Minutes of the Local Studies Special Interest Group held on Wednesday 18 November 2015 – visit to Ballarat.

Item Minutes Liz Pidgeon Yarra Plenty Regional LibraryElaine Craig Whitehorse ManninghamChristine Worthington PMIJanine Smith MorelandCathy Milward Bason KingstonLisa Wilson MorelandJason Brack Glen Waverley Library & Mulgrave Neighbourhood Library Diversity & Inclusion LibrarianCarmel Barnewall, Local History librarian Monash Federation Centre in OakleighLinda Longley Melbourne Library ServiceStephen Wright Moonee ValleyAnne Burrows State Library of VictoriaEdith Fry Ballarat City LibrariesKaren Seckold Wyndham City LibrariesMichael Law Maribyrnong Library ServiceJustine McCarthy Melbourne Library ServiceRos Ryan WimmeraAmanda Peckham Hobson’s BayHeather McKay MelbourneLina Favrin YarraSimone Sharp Stonnington

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Rose Connell MilduraJennie Moulder Moonee ValleyMia Mikinj YarraNanette San Martin Monash

ApologiesFiona Campbell Melbourne Library Service EastVicki Court Whitehorse Manningham LibrariesKathy Smalley Eastern Regional Libraries

2. Confirmation of Minutes.

Last Meeting was 16 June 2015 Victorian Archives Centre

3. Tours Australian Ex-Prisoners of War Memorial, Ballarat http://www.powmemorialballarat.com.au/

Brochures distributed. Tour led by Bill and Ray who are among five trustees of the memorial. This is a national memorial of national significance, unusually situated outside Canberra. It is on a number of Heritage registers. It includes 36,200 names and associated stories. There are 4,500 names where final resting places are known and 8,500 names where no known grave exists.

The Memorial committee met in 1996. At that time, there was no official list of POW’s. Details had to be searched individually by examining service files and other records. About 50 or so new names are added each year as the research continues. Japanese records were acquired in 1999.

Memorial designed by Peter Blizzard. The angle of the memorial is at 30 degrees, considered as optimum for viewing. The memorial was opened in 2004 by the Governor General Cosgrove.

Boer War – 291 names WW1 – 8 panels of 4200 names One man is listed for both WW1 and WW2. WW2 - 4200 A lone pine from Gallipoli has been planted near the Memorial. Visit the website where a lot of information about the names listed is added and updated and an education kit for

primary and secondary teachers. The Trustees are looking forward to their event on 15 February 2017.

Ballarat Mechanics Institute https://ballaratmi.org.au/

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Roger introduced the group to the renovated Institute which includes the new reading room. The oldest book in the collection is a bible from the 1500s, followed by a touring guide of England from 1587.

Volunteers are kept busy with corresponding the collection with their database/catalogue which is on the website - and re-arranging the collection which is arranged by Dewey.

Membership is $45 which includes access to the whole collection. You can visit for free. Day research fee is $10. Main income stream is via hire of rooms. Donations of items are accepted, within collection policy. No budget for new acquisitions. A Friends of Minerva (Statue on building) group does fund raising. Friday night lectures include partnerships with likeminded local institutions such as the library and Gold Museum.

Origins of the building, (though debated) is that it was the first stock exchange in Victoria situated on the corner of Sturt and Lydiard Streets. The interior may have had a mezzanine. When a new mining exchange was built in 1934 the Mechanics Institute took over the building. Building Includes original lantern ceiling, great for natural light. In the past dead pigeons blocked the drains which caused water overflow internally. Renovations recently fixed this problem. Working with Heritage Victoria a new steel mezzanine floor was built. Collection includes the Australasian newspaper 1867-1939. This is an excellent source for early photos. The Ballarat Courier, Echo (very fragile), Star newspapers and the Ballarat Stock and Land. The Echo is very good for the conscription issue of WW1. Art collection, much of the collection relates to a definition of the broad term of “mechanics” – stone smithing, blacksmithing, carpentry, trades – research queries in old techniques such as house building are common.

