A world without Trove

The National Library at Canberra under suitably stormy skies (photo from Pinterest by Jared Adamo on 500px)

Remembering the last funding cuts (see Treasure Trove: why defunding Trove leaves Australia poorer) it seems that once again Trove is in the gun sights.

Without additional funds the National Library of Australia is threatening to pull the plug on Trove or reduce it to a service focused on the National Library’s collections. 

Trove (as detailed in previous posts) is the bestest resource Australia has for finding stuff, and not just for librarians and academics. There are Average Joes and Janes out there who may never visit or consider joining a library, but who access Trove regularly.

Any service (‘service’ as distinct from providing a search engine) that boasts more than 22 million visits per year is on the right track. If not for Trove delivering access & consolidation to over six Billion digital items, these items would be either not be available digitally or scattered around all the organisations that contribute to Trove.

The daunting aspect is already past – it has been created and embellished and improved over the years. Digitising more items – newspapers, photographs, ephemera… is an ongoing process that will continue to add to Trove’s importance (and a Shout Out to all the volunteers who make Trove even better by correcting text and making our search results more accurate). 

How good is Trove? Try an experiment - search Trove’s newspaper collection then, do the same for British newspapers. What, access to the British is not free! The Search results and functionality is not as easy or as clear! Thank goodness for Trove.

Want to raise the issue or help campaign - check out Speak up for Trove.

Warracknabeal RIP

 Seriously impressed with the Warracknabeal Cemetery's deceased search functionality.

"Warracknabeal Cemetery Chronicle is an online digital mapping system which indicates the exact location of a gravesite by simply inserting a deceased name. It gives the plot details, date the person was buried, other people in the grave and shows where the plot is in the cemetery. 

 Eventually more burial details on each deceased person will be available on this system. It is helpful for family historians as it shows the exact location of the gravesite. It also assists cemetery administration as it readily indicates reserved, occupied, and vacant gravesites in the cemetery."

The Chronicle people say their software makes securely managing your cemetery easy and affordable by allowing you to 

• Create your digital cemetery
• Manage your interment register
• Share with the community

and that it is free for small cemeteries (up to 1,000 plots)!

Other Victorian cemeteries using Chronicle (you can search) are Beechworth, Bendoc, Boort, Bunyip, Carlsruhe, Chiltern, Lang Lang, Macedon, Maddingley, Murchison, Ouyen, Phillip Island, Rosedale, Yan Yean & Yarram.

 

Where in the world?

Have just come across this marvellous online list “Victorian BDM Place Name Abbreviations List”

The list is comprised of place name abbreviations used in the Victorian Births, Deaths and Marriages registry indexes. It is useful for all three versions of the indexes.

The list currently contains 3,215 abbreviations, including abbreviation errors, and is a work in progress. Please be aware that every effort has been made to ensure that place names are correct to the abbreviations. Research has been done with various resources to prove a birth or death in the locality that matches each abbreviation.

Abbreviations are generally representative of a settlement, town or suburb, but can be a shire, county, parish, area, creek, river, gully, forest, hill, mountain, road, hospital, asylum, convent or ship. And includes some interesting examples – ‘A Rat Hosp’ is Ararat Hospital, 'Greg' is Gre Gre South, ‘Astrens St’ is not some obscure street in a Melbourne suburb, but the abbreviation used for the McTavish births at Ashens Station in 1859.

Shed at 'Longerenong' probably built by Donald McTavish c1860

In 1856 Donald & Jane McTavish and their family moved from Hedi (Oxley's Plains near Wangaratta) to Ashens to work as a shepherd and carpenter for Dugald McPherson. They lived at an outstation, in a shepherd’s hut at the northern tip of Taylors (Drung Drung) Lake, then part of the Ashens Run, some 5 miles from the homestead.

A week before Christmas in 1856 Jane gave birth to a frail baby boy - Donald – with the help of the station women. Then in February 1859 Jane gave birth to her 9^th child – Margaret. (McTavish information from “Thy portion”). 

The Garden Shed today

Some abbreviations can represent multiple places (but at least you know the possible options) and there are also multiple abbreviations for a single place from different time periods (there are over 15 derivative abbreviations of Williamstown).
Some places no longer exist or are now known under a different name. They are indicated in the comments if known.
All in all a valuable asset if you're trawling through the BDM registers.

