Welcome. My name is Damian Cole and with me, Amy Ramires, and we are reference librarians in the Reader Services branch here at the National Library of Australia.

We’re here to talk to you about using the Library’s collections to research the history

of a place, the local history of a place, what we have in the collections and how to

go about using and accessing them.

I’ll just turn the camera off now so we can actually get into the presentation.

As a quick overview of what we’ll talk through today we’ll show you the variety of materials

available across the Library collections that can be used to find the history of a place

or a location, a town, a city, a suburb or a region.

Some of this may be predictable if you’ve used the Library before, particularly if you’ve

already done some research of your own history of your place already but some I hope may

be surprising and enlightening.

We’ll go through how to find items in the collection with some guidance on catalogue

searching, how to use the Library collections both at home and here in the Library reading

rooms.

One thing to say is that we’ll not be specifically looking at family history.

Family history is of course bound up in the history of a place, the history of people

living in that place and it may be that people are your primary interest of your research.

There are a whole range of resources of full family research and indeed it’s probably

the biggest single use of the Library’s collections though it is quite specialised

and can be complex.

The sorts of methods and materials we’ll be talking about will be a way to get to the

stories of families and people by getting to the story of their place, where and how

they lived.

We offer several separate learning program webinars like this focusing on family history

so I suggest you have a look at the Library’s YouTube channel and learning program calendar

for more.

The key place to start is where your place of interest is.

For me, being Canberra born and bred, this is my local place here and so the place that

I’ve researched and am familiar with.

We will use some examples of different resources we have on local history but only as an example

of the sort of resources we have at the Library and online.

For your place the range of materials and how to find and use them will be much the

same, just insert the name of your place that you want to find the history of, insert whatever

name we may be referring to as an example.

We will have varying materials on different places, maybe more or maybe less but to start

searching is the way to find out.

We want to show you with various places and examples the range of likely materials and

resources we have on the history of a place, to find the story of a place and that then

can be your place to search for.

The Library has a collection of more than just books, the collection includes imagery,

music, spoken words, objects, digital resources and more on all manner of subjects and through

this presentation we’ll show you the range of what the Library has, how to use it and

an idea of what sort of local stories you can find in this.

So to the materials in our collections starting with printed collections.

The first and obvious, books are the core of the Library collections as you would expect.

The Library has some six million books in the collection and continues to collect current

publications from Australia under the Legal Deposit Scheme that requires any book published

in Australia to be deposited in the Library.

These include ongoing publications such as journals, periodicals, magazines and newspapers

and these are increasingly being collected in a digital format.

For what we collect today some 30% of single title books and 70% of regularly published

periodicals are in a digital format.

The books are probably the best place to start researching the history of a place.

These include things such as histories and general works, biographies, government publications

and heritage reports.

family histories or books on the lives of significant personalities in a place, publications

by local historical societies including their journals and newsletters and books on community

groups and commercial businesses.

They include publications contemporary to the events of the past written by those who

actually lived through that history and transient publications that are a rich source for local

histories such as phone and business directories, the White and Yellow Pages and also even consider

fiction books set in the place that give an idea of how it was to live in that place at

that time.

But as any good librarian would say libraries are more than just books.

The National Library has a large collection of many varied formats, information presented

in all forms.

If there’s one thing I’d really like to take away from this presentation it is the

National Library and indeed any library is more than just books.

These different formats can be used to find different and unexpected stories or present

different sides to the one story and we want to take you through these different formats.

The Manuscripts Collection contains the unpublished and personal diaries, journals, letters, notebooks

and literary drafts.

We aim to collect papers and records of individuals and organisations that reflect the diversity

of Australian society, culture and environments.

It includes papers of people from ordinary settlers and workers to government and city

officials, writers and other creators and records of organisations such as community

groups, social clubs, business and enthusiast groups.

Manuscripts can tell the personal story by those who lived it.

Manuscript collections can be small, maybe just one folder of documents or very large,

perhaps hundreds of boxes.

The largest personal collection we hold is the papers of Sir Robert Menzies, over 500

boxes covering his life and career.

The archival nature of manuscripts, personal and unpublished can make using manuscripts

challenging so just be ready to spend a bit of time on them but I’m sure it will be

worth it.

