Archive for July, 2010

Looking for old cartoons?

Continuing on with our selection of reference enquiries…we’re not always able to provide the answer to a client – in which case we do try to suggest other avenues of research, though sometimes these are unavoidably arduous options. Q: I’m seeking a copy of a WEG cartoon that was done for the Lorne Surf Life [...]

Accomplishment of Chinese Serial Card Catalogue Conversion Project

A great Library milestone was achieved in the Asian Collections Branch in June: the complete recataloguing of over 2500 Chinese periodicals and newspapers previously entered only in the card catalogue. These titles are now fully catalogued online with all relevant holdings and location details. Their internal acquisitions records, the Visible Index cards, are no longer [...]

Objectively speaking

The National Library has an interesting and diverse collection of weird and wonderful objects originating from the earliest voyages to Australia and the Pacific to more recent events. These objects may have been acquired due to their association with prominent people, for example Captain Cook’s bureau and Ben Hall’s revolver, or have more humble origins [...]

A photographers life

After spending the best part of my working life as a photographer, I have decided to pull the plug. It was late January 1981 when I entered this building (National Library of Australia) thinking that I knew quite a lot about photography; after all I spent five long years studying photography and worked as a [...]

Saving the Sievers Archive for future generations

For a number of years one of the big ticket items included in the National Library’s digitisation program has been the Wolfgang Sievers Archive. It’s not just one of the most prestigious collections in the library, it’s also one of the biggest with more than 60,000 items in total. This includes many boxes of small [...]

Helping libraries in Myanmar

The NLA recently donated books to the Myanmar Book Centre to distribute to Burmese libraries devasted by Cyclone Nargis in 2008. Myanmar Book Centre has found a great way to make the best possible use of books donated by overseas aid projects.

FAQs – they may answer more enquiries than you think!

Many of our repeatedly asked enquiries are published on our website as FAQs.  These range from library services type questions, how to questions, to more in depth but frequently asked reference enquiries.  Clients visiting the Ask a librarian webpage are asked if they have first checked our FAQs before submitting their enquiry. However, we still often [...]

WA newspaper heritage preserved

Regional Australian newspapers are valued for the unique record of life in their communities which they provide. From local news to local personalities, sport to fashions, these newspapers shed light on the life and occupations of the people who inhabited these places. Sometimes the only newspaper circulating in the area at the time, they provide [...]