Budding authors

You thought that actually writing the manuscript was the difficult part, but had you considered the following aspects?

ISBN 

The International Standard Book Number (ISBN) is a unique identifier for books. An ISBN is not mandatory, and does not provide copyright on a work. However, ISBNs are the global standard for identifying titles, and are used internationally across the book trade and library sector. Most retailers require ISBNs to track book inventory for ordering, stocktake etc.

An ISBN is unique for a single version of a single book. If you wish to publish multiple versions of the same book eg. hardback, paperback, large print, digital (EPUB, MOBI, PDF), audio (CD, playaway, MP3) etc. each version has a different ISBN, thus identifying which version you have. Even different editions of the same book have different ISBNs.

In Australia the agency for providing an ISBN is Thorpe-Bowker, you can find more information and purchase an ISBN at their Identifier Services.

Legal deposit

A copy of most works published in Victoria must be deposited with State Library Victoria, within 60 days of publication, under Section 49 of the Libraries Act 1988 (Vic). As well, a copy must also be deposited with the National Library of Australia in Canberra.

Legal deposit, which has its origins in the Copyright Act 1869, has helped preserve and maintain a lasting record of Victoria’s publishing history. It has also enabled the State Library to collect Victorian publications not held in other libraries, providing valuable material for researchers.

A work can be written or printed, including books, magazines, newspapers, brochures, catalogues, newsletters, annual reports, maps, and musical scores, or in another format such as audio, video, CD-ROMS, DVDs or microfiche & film

While the legal deposit provisions of the Libraries Act 1988 do not specifically cover digital/electronic publications, the State Library is accepting and actively collecting these publications.

Works produced for companies, organisations, community groups, private individuals or the public must be deposited by the publisher. Even if your work isn't commercially published, you still need to deposit a copy of it.

Copyright

A word about copyright. Copyright is a legal right created by the law of a country that grants the creator of an original work exclusive rights for its use, and the right to control certain activities with their works. These activities include copying and re-use, such as publication, performance, adaptation and communicating the work to the public (eg. by making it available online).

Copyright should be a balance between the creator protecting their work, and the work being available for legitimate use.

Generally, in Australia, copyright for photographs lasts for the life of the creator plus 70 years. Ownership of a photo varies depending on the circumstances under which it was taken, eg. if it was created under an agreement or by commission, it was taken for the government, if an employee takes a photo as part of their job, copyright rests with the employer, except if the employer is a newspaper or magazine publisher – but excepting freelance photographers, and unless they have made a contrary agreement – yes copyright is a murky area.

Creators of copyright works, including photographers, have “moral rights” separate from copyright. Moral rights impose certain obligations on people who use a copyright work. A photographer has the right to:

• be attributed as creator of the photo

• take action if their work is falsely attributed

• take action if the work is distorted or treated in a way that is prejudicial to their honour or reputation.

It is just common decency to apportion credit, recognise sources, or admit the information came from elsewhere and wasn't your own work. An acknowledgement of where the information, image...was obtained, is the way to go.

 

Victorian artefacts

Victorian Collections is a central portal to the cultural treasures held by museums and galleries distributed across Victoria. Culture Victoria is its sister site.
It is also a free collections management system for Victoria’s cultural organisations and a tool for students, researchers and curious minds.

It has photo entries you can browse, if you hover over an image you get the text description. And we aren’t necessarily talking about promoting your entire collection, you could have some of your most interesting, unique items, enough to tantalise a browser to enquire further and contact you.

a sample page - St Arnaud

Calico flour bag from Bruntons Flour Mill, Rupanyup

Victorian Collections is free for collecting organisations within Victoria. It is designed for Public Organisations not Private Collections, and is a complete, industry-standard cataloguing tool for organisations of all shapes and sizes.


Organisations can bulk-load onto the VC database, and VC do not impose file size limits, and can support most file types, be they audio oral histories, videos or image files. 

Files are provided under Creative Commons licence for non-commercial use. The filea can also be harvested by Trove.