All manuscript collections are catalogued, the details within them are often not.

Large collections have finding aids like a listing of the contents of the boxes.

Many finding aids are viewable online linked from a catalogue record for that collection,

others are in paper format and available here in the Library’s reading rooms.

But if not viewable online you can always ask us to email a copy of a finding aid to

you.

Do ask for assistance in using manuscript collections.

There are issues such as access conditions and copyright and fragile materials may complicate

things but they are probably one of our best used and I think most useful collections.

Some examples of the spread of things in manuscripts, it includes the papers of the personal such

as a collection of 15 letters written by Thomas Hampton to his brother during his travels

around the Victorian goldfields in 1850s, ‘60s, ‘70s.

They tell of life on the goldfields and methods of mining and farming and of his success or

lack of it.

Extremes of weather and other things he experienced from around Maryborough, Ararat and Carisbrook.

He says the general state of the colony is prosperous with plenty of gold-getting but

he also believed that wine production would soon become an important thing for the region

and so a great insight into one person’s view of their place.

There are also papers of the professional such as the records of Burnima and Bibbenluke

Stations.

Nearly 40 boxes of papers covering the operations of these two pastoral stations in the Monaro

region of southern New South Wales from 1888 to 1915, the collection includes letterbooks,

financial records, diaries, station ledgers and business correspondence.

Although they may seem dry financial records they tell the story of business and life on

the land in a way that was so common at the turn of 20th century Australia written by

those who lived there and worked the stations.

Also a wonderful way to combine it, the papers of both the professional and the everyday

such as the papers of Charles Studdy Daley.

With a 40-year career in government Daley was one of the most significant public servants

in the early development of Canberra as the capital city.

He was also a keen musician in his personal time.

This collection shows how the personal likes of a professional of such interests can start

their own stories.Amongst documents and letters on the development of the Canberra site as

the capital and pamphlets on town planning are records that Daley created and collected

on the Canberra Musical Society of which he was President for 20 years.

Things such as meeting minutes, member files, concert programs and reviews.

This tells the story of how inhabitants of Canberra lived and played in the growing city,

the social life of the city and this can be a central part of the life of that place.

Taking the Daly collection as an example can show family history can be explored through

the local history through our manuscripts collection.

In the Musical Society member files are the names of some of my family living in Canberra

in the 1930s and ‘40s.

Although the collection is not in itself a likely family history resource, and I have

no relation to Charles Daley myself, but I find part of my family in the collection and

can imagine my family living in Canberra going to concerts, enjoying the music and it seems

on at least one occasion being late with their membership dues.

This can show that a local history and then a family history can appear in a resource

you may not first think of looking in.

The papers of the person will tell the story of their life and where they lived and so

who else lived there so do think broadly for your local history research, not just in the

obvious resources you may think of first.

I’ll now hand over to Amy to continue talking through our collections.

AMY: Thank you, Damian.

So pictures are a handy resource when researching the history of a place.

Our pictures collection holds around one million photographs and artworks which document aspects

of Australian life, society, personalities and events.

Examples include portraits of individuals, images of landscapes and structures, political

cartoons and imagery of everyday life.

So I guess this poses the question, why do we collect these items and how does our collecting

differ from that of an art gallery?

Our collection of pictures is for their documentary value and not about aesthetics or artistic

value.

We do collect images from prominent artists, of course but most of our collection is based

on ordinary individuals documenting their own life experiences and their surroundings.

We also collect contemporary photographs that document today’s places, events and people

and this is done in a variety of ways whether by commission or donation.

A large portion of the Pictures Collection is digitised and viewable online and those

that aren’t can be viewed here at the Library in our Special Collections Reading Room.

So relevant to today’s discussion pictures assist us by giving an image to a story, they

show the place you are researching as it was and how it has developed so I’m going to

take you through a few examples of the types of imagery we have in our collection.

So a key purpose of the Pictures Collection is to document a changing landscape over time

to show how a place has grown and changed.

So we have a wide range of photographs of locations, scenes and buildings from around

the country and one of these wider-ranging formed collections in the Library is the Ledger

Collection.

It contains around 421 photographs which includes album prints from various photographers and

of course his own work.

