LOCAL STUDIES INTEREST GROUP
Tuesday 20th November 2012
Southbank Library
Present:
Liz Pidgeon
Kathy Smalley
Glenn Greening
Vicki Court
Michael MacKenzie
Heather McKay
Jennie Moulder
Kay Browne
Fiona Campbell
Jordana Lory
Ros Ryan
Natasha Kamenev
Kay Rowan
Yarra Plenty
Eastern Regional
Darebin
Whitehorse Manningham
Melbourne
Melbourne
Moonee Valley
Hobsons Bay
Melbourne
Goldfields
Wimmera
Bayside
Port Phillip
Apologies:
Elaine Craig
Amanda Peckham
Lina Favrin
Meredith Reidy
Anne Burrows
Whitehorse Manningham
Hobsons Bay
Yarra
Maribyrnong
State Library of Victoria
Nunawading
Doncaster
The meeting was held at the new branch of the Melbourne City Library – the Boyd Centre,
Southbank. Michael Mackenzie is the Readers Advisor/Local History Librarian at Boyd and after our
general meeting he took us on a tour of the building which had been the old J.H. Boyd High School.
Not only is there a library, café and a community centre, there are also a number of creative spaces
for artists. The Australian Book Review magazine has its offices there as well.
Around the Table:
Jennie Moulder
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Moonee Valley
In August we planned and conducted two classes for Family History Week, concentrating on
Find my Past and Ancestry, together with some of our other resources. Demand for these
classes was high, so a further four classes were held through September and October.
Following on from this demand we are planning to hold these classes quarterly in 2013.
We are currently reviewing and assessing items held in our archive collection. Where possible
we hope to be able display some of these items and make them more accessible for a wider
audience. We are using the 2006 Memory Victoria Project assessment as a basis for our own
evaluation of this archive.
The Local History Room at Sam Merrifield Library continues to be well used by the public and
the Essendon Historical Society, and we are hoping to make a few changes to layout to make
this space more user friendly. To that end we plan to visit some other libraries in early 2013 to
explore how other library services are displaying and promoting Local and Family History.
Moonee Valley Library Service has spent most of 2012 preparing for and implementing RFID
technology across all five branches. The last and biggest branch, Sam Merrifield in Moonee
Ponds went live in mid November. Patron feedback has been largely positive. The removal of
the large circulation desk at Sam Merrifield along with changes in library layout have created
some great spaces that have also been welcomed by the public.
Heather McKay/Fiona Campbell
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Melbourne
Digitisation. We are paying for the last of the local papers to go on Trove and they should be
ready by March.
We are also paying for the rate books to be digitised and the first phase is available, just need
some cataloguing.
Docklands. We are planning a heritage centre at Docklands and there have been community
forums with other providers to ensure this will be a well used space. Those providers may be
able to loan items for display.
Ros Ryan
Wimmera
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Attended the launch of the ScanRobot digitsation scanning machine at Technological Micro
Data’s offices (http://www.treventus.com/automatic-book-scanner-scanrobot.html)
Hosted the annual meeting on the local National Trust Branch at Horsham Library, and am
involved in the National Trust Heritage Festival for 2013 “Community milestones”, the library
will be conducting 2 cemetery tours on 20th April.
Playing with a couple of iPhone apps – HistoryPin and Lost 100.
Working with Culture Victoria, Heritage Council of Victoria, and film-maker Malcolm
McKinnon to create 3 Wimmera industrial heritage stories for the Culture Victoria website,
on Murtoa’s Stick Shed, the Dimboola Banner’s old printing press, and Nhill Aeradio air
communications/navigation support station.
Working on some photographic “Now & then projects” with ABC Open and the library.
Visiting the Argus building on LaTrobe/Elizabeth streets while it is open this week.
Natasha Kamenev
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Bayside
Bayside Library Service developed a new five year Library, Arts and Culture Strategy 20122017. Five main themes are addressed in the Strategy – the need to meet technological
challenges, ensuring that both places and spaces are appropriate, keeping services relevant
to community needs, creating opportunities for partnerships and collaboration, and the
efficient use of financial and physical resources. There is 6 minutes video on Council's website
http://www.bayside.vic.gov.au/library_arts_and_culture_strategy.htm.
The Bayside Coastal Trail is now available as an audio tour through the App store.
On Sunday 21st October 2012 Brighton Library hosted very successful event - Antiques
Roadshow with Lester DeVere.
