The first session I attended was one on Local History. About 20 people moved into the seminar room, they came from different types of libraries in different states; most had quite a lot of experience. The first person to speak was Julia an Information Services and Community Heritage Librarian. She spoke about the difficulties she was having with engaging the community with local histories and how to go about collecting stories?

 Julia also mentioned some of the computer technology available to those interested in Local History. History PIN is like Pinterest, except it is all about history, it features Pin images that you can post to a map; so people can go to a map of their local area and look at the resources available. It’s a way to find past and present picture contacts on the web. She said they could use it to link pictures and stories of  grandparents and families, and show how the area has changed. Another experienced librarian talked about what her library did in History week: they developed a project to take photos on something in area and update it every year. She mentioned Augmented Reality projects (which I hadn’t heard of before); the project she mentioned was about King Ludwig III, there’s an app on his reign which takes you to various places that were important during his reign; this uses geo-location technology.

Julie from Moonee Ponds said they are looking into creating apps as they are cheap to produce. Somebody mentioned the LAYAR –augmented reality program. A person talked about the connection they have with their local history organisation. They try to collaborate but they have different views on access. Another person talked about how the library they work for has put some of their historical photos on Trove. Janet from Monash library said that they have lots of photos that they would like to digitise, but their local history organisation, who owns some of them, are not keen on digitising. Another person mentioned that you can put a watermark on the photos for copyright purposes. One other librarian said that you can see thumbnails of local history photos on their website, but people have to pay for an actual photo.

I asked Julie if the library worked with local history teachers in the area, because I could remember doing research at the Moonee Ponds library for a unit of Local History in Year 12. I thought having links with schools was a good way of building interest in local history. Julie said that they don’t have any program with schools.

Another librarian talked about activities that Robyn Archer organised to celebrate Canberra’s 100^th Anniversary. There were lots of grassroots activities e.g. an activity where people investigated why streets were given their names This linked people who weren’t normally interested in local history; they also had street parties

We then progressed to a description of local history events, at Boorondara library; they have a grandparent / grandchild group, this links the older generation and primary school students. The grandparents talk to the primary school children about the history of the area and sing the songs they sang when younger. They have regular ‘Tracing the History of a House’ sessions as part of local history.

They have created a Conversation Circle about local history and genealogy; this gets people sharing information. They set a time to get together, it’s now a once a month session and there are more people coming along. They do family history, local history and other activities. I t is a low cost and low risk activity; they get regulars coming. A few times they’ve got a speaker in; it’s usually someone plugging a book or a specific event.

A Queensland librarian talked about how the New Farm and Districts Historical Society in Brisbane is a local group that meets regularly at their library; they got Quentin Bryce to speak at one of their sessions and it raised their profile in the community a lot. That sort of event draws in people who have a crossover interest. It enables the library to ask people if they would contribute collections or resources. People lend photos or letters to be digitised. This can be done via a History Pin account

Another librarian talked about the WikiNorthia Project, in which three library services are working together to build a history of the Northern suburbs. Somebody mentioned that there was a paper given at VALA by a librarian from New Zealand; they talked about Kete freeware, which allowed libraries to create online spaces for community contributions to the Christchurch earthquake. (The librarian who gave the paper) was Smeetha Buswas from Auckland City Library. A New Zealand librarian mentioned that there’s also a place on the web that has photos of the oil spill, with stories and text.

There was a bit of discussion about the computer software that makes all of these sites possible. One of the Queensland librarians said that this software has been well taken up. The freeware actual set-up and configuration took 10 minutes. It’s not flash looking, but it seems to have been successful. It enabled her library to get contributions from schools and the community and there has been significant community engagement. One person interviewed a WW1 veteran that they’d seen in their neighbourhood and then they put the interview online. They built an API to harvest local contributions.

The subject of Oral histories was brought up; one librarian talked about how they got local secondary students interviewing people at a retirement village. Kew  Library has a large oral history collection, said one of their librarians. There was an elderly gentleman who played the piano in retirement villages and he interviewed people about their lives.

A librarian from the City of Gold Coast library mentioned how, at their library, they get digital recorders and do micro-histories. They have volunteers interviewing people by getting out into the community and asking them, will you say a few words?  Then they add the recordings to their collection. The librarian from the City of Gold Coast talked about how Gold Coast will be hosting a future Commonwealth Games and what the library and local history buffs can do as a contribution. The idea is that they will be collecting memories as people are generating them.

Somebody commented that the centenary of Gallipoli is next year; and how libraries need to start planning for it now. I mentioned to the librarian from MooneeValley that the man who invented the drip system self-firing device that got Allied forces off Gallipoli without any casualties came from around Essendon, it would be possible for her to use this to generate community interest. She already knew about this and said that he came from Ascot Vale, (which may be outside the library area), but as I recollected later, our Australian History teacher in HSC said that he had his own inventing business in Essendon after the war.

One librarian talked about how light rail is being connected soon in her local area, so the library is looking at ways of recording how light rail will change the suburb and the other transport that has been used in the past. Another woman talked about how she has moved back to the suburb where she lived as a child and is a new user of the Local History area of library. She lives in Carnegie; just down the road from her is the church where her parents got married. She may be able to contribute to the local information.

The experienced librarians talked about how Local History libraries are a place of mutual exchange; people are largely unaware of what they can contribute. Stories and visual memories are changing. Libraries are interested in finding ways to capture local information before it disappears completely. One major problem is that people in the community are unaware that libraries want their information. Some libraries have found that putting out part of an image can generate feedback. It was mentioned that the National Archive of Australia have put photo items from their collection on Flickr; and they ask people to contribute metadata to the images.

© Susan Davies 2014             spooky2013lib.wordpress.com