The photos were taken between 1858 and 1910 in Victoria, New South Wales, Tasmania and

South Australia.

Ledger was a town planning consultant who eventually became a lecturer in town and regional

planning.

He made extensive use of the photographs to show how Australian cities and towns have

changed.

Most of the photographs in the collection are of public buildings and streets and cities

and towns such as the Royal Engineers’ Office but there are also natural landscapes depicted

in the collection such as Lavender Bay here in Sydney Harbour.

Definitely not how it looks today but it’s just an example of how these places have changed

over time.

So local photographers are important as they create a large bank of photographs documenting

a specific place.

So one of these examples is the Mandurama Collection which is a collection of over 3,000

photographs of people and daily life around Mandurama and the central New South Wales

region at the start of the 20th century.

These photographs were captured by Evan Antoni Lumme and possibly his wife, Rose.

Many of the figures that are depicted in the collection remain unidentified but also this

collection is an invaluable source for seeing parts of Australia during the Victorian and

post-federation eras with few of these types of collections of this size surviving to this

day.

Another collection I’ll mention is the Jeff Carter so Jeff Carter was a freelance photographer

and journalist who was self-proclaimed as the photographer of the poor and the unknown.

There are over 600 photographs in this collection with most of the photos being individuals

who had recorded oral history interviews with him.

There are photographs of sceneries and cities and regional towns in most of the states and

territories and Jeff is widely regarded as one of Australia’s most influential documentary

photographers as his span of photographs has created a significant visual record of Australian

life.

So artworks, while allowing a more imaginative expression of place, are also helpful for

helping us understand a picture how it once was.

This could be especially helpful for places that no longer exist at this current time.

So Glenelg Hotel and the flagstaff by John Michael Skipper.

So John Michael Skipper was an artist and also a solicitor and he was known for having

a natural skill and painted various scenes in South Australia and the goldfields in Victoria.

His sketches and paintings of built and natural environments have been credited as holding

great artistic and historical value.

But I also wanted to bring your attention to an artwork that links to the Thomas Hampton

letters Damian mentioned before.

This sketch is of the Mt Alexander goldfields and while this isn’t an area that is connected

to Hampton’s story it reflects on how we can use multiple formats to tell us the same

story.

So doing a comparative analysis of different formats allows us to understand the same place

in different ways so connecting a written description of a past time to a more visual

description of place.

Of course our national collection is just that, a national documentation of the varied

lives of our nation’s people.

So our collection of portraits and documentation and events across the country must try to

reflect this diversity.

Alongside oral history interviews, which I’ll be talking about in a few moments, we also

have a collection of individual portraits from those who have been interviewed.

So Bob Gebhardt is one of these individuals.

Gebhardt recalls his life as a drover and his early days in Broken Hill in New South

Wales.

He speaks about this relationships with his Aboriginal and Afghan mates and co-workers

and his worker as a master welder of international standing.

Portraits of individuals can connect us to place through the people they are depicting

such as understanding prominent industries and the area.

But our collection also holds photographs of events in the life of a place from the

ceremonial to the everyday.

One of the photos I have depicted here is a group of people in a semiformal attire at

an event in Newcastle.

So the picture reflects a few things.

This picture is part of a newspaper photographs archive, The Newcastle Morning Herald and

The Miner’s Advocate archive.

So it depicts the importance of these archives in telling everyday stories.

Another thing that I want to point out is many of our photos such as this one are of

unknown subjects so many subjects in our collection remain unidentified.

We’re constantly searching to improve our descriptions of collection material so if

you can establish who they are or where they are in these photographs definitely get in

contact with us and we can improve our descriptions and that in turn will assist future researchers

and would be immensely valuable.

Okay so moving on to maps and the collection that I feel has the most to say about local

places and history.

So our maps collection in total includes around one million maps which includes different

types highlighting topographic surveys, land ownership, design and development, road and

tourist maps and also mapping from the air.

The range of maps we hold spans from European maps and their assumption of a great southern

land mass up to the satellite and digital datasets that are being produced today.

So maps gives us a complete picture of the layout of the landscape and how people have

lived on the land.

They give us a sense of place to a story and gives us a physical way to show that place.