On Friday 2nd of November we had another very popular event "Search for your Brighton
ancestors". Brighton Historical Society in partnership with Bayside Library Service had a
session for people who are interested in Brighton history or have a family connection with
Brighton. On the 6th of December Bayside Library Service and Brighton Historical Society
celebrated the 50th anniversary of "History of Brighton" by Weston Bate. Weston was
presented with an illuminated address.
We started a volunteer based Genealogy club at Brighton library. Once a month our wonderful
volunteer Jane Chamers is there to answer all genealogical questions.
Amanda Peckham/Kay Browne
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Hobsons Bay
The new Williamstown Library opened on the 20th of September 2012 and amongst the VIP’s
were Professor Geoffrey Blainey and his wife. His wife’s grandfather was a former Mayor of
Williamstown. Prof. Blainey commented that it was pleasing to see a Library service that was
committed to giving their heritage collection a high profile and priority. All went very well and
we are settling in to our beautiful new environment.
The new Library features a Heritage Room and Heritage collections:
 Local History (Includes Victorian)
 Family History
 Australiana
 Maritime
 Australian Military
 Maritime
 Indigenous
 Railways
The Heritage collections include materials for loan and not for loan. They reflect both the
strengths of our collection and areas of particular interest and importance to the Hobsons Bay
and wider communities.
The Heritage Room features: Large glass heritage cabinet containing our rare books, maps
drawers, two double sided display glass display cases, six PC’s (two with stViewscanners),
4G wifi and access to databases Library Ancestry and Find my Past. The Heritage room is
also staffed throughout the day.
Our opening displays included: Former City of Williamstown mayoral robes, chains and
memorabilia and shopping in old Williamstown. There has been a great deal of interest in the
displays which included contributions from the Williamstown Historical Society and retailers. –
We have been running a Williamstown History series of events which have been very well
received. A list of all participants willing to have their stories digitized and preserved is ever
growing and this will be part of our 2013 program. Events have included:
 History Alive. An introduction to the Heritage room and a tour.
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 On this Site –. The talk covered all the previous uses of the library site with many
participants having a direct link to the site.
 Growing up in Williamstown -Included a slide show to encourage conversations,
memories, debate and interest .24 attendees
 Buildings of Williamstown with Ian Rae - October Family history group 25th October
20129 bookings - 20 attended. Heritage of Williamstown was wonderfully
presented by Ian Rae (passionate local historian and ex-vice chancellor of VU). An
armchair walk around our surrounding streets
Our final Heritage event will be another introduction to the Heritage collections and rooms at
the end of November. Another introduction to the Heritage Room is scheduled for November
Picture Victoria uploading has not commenced as we have been too busy .We have resubscribed to Picture Victoria, and we are planning to upload 500+ images before the end of
this financial year.
2013 will see a greater emphasis on community involvement, digitization and social media
projects. Kay Browne is one of a group of staff who will be regularly rostered to the Heritage
Room and will be developing their skills and knowledge of these collections and resources.
Best wishes for the festive season and a happy 2013
Jordana Lory
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Bendigo Library and the Goldfields Research Centre have been open at their temporary
premises for 6 weeks now. Almost normal services have resumed. Please check the website
before visiting for change of opening hours, and some collections may need to be ordered
from off site storage.
The offsite storage is working well. Apart from a small print genealogy/LH collection all special
and reference collections and the stack collections are being housed at the Bendigo Regional
Archives Centre Nolan St. facility. A pick is being done once a week, and this seems to be
sufficient.
Bendigo Rates Database Project is going well. This project will see 1,000,000 + Bendigo rates
index entries converted from their current Access Database to an SQL database and will allow
the rates index to be searchable online. The conversion should happen before Christmas. This
project is only possible with an Public Records Office Local History Grant.
The Bendigo Advertiser (1855 – 1918) and the Bendigonian (1914 – 1918) are now available
on Trove. The Bendigo Advertiser is second only to The Argus in terms of hits! The NLA
funded the Bendigo Advertiser digitization an the SLV funded the Bendigonian
Glenn Greening
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Goldfields
Darebin
Self service push - 100% self service target
Restructure is at the band 5 level. All management in place. New children’s team leader
starting end of November.
New online resources AMES Learning English
Upcoming events: - Edible weeds talk, Professional Organiser talk, Cybersafety for seniors
session
Darebin Heritage website - no progress for months now. Still waiting on company to make
changes we have requested.
Wikinorthia - new site looks good and will be great when up and running. Currently being
tested with articles being added and checked, etc.
Recently had 2 Irish Family sessions for the public which were well attended and enjoyed.