Reviving the Mechanics'

Victoria once had more than one thousand Mechanics' Institutes scattered across the state. In many cases Institute halls were the first public building in a town, and today they are often the last.

Great Western

To obtain a complete picture of the heritage these organisations provided, the Mechanics' Institutes of Victoria Incorporated has been digitising the local records held by halls & institutes.

Murtoa

Records are sometimes held by the halls themselves, or with the local council, historical society, or museum, even with private individuals and trustees.
The digitisation process is funded from both philanthropic and government grant money.

Rainbow

After MIVic have made digital copies, the originals are returned to the records owner or provider along with a digital CD of the records. Copyright remains with the records owner.
Locally, records which have already been digitised are:  Apsley, Corack, Donald, Edenhope, Laen, Langkoop, Poolaijelo, Rich Avon West, St Arnaud, and Stuart Mill.

If you have Mechanics Institute records just waiting for the opportunity to be digitised, contact the Scanning Project Coordinator Judith Dwyer at mirc@mivic.org.au

Sharing

Sharing...and acknowledging

Nowdays everything is visible on the Net, and distributing, liking, RSS, sharing & copying are part and parcel of this phenomenon.
And unfortunately issues of intellectual property and copyright breaches are also phenomenal.
With regard to posts on this blog, or Pinterest, and the like - yes we allow sharing, in fact we encourage it - but we'd like acknowledgement of where this information was obtained. 
It is just common decency to apportion credit, recognise sources, or admit the information came from elsewhere and wasn't your own work, even before entering into the murky world of what is or is not covered by copyright or intellectual property. 
And yes, permission was requested and provided to use this photograph.

Trove locations

Heaps of people know about and use Trove to access its Historic Newspapers collection, even those who would not usually frequent a library.  
Now to make it even friendlier, there is the Trove newspaper locator. It is an early experiment in providing a place-based interface to the Trove newspapers. 

Newspaper locations in the Wimmera region

Just enter a place name and state and it will attempt return the ten nearest newspaper titles that relate to that location. 
Obviously not all Australian newspapers, only those that have been digitised and loaded onto Trove.  

 For instance, none of the Edenhope newspapers are on Trove, but this tells you what papers are geographically around (including interstate) the area, which may be relevant or have reported on Edenhope happenings or events.

The locator was created by Tim Sherratt a historian in Canberra, who researches the possibilities and politics of digital cultural collections. He creates online resources relating to archives, museums and history, making them more accessible like this Trove newspaper locator.

Historians and digital

Are you doing anything important on 16th November?
How about attending -
'Bread & stones: historians using & preserving digital sources'

This Making Public Histories seminar brings together experts to discuss how the prevalence of electronic sources of information is changing the ways that historians work.

Presentations and discussion will explore the subject of discovering and using electronic data, and preserving it for further use.

The session will be chaired by PROV's Owen O'Neil, and the Speakers are:

Michael Jones from the University of Melbourne and Museum Victoria

Sarah Slade of the State Library of Victoria

Daniel Wilksch from Public Record Office Victoria

This seminar is part of the ongoing Making Public Histories series exploring public history within the framework of topical issues in Australia. It is a joint initiative between State Library Victoria, the History Council of Victoria and Monash University.

'Bread & stones' is on 6pm - 7:30 pm Wednesday 16th November, in the Village Roadshow Theatrette room at the State Library in Melbourne.
The event is free, but bookings are essential. You can register/book online
For more details phone: 03 8664 7099 or email: inquiries@slv.vic.gov.au

Soldiering on the land

A PROV “Soldier On” exhibition will be at Horsham Library from Monday October 17th until Friday 25th November, and then at St. Arnaud Library from Tuesday 29th November 7 until Friday 16th December.