So many of our maps in our collection are fully digitised online and can be downloaded

from Trove.

The different maps we’ll be talking about are all covered in more depth in our online

research guides as well so if you’re finding you’re having difficulties finding relevant

maps in our collection or just want to understand them a bit better then they are an excellent

resource to go to.

A well known and key resource for understanding local history and family history are land

ownership maps, typically referred to as cadastral or parish maps.

These are considered a strength of the Library’s map collection mostly due to the amount of

parish maps we hold but coverage and dates do vary between different states.

Recently the Library has undergone a project which aims to digitise these cadastral and

parish maps.

Thousands of maps from New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland have been digitised and placed

online and these days also run by a similar system so they're separated by counties and

then subdivided into parishes.

So for the ACT, South Australia, Western Australia, Tasmania and Northern Territory they all have

varying systems that they use.

This is especially the case for South Australia, Northern Territory and WA as not all of the

states are separated into counties, parishes or hundreds with this separating concentrated

to the higher populated areas.

Wikipedia has some handy pages which talks through how land was divided across Australia

and the differing systems each state and territory used.

If you’re also looking for more detailed deposited plans of towns and suburbs these

can be found through the relevant land registry department of your state and territory.

For example in New South Wales that would be the Land Registry Services and their Historical

Land Record Viewer which is online.

So land sales plans so these are posters advertising blocks of land or sites for sale for a variety

of reasons, whether it be commercial or personal.

These can include sales that did occur or plans that didn’t progress any further.

So these posters can be used as early evidence for prices of blocks of land, its boundaries

and past built environments and any eventual changes to the roads or land usages.

The National Library holds around 100,000 land sales plans in the collection.

Most of our collection records the auctions of eastern Australia from around the 1840s

to the 1930s.

I guess the most known function of maps, and one that should come to no surprise, is that

maps highlight the physical landscape of the land as it once was and how it has changed.

So topographic maps both highlight the natural and manmade environments of a place.

So the Library holds around 200,000 post 1990s Australian topographic maps which have been

published by both national and state mapping and surveying authorities.

So I’m going to switch over to Trove just to highlight the differences between these

two topographic maps.

So one of them is a 1976 version which is highlighted here and the other is from 1989

so there’s just over 10 years’ difference between the two.

So I’ll start with 1976 so as you can see all the vineyards around here, there’s quite

a few of them, still lots of grassy areas along here and a big pine plantation up the

top.

So not a lot of urban development going on, it’s still quite a natural landscape and

we jump over to 1989 and you can already see all these built-up areas starting to form

here where it once was grassy and a natural landscape.

Very lightly you can see the size of some vineyards shrinking over on this side here.

But another thing I will point out is that icons in maps do change over time so while

in the 1976 version the pine plantations are noted with this area prominent dark green

icon, that completely changes in the 1989 version where it’s more of a light green.

So it's pretty important to just bear in mind those differences that can occur in maps.

So I’ll just go back to the PowerPoint now and we’ll move on to aerial photography.

So the Maps Collection includes aerial photography conducted by the Commonwealth Government for

surveying and planning purposes for the 1930s to the 1980s.

All Australian states are represented in our collection including Papua New Guinea and

Antarctica which amounts to around 800,000 photographs.

The aerial photography is a perfect way to see the growth of the cities and towns and

changes to the landscape.

They were used by city planners and other professions such as environmental resource

management, ecology, archaeology and the military.

Unfortunately, most of this collection is only viewable at the Library but flight diagrams

are available online through Geoscience so you can figure out what series of aerial photographs

will show the area you want.

So a supporting resource that researchers find key in using maps are gazetteers.

Think of it like a geographical directory.

These are often used in conjunction with maps because of the explicit written detail they

go into about a specific place.

Older gazetteers include information about its location, latitude and longitude, the

geographical profile of the place, the main industries and commerce, the population count

and even things like how regular the post deliveries are.The origin of the locality’s

name is also an important bit of information that gets mentioned in these guides.

But changing or variant placenames can be a confusing thing when researching a place

so examples of some placename changes in the past include Darwin which was once known as

Palmerston, many placenames in South Australia during world war one as they were of German

origin.