Our team has booked a session at PROV to have a tour and look at resources available that
are related to our area of Melbourne.
Attended RHSV conference on 17 November which was very great and worthwhile. It
consisted of three sessions, each with a number of speakers. The history of local history
writing, starting from the early 60s and the impact that Weston Bate’s History of Brighton has
had on local history writing since, then a session about where local history writing is at now
and what is currently happening in the area, and the last session: how local history writing
might develop in the future.
Some of the interesting parts of the day included a presentation on the Founders and
Survivors project (you may have heard about it before?) It’s a project collecting information for
many many convicts and their ancestors. Australia, particularly Tasmania, has the best
records in the world from the early 1800s. For the convicts in Van Diemen’s Land, so much
detail was recorded about each person that arrived. This project compiles all that information
to find out where each boat load of convicts ended up, which came to Victoria, which ended up
being successful or failures, and what those groups had in common, a mother? Education?
The place they had come from? It’s a very interesting project and you can read more about it
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here: http://www.theage.com.au/national/convict-kin-find-history-aint-no-ball-and-chain20120922-26dzm.html definitely worth the read.
After lunch we heard from speakers discussing the future of local history writing. First up was
Keith White talking about making local history interactive and visual rather than just a piece of
writing. He showed some examples of short videos that can be made using photographs and
voiceovers with tips on how to make it look interesting. Rather than having one long
documentary or video on a loop it’s a better idea to have short videos of a few minutes each
that can be selected by the user so the viewer can watch what they are interested in. He
spoke about filming photographs by panning and zooming rather than a still shot. Using
character voices and a narrative as if the person in the piece is telling the story. Also sound
effects and music is a good tool. The next speaker has done some work in South Australia on
websites that look very similar to the wikinorthia site that should be live soon. Site is
mallala.nowandthen.net.au and is worth a look. Interesting to see on the right how many
article views there have been. Hope our site and/or wikinorthia gets this many. A photo of a
football team was posted on the site and within days a member of the public provided names
of each person in the team, all were previously unknown. This was another idea that came up
from this speaker. Allowing people with smart phones to scan a QR code which takes them
directly to a website article about the place they are at.
Probably the thing I liked the most from the whole day was this:
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Kathy Smalley
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Eastern Regional
ERL Anzac Project: I have had several emails and a phone conversation with Dr Marina
Larsens Senior Policy Officer, Veterans Heritage Veterans Unit Department of Planning and
Community Development initially regarding funding of our ERL Anzac database. She
suggested various place to try for grants. However my main conversation with her regarded
accessing material.
Met with 2 members of Knox Historical Society who are working on the City of Knox War Dead
project. We have swapped databases.
Family History Week (27 July-5 Aug) Yarra Ranges Regional Museum
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Very successful, conducted 4 sessions which included Beginning Family History x 2,
Accessing Digitised Newspapers via TROVE and a session on the 2 ERL Family History
databases of Ancestry Library Edition and FindMyPast.
Had a limit of 20 people per session, and 3 were fully booked with one booked for 18 out of 20
people.
Have formed liaisons with 4 local U3A’s Emerald, Yarra Junction, Lilydale and Croydon who
offer genealogy classes. Have spoken to the classes, or had them to visit Croydon where the
main Family History collection is situated.
Working with Mater Christie school at Belgrave for their 50th Anniversary, e.g. referring them to
the newspaper collection at Belgrave; the local historical societies, particularly for
photographs; checking the local history files at Belgrave and offering the branches for displays
to obtain more information.
Local History Week: 21-28 November
Had a very successful day last Sunday at Gulf station with local and heritage groups from the
Shire of Yarra Ranges. Over 500 people attended from 11am-3pm.
Give a talk at GUM (Genealogists Using Microcomputers) in early Nov on what public libraries
can offer for family and local history resources.
Dandenong Ranges Historical Council Inc.
As a result of this group being successful in their grant application to digitise the Helen
Coulson archive, I have contacted them and will be part of the team to bring this grant to
fruition.
Knox library is currently closed until 10 Dec for fitting of “check in machine”
Closure of one of the mobile libraries has resulted in having to relocate their local history
collections.
Ringwood stack has ceased and had to relocate and weed.
Monbulk Primary School library’s collection relocated to Monbulk hub, again collection needed
weeding, particularly local history.
