NSW public library wiki

Note: The Minutes presented are not necessarily in the order presented on the day for reasons of clarity. Presentations supplied by the speakers are viewable after the Minutes.

Kirsten Broderick; Geoffrey Potter, Central Coast; Ellen Forsyth, SLNSW; Donna Braye, Mosman; Mary Lou Byrne, Mosman; Kimberly O’Sullivan, Cessnock; Jenny MacRitchie, Mascot; Sue Dredge, Fairfield; Samantha Sinnayah, Mascot; John McRitchie, Northern Beaches; Jenny McRitchie, Bayside; Michelle Nichols, Hawkesbury; Angela Phippen, Ryde; Helen McDonald, Sutherland; Rebecca Cook, Kiama; Michelle Richmond, Northern Beaches; Amie Zar, Inner West; Aleem Aleemulah, Inner West; Shane Teeha, Inner West; Anna Bella Silva, Inner West; Shirley Ramrakha, Willoughby; Jan Herivel, Blacktown; Ravneet Gill, Blacktown; Liz Agnew, North Sydney; Ingrid Grace, Waverley; Jeff Stonehouse, Port Macquarie Hastings; Andrew Allen, Campbelltown; Vicki Movizio, Camden; Stephen Coppins, Cumberland; Jane Elias, Cumberland; Mark Dunk, Central Coast; Wendy Holz, SLNSW; Kylie Vella, The Hills; Billie Arnull, Wingecarribee; Fiona Macdonald, Inner West; Ngarie Macqueen, Richmond-Upper Clarence; John Johnson, Canada Bay; Jessica Graham, Ku-ring-gai; Lisa Perugini, Strathfield; Julie Fitzsimons, Hurstville Museum/Gallery; Tom Macrae, Georges River; Neil Chippendale, Hornsby; Karen Richardson, Hornsby; Catherine Hardie, Campsie; Hilary Powell, Wollongong; Barbara Moss, Strathfield; Kimberley O'Sullivan, Cessnock; Tyler Hersey Recollect/NZMS; Gavin Mitchell, Recollect/NZMS Apologies: Georgina Keep, Randwick; Barbara Swebeck, Woollahra; Neera Sahni, Parramatta; Derrilin Marshall, Shoalhaven; Michelle Goldsmith, Central Coast.

Meeting commenced 9:40am

• Recollect is a user focussed platform currently operating across 44 sites in Australia and New Zealand
• The platform delivers for any audience from organisational to regional and to personal levels. New functionality is being added constantly e.g. 3D functions
• Most users use Recollect Enterprise which features full control & administration by user. Recollect sites include Hornsby, SA State Library, University of Wollongong, University of Newcastle.
• Maps, photographs, oral history newsletters etc. can be accommodated on Recollect. Automatic text transcriptions and crowd-source correcting are possible for Oral Histories. Tagging of content within oral histories facilitated.
• Robust accessibility – Recollect adapts to any device. Google analytics allow detailed measurement of high use/low use resources.
• Neil Chippendale described Hornsby experience: They needed to bring diverse digital platforms under one platform. Previous platforms not seamless. Recollect chosen based on feedback from Libraries using it. Cost-wise Recollect is comparable with ContentDM, but the one-stop-shop features of Recollect were preferred.

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• Hornsby finds it easy to link different collections. 1,500 hits per day on particular items. Hornsby has photographs, maps, plans, documents, videos, topic pages, biographies and oral histories available. See Hornsby Recollect.
• Grant White, University of Wollongong archives manager described their use of Recollect. 5,000 digital assets online. Community contribute information on images, families etc. Metadata is augmented by local historians.
• Living Histories @ UON has a diverse range of photographs, ephemera, maps, videos etc. Features such as map view allow users to zoom right in on suburbs. OCR useful when digitising documents. Living histories uses Timelines feature, which is a free to use tool from Knightlab. Photographs, oral histories, interview transcripts are linked. Video content is tagged.

Neil Chippendale

Colonial frontier massacres in Eastern Australia 1788-1872 website

• Professor Ryan is an Australian historian specialising in Aboriginal history.
• How do you quantify what constitutes a massacre? Characteristics may include that it was a planned act, usually in response to some slight or loss of prestige, stealing from property. Massacres are about revenge and it is secret. Massacres are terrible acts for civilised societies. Denial is often a key factor. No witnesses are expected. Guilt may lead to perpetrators recounting massacre.
• Aboriginal people may be regarded as living in “hearth groups” of 20-30 people. Massacres often dealt with fireside groups, and involved groups living near rivers where sources of food exist. Following a massacre, the ability of a “hearth group” to function is compromised. A minimum of 6 deaths is used by Professor Ryan for her definition of a massacre.
• Map shows areas where Aboriginal people and colonists were massacred. Click on sites to get basic details such as location, date, number of casualties, time of day. Click again to get detail including a map/aerial image, participants, motive etc. A star level indicates corroboration level. Ideally there should be 3 or more primary sources to corroborate information. Wide range of primary sources are consulted. Newspapers, official and personal memoirs, Aboriginal accounts, archaeological reports etc.

Kimberley O’Sullivan, Cessnock Library Service. Be a history detective. As the first Local Studies Librarian for Cessnock, Kimberley needs to identify many previously-collected photographs existing in unidentified collections. An identification event was held to “piggyback” on Seniors’ Week events and calendar. The Cessnock Advertiser “Unlocking the past” articles written by Kimberley helped create interest around collections, and were used to promote “Be a History Detective” project. Further interest was built through monthly Community Radio interviews. BAHD mornings are held for 2 ½ hours from 10am on Saturday mornings. Open-ended questions are used to elicit responses. Photocopies of photos are given out for people to make notes on/take home to share and identify.