A local medico was looking at old copies of “The Lancet” journal and noted that the MI had a rare second issue. A lot of original newsletters were designed to be disposable and many were lost in London in WW2.

There is a partnership with Federation University, biggest use by individual researchers. Melbourne University architecture students visit now and then to look at the building itself, its restoration and how to make a useful building.

The building includes a theatre room.

3. Guest Speaker Lloyd Brady, Systems Co-ordinator from the Swift Libraries Consortium presented an overview of Portfolio.

Portfolio is Digital Asset Management Expansion to Sirsi Dynix Enterprise Discovery Service Will accept any digital file format – images, documents, video, audio OAI-PMH Compliant – can both harvest other databases and be harvested Dublin Core metadata standard

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Assets are organised in a folder structure Ability to add a security levelCan drag assets between foldersUpdates due in coming weeks include:

Ability to add multiple images to one record eg. Individual pages of a PDF, an oral history audio recording, transcription word document and photo of subject , JPG

Bulk editing of recordsImport / Export AssetsExport for back up somewhere else.Create a room to highlight a specific collection and limit search to that collectionTrove can harvest particular folders Ability to shadow particular items“Media types” are defined. Set how you want them delivered. E.g. PDF open in browser or download.Examples of libraries using Portfolio:

Bookclub reading guides (Central Highlands) Local newspaper articles (Kogarah) School magazines (Mildura) Rate books Ashfield Library Botany Bay: browse able collections – interactive maps (embedded google map with images

4. Reports Whitehorse Manningham - Nunawading Library - Vicki Court Whitehorse Heritage Week was held from 10-17 September with the main feature being the Australia Calls

exhibition at the Box Hill Art Space from 10 September to 14 October. Unfortunately the two Heritage Week talks planned to be held in the libraries were cancelled due to low booking numbers. However, since then I have run one on one sessions for those who had booked for Battle to Farm.

On 12 October I ran a session Exploring Family Military History looking at resources for researching nineteenth and twentieth century wars.

The Writing the War exhibition has been at the Box Hill Art Space from 2 October until 11 November.

Wimmera - Ros Ryan Wimmera made October “History is a story” month We had a number of different sessions:

“Crafting your book” using bit n’ pieces, scrap & memory objects to create a look for your book, journal or album

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“Crafting my book” for Seniors Week participants “Crafting your story” how to construct the elements &  finding sources and inspiration to write your story, journal or

book “Searching for Ancestors” seminar by Eric & Rosemary Kopittke with Gould Genealogy & Unlock the Past

Wyndham - Karen Seckold We are running a Local History Bus Tour for Local History Month. It was so popular we had to run it twice and we

are planning on running it again next year. We partnered with the Werribee River Association and had very happy customers.

The Tarneit Library will open on 14th December and we have taken on a lot of new staff including Glenn Greening.

We had the Scan Pro 300 and the Mekel Mach 2 demonstrated to us recently and have to choose one. Does anyone have any feedback on them? The Mekel is a German Machine that is very popular in America and Europe. They have sold 4 in Australia so far.

WE applying for a grant to add some Aboriginal content to our www.wyndhamhistory.net.au website. Would be grateful for any feedback from anyone who has carried out a similar project.

Ryerson Indexing and the Biographies for the WW1 soldiers and nurses are all progressing well.

Moonee Valley - Stephen WrightFamily History

The digital installation created this year for Family History Month by our Family History Group has been made available online through the Moonee Valley Libraries Local and Family History Blog (http://mooneevalleyfamilylocalhistory.blogspot.com.au/).

We are planning to change how some of our Family History classes are run in 2016. With updated resources and refocusing them from names and dates searches to helping patrons tell a more detailed story of the lives of their ancestors using other records.

Other news

Moonee Valley libraries has begun uploading assets to Portfolio. This is the second phase in a large project which has involved many people. We are hopeful that assets will start to be made available

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online beginning in 2016. As part of Remembrance Day 2015 people were asked to contribute on our blog and write a short

piece on what Remembrance Day meant them. They could talk about how they remembered what the day looked like as or how they feel about it today. This program was done entirely online with no promotion done in branch. The result has been a successful program with many people telling staff that they are now thinking about the day again. Events

After the first class we ran another session on European and Italian Family History, this was also a great success.

