NSW Local studies Librarians' meeting
                     Marrickville library 29 March 2022 9.15am - 4-14pm
                                            MINUTES

In person attendees:??

Virtual attendees:??

Acknowledgment and Welcome to Country/housekeeping

9.30 - 10 Marrickville Library tour – first session.

9.30 - 10 Info sharing - Australian Heritage Festival, History Week, general business, next meeting

10.05 - 10.45 Mary Lou Byrne, Librarian, Mosman Library Services Mosman Faces: Ten years of telling Mosman’s stories on film.

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10.50 - 11 Local Studies in a Flash Kimberly O’Sullivan, Cessnock Showcasing your Local Studies collection via a YouTube channel

Michelle Nichols, Hawkesbury

11 - 11.30 Info sharing - Australian Heritage Festival, History Week, general business, next meeting

11.35 - 12.15 Michelle Richmond, Northern Beaches Navigating the Department of Lands Website

12.20 – 12.40 Local Studies in a Flash

Alison Wishart, Bayside Challenges and learnings of the 'Flashback Friday’ online sessions held during the COVID19 lockdown.

Justin Yeomans and John MacRitchie, Georges River, We Are Georges River a project which consisted of an outdoor photographic exhibition during Covid19 lockdown and the use of QR codes linking to a dedicated website.

Brigid Whitbread, Queanbeyan-Palerang Treasures from the tip

Michelle Goldsmith, Central Coast, Moving beyond ‘Can everyone see my screen?’ Online family history programming during lockdown and beyond

12.45 – 1.45 Lunch

1.45 - 2.30

Recollect team presentation: Recollect is a Special Collection Management and Community Engagement platform. Roger Mills, formerly of Northern Beaches Council and now an implementation consultant for Recollect reseller partner in Australia, spoke about the Recollect implementations he's done over the past year. Tyler Hersey, Business Development Manager and Gavin Mitchell CEO at Recollect provided an introduction and overview of the Recollect product, its capabilities and applications for libraries and local studies collections.

2.35 - 3.15 Cooking recovery and connections Nagat Abdalla, project team, Melbourne. Nagat resented “Cooking recovery and connections. A project led by public housing residents to support COVID19 recovery and the wellbeing of the residents of the nine towers in North Melbourne and Flemington Nagat a resident and CoHealth Community Support Officer, who coordinated the cookbook project. She spoke on how a cookbook brought Melbourne’s inner-city public housing community together. The cookbook project helped rebuild trust after last year's hard lockdown. The book features traditional recipes from Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia and Eritrea. It has been a greate engagement and resources for the community so much more than just a collection of recipes, the purpose of the project lies in the title: Cooking, Recovery and Connections. The project shows that people from hardship, they can create something positive because of their resilience and their connection. a resident and CoHealth Community Support Officer, who coordinated the cookbook project. The idea for a cookbook was born out of a need to rebuild trust. In the wake of the hard lockdown, people were afraid to talk to each other and to trust groups like theirs that were offering support. Food reminds migrants of home. It was not easy because at that time even talking about any topic was really not comfortable for everyone, this topic was one common way to engage and connect with residents.

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3.15 - 4 Fairfield City Heritage Site using Recollect Alinde Bierhuizen, Curator at Fairfield City Museum & Gallery, Alinde spoke about how Fairfield City Open Libraries and Fairfield City Museum & Gallery have used Recollect to develop the Fairfield City Heritage Collection website. Alinde gave an honest insight into how recollect worked for them (pros and cons), which generated interest and answered many questions. Alinde Bierhuizen if a historian and Museum curator at Fairfield City Museum & Gallery (FCMG). Alinde presented their experience as an example of how Recollect is used to manage the heritage collections within the Fairfield City Library and Museum services. Recollect was adopted in 2019 after a restructure where library and museum came under the same department. The two teams came together with different experiences and collections. The Museum with 3,000 objects and the library with over 27,000 records. There was no public face prior to that for the object collection. Mosaic is used to manage the collection internally. The library uses Spydus and had a heritage blog. Council wanted a history hub to bring all the collections together with a public face. Recollect met all the criteria’s and was adopted. PROS -Have your whole collection accessed from one access point including photographs including special collections such as the Fairfax collection, oral histories, print publications, videos, exhibitions, council minutes, blogs, community annual reports and CALD community special collections. -Training is initially provided by the Recollect team. Staff can log a call for help via the site and also recommend for improvements. -Collections can be made public, private or offline. This is useful for work in progress or for records bound by copyright and only used by staff for research. -Recollect is capable of linking records and collections up, down, side and connecting collections within collections and records within collections. Fairfield discovered their military collection was extensive enough to apply for funding from the Veterans’ Affairs department and further its value by conducting in-depth study. -High resolution records can be uploaded -Can customise the page to your needs and give it a face representing your collection -Can present your records without being bound by industry standards but on how users use it. -Community engagements and crowdsourcing. This function is not yet utilised by Fairfield as staff resources are needed for this to be effective - Records can be downloaded with no charge by the user. -Recollect helps in customising the site to your specifications -Statistics can be generated on usage and size of the collection. Fairfield uses Google Analytics as well as Recollect statistics to identify source of traffic and duration to the site. CONS -Staff time and expertise, as this needs to be coordinated and is an ongoing task to be undertaken and need to be included in staff work plans. Training and upskilling can be seen as both advantages and time consuming. -Cost: initial cost was $23,000 and $13.00 annual hosting Alinde navigated the site and showcased some of the collections and how linking records and collections add value to the site. The presentation generated a lot of questions and comments from the audience.

4 - 4.15 Amie Zar, from the Inner West Libraries. Amie presented a short video on the Inner West Library Service made for the Slovenian Public Libraries. A showcase sneak peak of the Inner West Library Community History collection and service for the Slovenian Public library service.

Close 4.15pm

Next meeting: ?