Victoria sent about 90,000 men and women to serve overseas in the First World War, about 70,000 of whom survived to return home. As the war continued, the issue of repatriating returning soldiers became increasingly urgent. As well as providing War pensions and other financial assistance, State governments of the time set up ‘settlement’ schemes to support returning soldiers with work. These ambitious and controversial schemes involved subdividing large rural estates into smaller parcels of land for family farming blocks and leasing them back to discharged service-people. In Victoria around 11,000 farms were created. Each potential settler was required to be certified as qualified to apply, and if successful to remain in residence on that land for 5 years. In this way remote rural areas set aside for such settlement were guaranteed a population expansion for a number of years

Erecting a standard soldier settler home (SLV)

The First World War Soldier Settlement Scheme had been administered by the Lands Department and culminated with the majority of farmers walking off the land and ultimately a Royal Commission. The Soldier Settlement Commission (later called The Rural Finance Commission) began in 1945 to oversee the WW2 Soldier Settlement Scheme.

Oliver Telfer's (ex-22nd Battalion Gallipoli veteran) first house, Lascelles, 1922 (Vic. Museum)

The Public Record Office Victoria have digitised selected documents from Victorian Government files kept on returned World War One soldiers who were approved to lease a block of farming land in Victoria. These government records will help family and Australian history researchers understand the individual experience of a soldier settler, as well as the historical context of the Victorian Soldier Settlement Scheme.

An Exhibition Launch with a talk from the Exhibition Curator Kate Luciano of the Public Record Office Victoria, will take place at Horsham Library on Monday October 17th at 6.30pm. Bookings are essential via visiting the library or phoning 5382 5707.

Re: when Works does not work

This is a re-post of a blog from the National Library of Australia, illustrating why digital preservation and preservation of digital is so important
"When Works does not work : a journey from convicts to digital preservation"

While 1788 was ages ago, and paper resources can last for centuries, it is amazing how quickly hardware and software can date and become obsolete.

So make sure your data doesn't sink out of sight, and ustilise a digital life-preserver.

Such was life

This month the State Library’s “Our story : Such was life” is ‘The Mallee’

In Victoria’s north-west lies the Mallee; a dry, hot region featuring sand dunes, salt bushes, shrubs and a ‘strange dwarf gum tree, Eucalyptus Dumosa, usually called Mallee…The tough land and climate certainly made an impression on Dr. Neumayer, a surveyor who recounted his experiences in 1864, ‘I can readily imagine why most people speak of this part of the country with a certain dread for there is actually no grass and no water to be found’…Over the years the land has endured its share of rural disasters, namely plagues (rabbits, mice, grass hoppers), drought and dust storms. Today its 100,000 occupants mainly reside in major towns like Mildura, Swan Hill and Kerang, but the Mallee is also dotted with smaller towns with delicious names such as Patchewollock, Cowangie, Boinka, Underbool, Piangil, Walpeup and Manangatang…In 1995 the State Library received a collection of photographs from the Rural Water Corporation (State Rivers & Water Supply Commission) which span the late 19th century to 1980. The thousands of images document Victoria’s water use and include many from the Mallee and Wimmera, which feature in this post.

Unfortunately some of the records have little or no information attached, they were grouped together under titles like:  [Wimmera - Mallee District] [picture], or [Wimmera region] [picture] with Accession no(s) RWP/1855; RWP/1870; RWP/1884; RWP/1883;RWP/1906; RWP/1862; RWP/1873; RWP/1926; RWP/1895; RWP/1932; RWP/1881; RWP/1878; RWP/1871; RWP/1872; RWP/1896; RWP/1923; RWP/1860

And Summary Descriptions: Shows sand drift on a Mallee farm, crops on Mr. Black's property, sheep at drinking storage at Dumosa, crops near Murtoa, ploughing at Murtoa, Miss Lodwick in her father's vegetable garden at Timberoo, interior of wheat storage shed in Murtoa, abandoned homestead at Galah, horses drinking from bore-water trough, Consolidated State School at Murrayville, bowling green at Ouyen, sand and crops at Patchewollock.

For some, it is easy to positively identify - for example the 'ploughing at Murtoa' can only be the 'RWP 1870' as the Stick Shed is visible in the background.

Ploughing at Murtoa (RWP 1870)

Likewise 'interior of wheat storage shed in Murtoa' is 'RWP 1884' a great shot of inside the Stick Shed.

Interior of wheat storage shed in Murtoa (RWP 1884)

 

Sand drift on a Mallee farm (RWP 1906)

It gets trickier with descriptions like 'abandoned homestead at Galah'. This is possibly 'RWP 1883' if you consider the building to look abandoned or derelict. Galah was a siding on the way to Walpeup.