Elaine Craig
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The new library continues to be busy, but usage has stabilised, and is no longer as frantic as
in the first couple of weeks
However, student usage of the library in pre and exam periods was huge, with many extra
chairs and table being brought out of storage areas for their use
Numerous community based genie groups have requested either tours or orientation session
into the genie area and resources – two U3A groups, 3 Probus groups, as well as numerous
individuals. Another Probus group is holding its monthly meeting in the library
I gave a ‘Starting your family history ‘ talk at Nunawading
ScanPro has been giving problems, will not recognize fiche, will not refocus when fiche moved
to another page. Thanks to advice from Ros Ryan, Wimmera, IT altered some settings, and
things have improved immensely, but I am not sure that it is functioning as it should.
I am attending meeting for the Manningham Heritage Festival 2013. The library will have a
continuously running PowerPoint display of the history of libraries in Manningham (the first
library was Athenaeum Library dating from 1871. This is proving to be a very interesting
project, I am learning a lot about the history of the library service.
The two monthly Genie Matters meetings continue to be well attended.
Kay Rowan
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Whitehorse Manningham
Port Phillip
I gave a talk at the St Kilda Library recently on ‘Beginner’s guide to Local & Family History on
the Internet’. This was successful and I am planning to do a series next year.
I have also been given some assistance by staff with Local History for 4 hours a week, this is
working well. The Port Phillip Heritage Centre should be finished in July 2013. This will be
an additional wing to a newly refurbished Emerald Hill Library.
Liz Pidgeon
Yarra Plenty Regional Library
As I am the last speaker, I would like to acknowledge the value of these meetings and the
terrific information sharing and generation of ideas. I would also like to acknowledge the
success of the Geelong two day meeting and excursion in September and thank the organiser
Judith Oke again for all her efforts.
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I am busy as always but the following are some highlights
It is Local History month at YPRL - about 7 events across the Region.
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Plenty Centenary - involved on the committee for this celebrating the first major land selection
which occurred in April 1913. There will be a weekend of celebrations 12-14th April 2013
Been very busy working on the re-development of the Wikinorthia: documenting life in
Melbourne's north website - mainly testing the site new site and now manually converting
content over. Will post a note to the Local Studies Yahoo group when it is more public.
Finally after many IT issues, converted Hyperion archive over to Portfolio - A Sirsi product and
we now have a separate link to search images on our website - but many records very basic
and will need to review them. Looking forward to adding new content. Link from:
http://yprl.vic.gov.au/research/local-history/local-history-blog
We subscribe to Picture Victoria but adding to it is not a top priority with limited staff hours.
I facilitate four Forum meetings each year with my local history community. The next one is
December 11
Submitted a PROV local history grant with Eltham District Historical Society for a digitisation
project
Attended the Local History Community History Awards by invitation of local historian Mick
Woiwod - He subsequently won the Local History project category for "Corranderrk Database"
which YPRL had supported him with - including free distribution and launch at Eltham Library.
Recommend that everyone checks that they have the winner "The Art of Being Melbourne" by
Maree Coote in their general collections.
Currently booking genealogy speakers for the first half of the year for our "Family History Fest"
program at Diamond Valley Library. I would welcome suggestions for quality speakers.
Currently also booking speakers and organising programs for the YPRL contribution to the
Whittlesea Cultural Heritage Program, April - Nov 2013. This is a printed booklet which is
distributed in Feb.
Other Business
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At next meeting we thought we might talk about a comparison of Ancestry & Findmypast and
what they are proposing to put on their sites. Some of us noticed that Findmypast has a few of
the early microfiche of which we all have copies, and are now digitised on their site.
Genealogy ebooks
Next meeting
Thursday March 7 2013
2.00 pm
Doncaster Library
Mc2
687 Doncaster Road
Doncaster 3018
Ph 9877 8500
elaine.craig@wml.vic.gov.au
There is a café in the building, we can have lunch there if you want to.
http://www.mcsquarecafe.com.au/index.html
Melway 33 F12
BUT currently the new mc2 building does not appear in Melway, nor Google Maps, so the following is
a map.
It will not scan well, unfortunately, but mc2 is the yellow building. The road running from top to bottom
is Doncaster Road, turn off Doncaster Road (north) and travel around to the back of the mc2 building
(roads are black) and go under the building to B1 (there is a P symbol on the map), parking is free for
4 hours, and catch the lift to the Ground floor.
2013 meetings
Thursday March 7
Tuesday June 25
Tuesday September 17
Wednesday November 13
Doncaster Library
Williamstown library
SLV
TBC
Elaine Craig
Amanda Peckham
Liz Pidgeon, Margery Ramsay report