So I thought I’d also mention that the Bailliere’s New South Wales gazetteer for 1866 is digitised

online through Library of Congress so that is also a handy guide to go to if you can’t

make it onsite and view these in person.

So moving on to oral history and folklore our oral history interviews document life

stories from people across Australia with different and somewhat similar stories relating

to our cultural, intellectual and social aspects of life.

Our earliest interviews date back to the 1950s but can discuss events decades before that.

Our interviews can be a part of a project focusing around a unified thing or they can

be singular.

Oral histories are a detailed oral picture of a place through reminiscence and can also

be a chance to hear about details of places that are underrepresented in the historical

record.

So many of our interviews are available to listen to online and have written transcripts.

As these collections could hold sensitive information they might also have access conditions

so you will need to contact us if that is the case.

Some might be available for access by getting written permission but some might not be accessible

for the interviewee’s lifetime.

So I just wanted to point out really quickly a few of the prominent collections so Wendy

Lowenstein’s 1930s depression collection so this collection comprises of 172 tapes

of recollections of life during the depression in the 1930s and these were recorded by Lowenstein

in 1972 to 1976.

Around 68 of these interviews are available online.

The interviewees all lived in all the states and included bagmen, shearers, station hands,

canecutters, builders, plumbers, a whole range of occupations.

Some of the examples of specific place descriptions relate to land prices during the depression,

the rising popularity of places due to low rents and the origins of particular stores

in townships.

I also point out the Drovers oral history project so this is a collection of around

140 interviews with around 25 of them available online.

Most interviewees lived in Queensland and the recordings were made in Charters Towers,

Mt Isa, Cloncurry, Emerald, McKay, Bundaberg and there were also other recordings made

in Alice Springs, Adelaide and Canberra.

So onto newspapers.

Newspapers are an effective form of detailing local history as they discuss stories at the

time they are happening.

Local newspapers are an important source of information on any town or city as they document

events that occurred in that place as well as people that lived there.

The National Library’s collection holds the major daily newspapers as well as reginal,

local and community newspapers.

So most Australian newspapers pre-1955 are digitised on Trove, after this it can get

tricky as to whether you can find newspapers online or if they can only be viewed onsite

at a library.

For newspapers not on Trove and for post-1955 papers these are most likely on microfilm

and print.

Microfilm is the preferred method for viewing these papers as they are more robust than

the typical newspaper.

For newspapers around the 1990s onwards newspapers can be accessed through our subscribed online

databases such as NewsBank and the Australian New Zealand Reference Centre.

These can be accessed at home by logging in with your library card but this’ll be discussed

in a few moments by Damian.

The National Library has presented other learning programs focusing on newspapers which will

provide more in-depth information.

This section was just to give you a brief overview of how newspapers document local

history and a brief overview on the different ways you can access newspapers in our collection.

So now I'm going to hand it back over to Damian who’s going to discuss a few more of our

collections and how you can go about finding them.

Thank you, Damian.

DAMIAN:So to our music collections.

As well as reading and listening to history you can also sing to it.

The Library has a collection of printed sheet musical scores, some 300,000 in all, in a

range of musical styles.

Music and lyrics can tell so much of the story of a place.

Music served as a form of advertisement, a celebration or describing an event or local

personality.

A song about a place can really show what people thought about that place or what that

place wanted people to think about it.

Many songs about Canberra in the early 20th century seemed to be trying to convince Australians

to accept the new city as their capital so perhaps a little bit of that Canberra cringe

that all of us Canberrans perhaps still feel today.

Many of the older musical scores are digitised and can be seen online.

To ephemera.

Now ephemera is a term given to printed materials that were intended to be short-term or immediate

use.

They are ephemeral, seen as minor things to inform for a moment but we have collected

and kept them as they are largely the everyday documents of people’s lives that tell the

stories of these passing events.

The ephemera collection includes advertising material, postcards, posters, trade catalogues,

performance programs, tourist and travel guides and scrapbooks.

All these can tell a story of a place and the people living in it as they are the material

produced by a local group or about a local event.

Not all items are individually catalogued but they do have subject area catalogue records

and descriptive lists that can be seen through our website.

They are often grouped by who produced them or under very broad subject headings so this

is in a way a bit like manuscripts, a bit of searching may be needed to find what you’re

looking for or just something unexpected that is informative.