Possibly abandoned homestead at Galah, it is RWP 1883

Another photograph which could be 'crops near Murtoa' or 'crops on Mr. Black's property' is 'RWP 1855'.  Mr Black's property was at Timberoo - north of Patchewollck and south east of Walpeup, and south west of Ouyen. Looking at the health of the crop and the vegetation in the background, it looks more like the Wimmera, than a really good year in the Mallee.

RWP 1855

From another catalogue record comes this graphic photograph, likely to be - 'wind erosion and sand drift at Patchewollock' and the gentleman, one of the commissioners - McClelland, Greenwood, Stafford, McNab, Fitzgerald, Hall, Rogerson, Welch, Godkin or East. It was taken during Royal Commission on Water Supply in 1936.

RWP 589

Battling on the land

Victoria sent about 90,000 men and women to serve overseas in the First World War, about 70,000 of whom survived to return home. As the war continued, the issue of repatriating returning soldiers became increasingly urgent.  As well as providing War pensions and other financial assistance, State governments of the time set up ‘settlement’ schemes to support returning soldiers with work. These schemes involved subdividing large rural estates into smaller farming blocks and leasing them back to discharged service-people. In Victoria around 11,000 farms were created.

The Public Record Office Victoria have digitised selected documents from Victorian Government files kept on returned World War One soldiers who were approved to lease a block of farming land in Victoria. They are presented online as “Battle to farm : World War One Soldier Settlement records in Victoria”. These government records will help family and Australian history researchers understand the individual experience of a soldier settler, as well as the historical context of the Victorian Soldier Settlement Scheme.

There are also 6 "Soldiers' Stories" with photos and video, in addition to the paper files.

William & Rebecca

One of these is William Edward Bradshaw, who was born at Clarendon near Ballarat on 5th  June 1888. In his teen he worked as a telegram boy in Ballarat.

William married Rebecca Ralston on 21st April 1917. Their children were Edward, Shirley, Evelyn, Alfred, Dorothy (died at birth), William (died at 6 months), and William.

William enlisted with the Australian infantry in 1917 and fought in the battle of the Somme in France from 1917 until 1918. A qualified engineer before the war, he was recruited to work as a signaller or ‘sapper’ on the battlefields. Signallers were required to be proficient in morse-code signalling on flag, lamp and heliograph, as well as in map reading (note the flag patch on his right forearm). 
William had ambitions to be a farmer on his return to Australia and leased a soldier settler block at Wallaloo on the Avon Plains near St Arnaud in 1920. 
Things didn’t go as planned, despite working on a pretty good block he sold his lease. On a good year he harvested 930 bags of wheat and 800 bags of oats. Working two teams of eight horses left him physically incapacitated, and as a sufferer of acute neuritis by 1924 he had to abandon the land, and sell in November 1924.

The farmhouse at Wallaloo

William might have held onto the farm if he could have afforded to hire labour during his recovery. The costs and the poor timing of this farming scheme meant many farmers couldn’t make it work. The government’s large-scale purchase of land had inflated prices, which inflated the repayments on the leases soldier settlers signed. As the war ended the world-wide supply of agricultural goods and labour increased and therefore the value of the soldier’s investment in land and stock started to fall. Soldier settlers frequently became deeply in debt to stores and suppliers as well as to the government. William’s wheat, which in 1919 would have sold for 7.5 shillings, by 1929 was selling for 3.17 shillings. As the Great Depression set in, the value of all agricultural capital acquired by soldier-settlers was greatly diminished, and was often worth less than half its purchase value in 1929.

William’s story is one of thousands of cases whereby the blocks were transferred to other leaseholders due to either ill health or poor financial returns.

William died of pneumonia in Queensland on 7^th August 1935.

William’s story is just one from the PROV site.
You can access the individual records of thousands of  World War One returned soldiers who leased farming land across Victoria between 1919 and 1935. Enter a settler’s name in the search box or search by geographic location through the digital map, to zoom to parts of Victoria and click on a name to access their digitised official settlement record files.

