Noel Butlin and ANU Archives Tour July 2017

Maggie Shapley (ANU archivist) led the tour of the  ANU and Noel Butlin Archives  on 26 July 2017.  A small crowd of librarians and records managers turned up to explore the repository situated over the  Parkes Way Tunnel.  Maggie explained that  the Noel Butlin Archives centre had originally been designed as an underground carpark so it is not designed in its floor loadings to carry the heavy compactuses of  purpose built  Archives. The staff have done a  great job of storing the  various collections in archival  quality  storage boxes and  making do with the shelves they had .  Various numbering  systems has been  changed and started  by different archivists. Under Maggie a major achievement has been pulling of all these diverse systems into the one relational discovery system.

 Maggie and  Sarah Lethbridge the Senior Archivist had gone to some pains to  draw out  interesting items in their collections to  show  us on the tour and  we all enjoyed the show and tell. The Noel Butlin Archives is a mixture of company records and union records so many family historians  use the Noel Butlin Archives to find out about their ancestors involvement in   certain unions or  firms  as well as academic researchers doing formal research into  such organisations. The range of topics researched include industrial relations, immigration, working women, indigenous employment, architecture, economic history, family history, social history in Australia and the Pacific, and on particular industries such as agriculture, timber, shipping, mining, brewing, advertising and finance The ANU Archives holds corporate as well as personal papers of ANU academics. Several interesting collection items were  the   research and mapping of the many pubs in Sydney based on the Tooth company records and the  pamphlets and photos of the  spartan ANU campus and  sparse settlement of Canberra of the 1940s used  to market ANU  and to entice British academics to migrate to  Canberra. To me personally a very interesting  collection were the unions banners  used by various trade unions as part of their Mayday celebrations. I was  also intrigued to see the  very old  minute books of   one of Australian’s earliest trade unions ,  the stone masons of New South Wales. The  collection of old sporting trophies from the old forestry school reminded me of the stories my mother an old Canberra girl use to narrate.  Learning about how they physically   treat the collection by freezing  to  keep pests like silver fish out was another interesting aspect. It certainly beats reading about such things . The  physical process of digitising various  memorable papers and  other items in the collection was an eye opener for me.  Afterwards all of us remarked how much we had gained from going on the  tour and discovering for ourselves the ANU and Noel Butlin Archives.

Kym Holden library leader and volunteer 2017

Kym HOLDEN tribute 2017

Kym Holden, our colleague and stalwart of the Canberra library community recently retired. Kym has been a pillar of the library community from many years and often we have genuinely appreciated her contribution. Kym has been one of the quiet achievers who volunteers and is volunteered to work on many activates and does so very competently and quietly. Her strategic insight, sound approach and calm leadership skills have been much appreciated by ALIA colleagues throughout her career in special libraries.

Kym Holden has been an Associate Member of Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA) since 1996.

Her notable contributions have been many and varied

• She has been an active participant in ALIA Canberra groups and events over these 21 years and remains on the national ALIA Special Library and Information Services Advisory Committee.

• Kym was also a valued member of the Charles Sturt University ALIA course accreditation panel in 2016.
• Kym by her work for ALIA and AGLIN has encouraged capacity building and knowledge sharing for library staff across the ACT including:
• contribution to Information Awareness month which has effectively raised the profile of libraries within the information professions and supported many professional development activities
• Contributed to the ACTive ALIA committee by organising events
• Providing mentoring and support to many of her professional colleagues.

Kym has been the team leader of a number of government libraries over a span of years.

She has achieved much such as:

• considerable achievements in the workplace including delivery of new online training services, development of library intranets and information skills in the department, reflecting extraordinarily well on the skills and knowledge of the profession

• willingly sharing with colleagues her innovative library practices.

In addition to her work in the ACT, Kym has made a major contribution to Australian government libraries through her leadership in the Australian Libraries Government Information Network (AGLIN).

Kym was a volunteer with AGLIN for over a decade where she led and contributed to both the Executive Committee and the AGLIN Training and Development Committee.

She has been a passionate supporter of Government Libraries both through her ideas and contributions in advancing the learning within Government Libraries and also in mentoring new committee members. 

Her contributions to AGLIN include:

• As the longest serving Executive Committee member, Kym developed a wealth of corporate knowledge which was invaluable for assisting with the decision making within the Committee.
• Kym’s dedication in personally supporting the more general tasks of assisting at Forum registrations, being the AGLIN chair of ceremonies at AGLIN Forums and events.
• Kym was a volunteer with AGLIN for over a decade where she led and contributed to both the Executive Committee and the AGLIN Training and Development Committee.

Government librarians and information specialists owe her a debt of gratitude.

ACT ALIA wishes her the very best in her retirement.

Linked data: time to act

More than 50 librarians, archivists, information professionals and interested community members attended a presentation on 20^th February by Karen Smith Yoshimira, Senior Project Officer, OCLC on Linked data - bringing the world closer together.

The full presentation is available online Linked data: bringing the world closer

Karen started by reminding us that in 2006, Tim Berners-Lee published a blog post in the w3c web space. It featured an image that became an icon of the linked data movement: the coffee cup with the five stars. She drew our attention to two points:

*The text:  make links to things. Use a special kind of identifier [called a URI] to name things; include more URIs so people can discover other things. URIs: Identifiers that are persistent, unique, resolved with existing web protocols.

*The insight: This appears to be describing hypertext, but it is different from the web we know. It is about things in the world. URIs are collection points for information about them. By interacting with the web, we are getting information about objects, and not just reading documents.

She noted that from the research of Lynn Connaway (The Library in the life of the user) “Students’ information searches have evolved from browsing books in the stacks to submitting online queries to Google because is quicker.”

Taking a deep dive into Google knowledge Card and WorldCat she explored how unleashing bibliographic information can add to the user journey increasing visibility of works and linking translations.

The linked data sites mentioned in the OCLC 2015 International Linked Data Survey for Implementers provided a rich set of examples that she discussed including Europeana, the Digital Public Library of America, National Diet Library projects, German National Library projects and Pratt Institute Linked Jazz project.

Her summary remarks inspired us all to look at how we can use linked data to achieve greater visibility and access to the digitized resources from the GLAM sector:

•       Linked data can bring the world closer together through a worldwide web of data

•       It will likely take years for library data to be ingested in the websites where information seekers live and learn

•       Library data can help bridge the world across both domains and languages through more linked and actionable data

•       And that’s a Good Thing

Roxanne Missingham

University Librarian (Chief Scholarly Information Services)

The Australian National University