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Jenny MacRitchie, Bayside Library Service. Postings from the Front. Former Botany Council created WW1 book project. Community engagement was critical to the success of the project, which is an inclusive history seeking to identify all names found on local honour rolls. This project received a highly commended in the National Trust heritage awards.

Samantha Sinnayah, Bayside Library Service. Remembering together: the pros and cons of group oral history sessions. Group OH sessions can offer differing perspectives on a single topic, using photographs as a catalyst for discussion e.g. Quality Store memories. A Zoom H4n Handyrecorder is moved around group. Display photos on topic are shown to elicit responses. Group OH is tricky but rewarding. School sessions were held several times. Every session is different. Some participants are very dominant, which can stifle responses from other participants. Mapping memories took a different approach, attempting to use a map printed on foamcore to identify local landmarks and events remembered but not often recorded. The map discussion was very wide ranging. 20 people attended, but 3 dominated session. Set a definite topic if you can to focus discussion. Verification of some stories may be possible through Trove.

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Michelle Nichols, Hawkesbury. Looking further afield. Michelle suggests some websites that are not usually thought to contain much useful local content, but can be very useful. Library of Congress website has Australian photographs, importantly the album dealing with construction of the 1st Hawkesbury River Railway Bridge. There are Journals, articles and data sets on Trove, NSW Archaeology online from University of Sydney. Google earth is great for genealogy but also local history. US Genealogist Lisa Louise Cooke recently presented on this topic at the recent Australian Genealogists Conference in Sydney. Papers Past from NZ often contains Australian news. Chronicling America from Library of Congress is an American version of Trove newspapers. British newspaper archives can be subscribed to for $400-600 per year. The newspapers on this site are mainly British regional papers. Ancestry and Find My Past also have local history applications.

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Angela Phippen, Ryde. Those who served: how accurate is your list of aldermen and mayors? Don’t take list of aldermen and mayors on face value, as it may not be accurate. Angela revised her Council list by checking Government Gazettes and newspapers (Trove), Sands Directory and Council minutes. Fields included: Date of election/Who was elected/ Which ward was represented/Who served as Mayors or Deputy Mayors. Full footnotes are included.

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Helen McDonald, Sutherland. Walking tours, taking history outside and reaching a new audience. Preparation is important, pick a topic/place you are interested in. Do a risk assessment. Work out timing and practice. Walks 1.5 hour in length on average. In planning note where public toilets are, and if walkers have any medical issues. Set a lower age limit, and do not allow dogs. Sunscreen and hats, water need to be taken. Cooler months are well suited to these walks. Sutherland has run them of a Wednesday 10.30am-12noon. Walks are a great way to share information and can lead to donations and loans of material for copying.

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Hilary Powell, Wollongong. Image recognition: a joint project with the University of Wollongong. Linking regional archival collections using Ad Vis Tech. This is a collaborative project between UOW School of computing and IT and Wollongong Library. Contributors include UOW archives, Illawarra Museum and Historical Society, and Wollongong City Library. Funded through a community engagement grant 2017. Project is in final stages. Refinements include final design, mobile device capability, ability to include public feedback, confirm best technology to make it publicly available.

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4. Glen Barnes. Curtis digital repository.

• Easy to use & affordable digital object repository. About collections and community. Object store at its core. No storage limitation, designed for the Cloud. Curtis can draw digital objects from a wide range of repositories. Supports any sized image in any format. Can handle zoomable images, multi images, audio files with simple audio player, pdf files etc.
• Curtis has powerful search facility. Designed for sharing and reusing material. Geocoding and multilingual features are coming soon.
• Palmerston North Library and Manuwatu Heritage (NZ)are using Curtis.

5. Ellen Forsyth, SLNSW. Instagram archiving

• Harvesting of Instagram images is a possible way to collect contributed material on a local area. Collection can be done using Lentil App and is based on hashtags.
• Components are Tags - keywords to harvest from Instagram (added manually by staff); Tag sets – logical group of tags to be harvested (can be theme-or-event-related); Harvester – looks for images that match predefined tag sets & saves links to those images; Images approved – harvester adds items and a human approves select images; Back up images Copyright can be managed on a risk-management basis as per North Carolina Library model.

6. Ngairie McQueen, Richmond Upper Clarence Instagram archiving using Icelab

• Former Richmond Valley Council &a; Kyogle Council area. Building a local studies collection from scratch. Instagram harvesting using hashtags based on names of towns in area, indigenous groups & languages. Younger people are using Instagram. Harvesting these images can democratise collections, providing a current reflection of community life. A Risk-management approach is taken to copyright.

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7. Fiona MacDonald, Inner West. Having a Voice Instagram competition.

• Competition highlights contemporary collecting. Showcase and encourage capture of Inner West images (Newtown, St. Peters, Ashfield, Balmain etc.) hashtag #instantheritage2017. Basecamp used to coordinate project.
• Minimum setup Heroku & Amazon S3. 13 hashtags to begin with. High volume of images to moderate. It is easy to get carried away, so establish curatorial guidelines. Ask questions like “How do you want to present your community?” and “Who is your target audience?” Images will be accessible from Library webpage July 2018. You choose what you collect through selective hashtags.

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Meeting closed 4pm.

Thank you to Bayside Libraries and the staff of Rockdale Library for your hospitality. Next Local Studies Librarians’ meeting will be held at Dubbo Regional Library on 2 November 2018.

Your committee is Donna Braye (Mosman); Ellen Forsyth (SLNSW); Geoffrey Potter (Central Coast) and new member Samantha Sinnayah (Bayside). Welcome to the team Sam!

Next meeting and agenda local studies

Minutes local studies

Wider local studies This provides information about the national local studies network.