Our Remembrance Day author talk this year was by Joshua Funder who wrote the fictional account of this great- grandfather during the retreat from Gallipoli, “Watson’s Pier.” The talk was held at our Niddrie branch as was well attended.

We have begun planning events for 2016 with a focus on the Essendon Rifles and talks associated with them and the Battle of Fromelles in which they took part. Jennie has been in contact with the Essendon Rifles association to create a working relationship with them.

Prahran Mechanics’ Institute - Christine Worthington Victorian History Week: Our lecture given by Brian Hunt of the Cinema & Theatre Historical Society on ‘Cinemas

and theatres in Prahran and surrounds’ was well attended and enjoyed by all. On the same afternoon we presented 2015 PMI Short History Prize to Heather Mutimer of Daylesford Historical Society for her entry ‘A picture can tell a thousand words’. The prize was judged as usual by a panel from the Professional Historians Association and Heather and her society each received $500.

Next lecture: Our next event will be the annual Laurie McCalman Lecture (a joint presentation of the PMI and the Prahran Historical & Arts Society) to be given by Robin Grow on his latest book Murder of a messenger at 2.00pm on Saturday 27 February.

New LMS: The overdues section of our new FirstLMS catalogue is now implemented and we are monitoring it closely. This implementation also includes automated subscription notices which will save us a lot of time. Once we are satisfied this is working well we will begin to incorporate and streamline our acquisition procedures.

PMI Press: The deadline (29 Feb) for the next submission round for PMI Press (Victorian history publishing) has been announced and we have been. Our new publishing partner, BookPOD, has offered our authors well discounted rates on editing, design and printing. All works on any aspect of Victorian history will be considered.

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PMI Archives: Work on our DB Textworks database continues (records and linked files for scanned correspondence 1854-1899 have been added and material from our biography files is now being added). I was fortunate to have attended the recent digital preservation session at the SLV and this will inform our progress with this project.

Recent donations: We recently accepted a significant donation of books from Monash Public Library Service and we also regularly receive items from Bayside Library Service and Yarra Plenty Regional Library which we are very grateful. We accept donations of items concerned with Australian history – particularly items relating to local histories of places throughout Australia. Please send to : PMI Library, DX 212404, Melbourne VIC.

Yarra Plenty - Liz Pidgeon Applied for Strengthening Communities Grant for Multitouch – Local Stories Project at 2 libraries Successful Forum meeting at Plenty in September – spoke on Trove website Planning 2016 Whittlesea Heritage Program. About 15 events over the 4 libraries. Local Anzacs Book Project: I have about 25 stories in total with about maybe 10 or so I still expect to receive to be

published July 2016. Region: Our CEO is resigning at end of January. Position advertised nation wide . I am on Leave: 24 November – 27 January.

Edith Fry - Central Highlands For the last few months it has been ‘steady as she goes’, we’ve been trying to encode all the tags that are now in

the AR collection, its not that hard or even tedious (and a good chance to do some snap-decision weeding) but just finding the time to do it is getting ridiculous. We’ve made good progress, Simon is very good at it, me less so, there is always something else to distract me.

Lady Teviot visited us we had about 15 attending. I’ve never heard her speak before so I was entertained. We got her to do the “brick wall” talk, and she gave a lot of useful tips but none of them was new to me, happy to say.  It was very confidence boosting. However she ended the talk and asked if there were any comments/questions, so I could not resist putting up my hand and adding “ALWAYS ask the librarian or info officer or person in charge, of the library or wherever you may be, especially if this is while you are travelling, because that person may have local knowledge of which you may be unaware. An example of this might be, being unable to locate a burial in one of the Ballarat cemeteries, and giving up, not realising that a lot of Ballarat people are buried at Buninyong, and we would always check that.” But there are thousands of reasons why you should ask your librarian, each of you will have local examples. Lady Teviot was most enthusiastic for my suggestion.