The Bradshaws on the verandah

1914-1918 news

A major project commemorating World War I has digitised 216 World War One-era Victorian community newspapers and made them available online via the National Library of Australia’s Trove portal. 

Victorians everywhere can now explore the stories of their communities and family and friends who lived and fought through the Great War.
This digitised collection contains thousands of stories waiting to be found. These newspapers of the day provide, in their original format, news and public debate; letters from soldiers, sailors and nurses; death notices, images and more.
The newspapers can be freely and easily searched by anyone at anytime and anywhere, using keywords, dates or geographical regions

The digitised newspapers cover the period 1914–19. Many soldiers were still being demobbed in 1919, and mentions of celebrations for returned soldiers can be found in papers of this time. Also, many in memoriam notices can be found in papers the year after a soldier died.

The collection includes Wimmera and Southern Mallee papers: Birchip Advertiser & Watchem Sentinel, Hopetoun Courier & Mallee Pioneer, Horsham Times, Nhill Free Press, Rainbow Argus, St Arnaud Mercury, Stawell News & Pleasant Creek Chronicle, Warracknabeal Herald, West Wimmera Mail & Natimuk Advertiser, and more general papers - Stock & Land, and Weekly Times.
The digitisation of these newspapers has been supported by the State Library of Victoria, National Library of Australia, Public Libraries Victoria Network, local councils and historical societies.

Wot's in a name

What is in a name, its spelling, its pronuncation or its meaning, and how do these change over time?

The original gateway to North Brighton (the posts are over 5' high)

While out touring on the weekend there was some lively discussion as we drove along Mokepilly Road near Kewell - on how it was the same spelling as the other Mokepilly near Stawell.

Sure that it was Muck rather than Moke originally, I couldn't let it rest, so cranked up the PC to check out the Duffy map (PROVs online version of The 1862 Duffy Land Act map) fairly sure it included Muckpilly as an out-station of the Kewell Station. I was half right, the out station was "Muckbilly". 
Kewell Station was named as "Kewell or Muckbilly" and "Kewell & Muckbilly", it was settled by the Wilson brothers John & Alexander in April 1845.
And in fact the Mokepilly of Lexington Station is also spelt Mokepille in some sources.

The other bone of contention was the correct pronunciation of Darlot (of James Monckton Darlot fame) was it the French "dar-low" as with Darlot Swamp or the more common vernacular "dar-lot" as with Darlot Street. I think it is the old-timers who like to use some class and refer to the original dar-low while the lazier Aussie speech is sounding more a chopped-off dar-let.
Darlot settled Brighton with Archibald McLachlan in July 1843. It was subdivided into North and South Brighton in 1859.
The tour included a number of historically significant sites - the Kewell area, the entrance to North Brighton, and the remains of the Dooen Weir on the Wimmera River. 

Looking downstream of the Dooen Weir

Don't miss this opportunity

   
The Royal Historical Society of Victoria's Support Group is holding a seminar titled "Opportunities in information technology for historical societies" in St Arnaud next Saturday.

Topics to be covered include:

'History online : a whole new world'

'Digitise your photographic collection and reap rewards'

'Making new friends : using Facebook to take your group in exciting directions'.

More information is available at the RHSV site - www.historyvictoria.org.au/http://www.historyvictoria.org.au/

Historic images live again

Had a visit from a family who normally use the Mobile Library, and who had a couple of historic items they wished to have copied.

Firstly was a 70s vintage photo of Eddie Jaensch's original home, near Pepper's Plains. The structure was built primarily from kerosene tins. The ingenious building lined with flattened kero tins also has a row of tins to catch the rain from the galvanised iron roof where there was no spouting.
The ubiquitous re-use of readily available materials such as kerosene tins was a feature of many rustic structures on farms across the Wimmera.

Shed with rude timber poles and flattened kero tins

In addition to the photo, which the library scanned and printed for them, the family had a small strip of microfilm sent to them from the State Library of Victoria. The mircofilm was a page from an old edition of the Jeparit newspaper with an article on the history of the beautiful Edwardian Yurunga Homestead at Rainbow. Again the Library was able to copy them a full size print of the article complete with a picture of the building.

Yurunga homestead