioritise archives for digitisation and other work

6. Next meeting – venue and topics – and need to be able to run a hybrid meeting like at Marrickville or Shellharbour – this is not optional since we had 46 people online and 25 onsite. Needs to provide high quality sound and vision for online and onsite.

7. Eligibility for travel subsidy for this meeting - see details here