Otherwise, I was busy planning for the November 18th PLVN Local Studies visit to Ballarat and I was very much rewarded on the day, 20 visiting librarians and it was great. Even the weather was on-side. The POW Memorial

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was very interesting with 2 knowledgeable guides, and of course the Mechanics Institute never fails with its wow! factor. The session after lunch on Portfolio was very interesting and inspiring, thanks to Ros for organising Lloyd to attend. Even putting everybody back on the train was an adventure, moving along two “youths” who were taking up ALL the space in the seats facing each other, so the librarians could continue with their meeting! Thanks to everybody for coming, I am glad you all enjoyed it, I certainly did. Looking forward to another great year in 2016!

I received the nicest email from Bill Bahr, one of the chaps at the POW memorial :Hi Edith,Thank you again for organising the visit from the Local History Librarians group. Ray & I were happy with the questions and overall sincerity of the group in learning and understanding the “Stone Garden Journey”…It is also great to discuss the Memorial concept and the history behind the 36,000+ POW’s with like-minded people

I have attached a copy of my notes should you wish to distribute to the group and thank you again on behalf of the 36,500 POW whose stories should be told and remembered…RegardsBillTrustee

State Library of Victoria - Anne Burrowso Family History Feast 2015o Videos for all the talks given at the 2015 Feast on 10 August with a WW1 Theme are now available on the State

Library Victoria website. http://www.slv.vic.gov.au/view-discuss/audio-video/301?field_media_type_value=All o Family History Feast 2016 is tentatively planned for Monday 8 August.o Report on VAFHO Family History Expo 17 October 2015, Seymour, Victoriao Very successful with 153 in attendance and 29 exhibitors. Some people came from as far afield as Melbourne

and a number of Victorian country areas, such as Wodonga and Warragul. At my stand I had much interest in the State Library Victoria – collections, services etc. A few people said that it was good to see SLV in country Victoria. I was busy all day especially in the morning.

o All in all a very successful event, well organised and enjoyable.

Moreland - Janine Smith Moreland City Libraries has hosted an exhibition “Merri Creek from wasteland to parkland”. The exhibition will

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move to other municipalities. Full exhibition is available on the Merri Creek management committee website. Brunswick Library hosted ‘Researching the history of house’ session during History Week. We had 50 people and

demand to run the session again. Also created a webpage of resources on this topic Moreland remembers World War I project was shortlisted for the community collaboration section of the Victorian

Community History Awards Added content from an oral history project in the 1980s, For a better life we came’ onto Wikinorthia. Next year Don Osborne will speak at Coburg Library about his recently published book "Pentridge: behind the

bluestone walls", based on his experiences at education officer at the prison in the 1970s We will be partnering with the Coburg Historical Society in February to host Lucy Sussex author of "Blockbuster!

Fergus Hume and mystery of a hansom cab"

Yarra - Lina Favrin All 5 Branches going live with RFID in November. FE system. Renovations being done to all locations to

accommodate equipment, new desks etc. Three staff undertaking SLV Jumpstart online training from early November to 18th December. According to the

website this is a hands-on course designed to help you thrive as information professionals in the new digital environment.” We’ll report back at the next meeting.

Whitehorse Manningham – Doncaster – Elaine Craig

The Branch Manager has resigned to take up a position at Coburg, Moreland, and I am Acting Branch manager from November 9 2015 to 9 January 2016

Planning for the guest speakers for 2016 Genie Matters Will be doing a talk on 28 April 2016 on using Ancestry Library Edition Using a grant, we ran a youth writing competition, and ran 3 events in conjunction with the ‘Writing the War’

exhibition, 2 of which had to be cancelled due to insufficient numbers On Remembrance Day, Whitehorse Council erected ceramic poppies in the lawn outside the Box Hill Town Hall We shall be celebrating our 20th birthday in 2016, and will be adopting a new logo and completely rebranding. We

have employed an external marketing person, who is overseeing the rebranding, and all marketing, including grants etc.

Involved in the ‘Writing the War’ exhibition in October/November 2015 EmpLive has been introduced, a rostering/pay package. A new function in Spydus has been introduced, ability to place recurring reservations on magazine titles A new fulltime Home Library Service librarian has been appointed

Hobson’s Bay - Amanda Peckham

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Community engagement, training, themed events, activities and adding content to our Historypin channel occupied the Hobsons Bay Libraries Heritage Team throughout 2015. Due to various leave and service commitments, we have not had a representative of HBL in 2015 so this report will be an overview of the year and beyond.

World War One commemorations included:Displays

Digital content Historypin - Anzac collection for our residents who served. Talks & Events - Researching War Records. hands-on workshop. March, on the Homefront - 1915. Local life during the Great War with local Helen Penrose, historian and author. themed Film sessions on Anzac Day & Remembrance Day

Other events May – It’s all about the trains at the Newport sub-station (temporary Library). Presentation, display and talk. June – Altona Library 50th. Altona 50th historypin collection created. A series of events and talks and DVD. October – Mateship a very Australian Story. Author Nick Dyrenfurth, based on his provocative book. He is a

Lecturer; National Centre for Australian Studies, his style was very engaging, inclusive and interactive. Highly recommend for an event, appeals to a wide audience.

Online databases. Ancestry: Staff and researchers are overjoyed with the edition of some Victorian rate records, particularly the former City of Williamstown. It is possible (although a bit quirky) to search by property address as well as owner/occupier. Continue uploading content, marketing to community and encouraging participation in historypin

Hands on Heritage last Thursday of the Month. February-November Feb - Finding Families with Anne Copeland SLV We will be running events for the Newport substation centenary celebrations (for the electrification of Suburban

railways now Arts Centre and temporary home of Newport Library) which will include a segment from the 7.30 Report on the building and work for the dole workers from the 1980’s and a Swinburne art students historical interpretation.

Three well-known Australians Martin Shaw exhibition events and activities Historypin - staff and our volunteer we have pinned 408 pins and created 8 collections including Altona Library 50th celebrations, ANZACS, Williamstown High School – centenary, An up-grade throughout the year slowed us down a bit but new features include uploading a/v and text and pinning via a link. Very slow for searching but user friendly.

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Heritage Group continues to meet on the last Thursday of each month. The hands-on sessions have been well attended by enthusiastic researchers and willing volunteers. Collections: Created a new sub lounge, homegrown. Held a launch, added biographies of authors to our website, introduced new genre branding and held several book launches the most popular being Tom Ferris Williamstown: A Great Metropolitan Racing Club -  with 100+ attendees there was standing room only.Publications: Our Heritage Volunteer Dorothy Small has had an article published by PROV An Innocent Pentonvillain: Thomas Drewery, chemist and exile 1821-1859 http://prov.vic.gov.au/publications/provenance   

       

2016

To commemorate the opening of the Altona Meadows Library and Learning Centre we will be utilising the Childrens & Youth Team Book Cubby. Primary Children will make books entitled ‘My Place’

Excerpts from our training notes:

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Still drafting a full set of notes as it is rather quirky and transcriptions are in places poor. It appears that other part of the City e.g. Spotswood and Newport are all listed under Williamstown. Former names of localities are not indexed. Street numbers for some years and areas are searchable but not all. As with other searches in Ancestry try variations, narrow/broad Boolean etc. As far as we know with ancestry Library user input or corrections is not directly possible. If researching a house it is possible to begin with the Victorian Electoral roll to get names of owner occupier then cross reference to rate books and if you’re fortunate photos and family trees!

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6. Memory Workgroup Update

There will be Digital Preservation information sessions across Victoria Benalla 16 February 2015Pakenham 9 March 2016Geelong Library and heritage Centre 27 April 2016

7. 2016 Meetings 2016 TO BE CONFIRMED16 March 2016 Stonnington History Centre Simone SharpNovember Geelong Library Judith OkeJune Ringwood – Realm Library Kathy Smalley

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