Again many ephemera items are digitised and viewable online, not always entire contents

of a collection.

Ephemera can be based around an event in the calendar of a place such as a festival or

formal dinner of a social group or be advertising for a place such as here, the El Dorado Motel,

the first motel in Surfers Paradise.

We are currently collecting ephemera around the COVID-19 pandemic to document the day-to-day

experiences of Australians living through this event as this event that we are living

through now will become part of our history that researchers in the future will turn to

the Library to find out more about.

So to websites.

A new resource launched by the Library just last year is the Australian Web Archive, the

AWAarchives.au domain name websites from 1996 onwards.

This covers government, commercial and personal websites.

It’s basically a snapshot of each page within a website as it existed at that time.

The AWA is accessible via Trove and so searches of Trove will include the AWA in results.

Websites can be a source of historical information as has already been compiled and published

online.

Older versions of existing websites can be seen as well as websites that may no longer

be active.

Just like collecting books that have been published the Library now aims to collect

websites that have been published online, the new way to tell old stories or to document

the history of a place from now into the future.

While all websites can be searched for there are groupings of selected websites by theme

including one on local history.

For example there are 35 different websites created for the 2013 centenary of Canberra

that have been archived that tell the story about how Canberra celebrated our local history

as well as a collection of 41 websites devoted to exploring and describing historical villages

around Australia.

So while that was a quick overview of the variety of materials in the collection that

can be used to research the local history of a place there are many other ways to find

that information online.

I want to go to a website to show you some of these online resources that can be accessed

through us and used for researching local history so I’ll click through to our National

Library homepage.

So on our Library homepage one thing to look at is research guides.

We publish a number of research guides online to aid in researching particular subjects

and parts of the Library collection.

You can see this through Using the Library and under our Research Tools and Resources,

research guides.

Listed by various subjects these research guides list useful resources, provide guidance

on using the cataloguing collections and show what resources exist beyond the Library.

They are a very good first step to researching almost any topic.

Guides that are relevant to local history include guides to Australian cemetery records,

guides to topographic maps and maps of family historians and many guides on family history

research and the use of birth, death and marriage records.

I go back to our homepage to another option to Blogs, to our Stories and into Blogs.

Staff and researchers produce blogs that are another source of information on what is in

the collections, the stories that can be told and how to use the Library collections.

New blogs are regularly published on all aspects of the Library collection and how to use the

Library.

To probably one of our most used resources, and certainly if you’re not able to come

visit us in Canberra the most important one perhaps, is our eResources so click through

from eResources to take you into our eResources portal.

What we refer to as our eResources are subscription of websites containing online journals, databases,

newspapers and eBooks.

If you’re logging into our eResource you need to accept the terms and conditions but

things such as Australian online journals and other publications on history and society

can all be relevant to researching local histories.

The first thing to do if you are trying to get into our eResources is to log in with

your National Library card and I’ll talk a bit about that shortly.

But once you’ve logged in with that card it opens up the content of a lot of things

you can see online.

Search for content within a database perhaps but the best way to perhaps start is to browse

the resources that we have.

A list of the sorts of resources we offer but also the basic subjects as a way if you

want to get started.

There are three basic categories of eResources to be aware of and having a look at these

little icons that appear before each one of them.

Free websites that are basically freely available websites that we just link to because it’s

particularly useful or perhaps hard to find, licensed eResources.

These are the ones that you can log into from home with your Library card so just look for

the one that has the small little key icon.

There are also a lot of onsite resources with the little National Library of Australia building

icon, are ones that can only be accessed here in the Library building.

But you can see even from this starting list there’s quite a variety there so from home

always look for these little key icons, these are things you can access from home.

So in talking through the various resources we use the question of course you always have

next is how to find things.

So from our Library homepage here our catalogue is just under the top banner so click on Catalogue.

The online catalogue is the first and best place to begin.

It’s basically the database of what is in the Library collections.

I’ll try and give a very basic overview of using the catalogue with some search tips.

Given how much there is you may want to find and the number of different ways to find the

same thing it’s a bit hard to get a complete this is all you need to know-type description

so the best advice I can give is to explore the catalogue.

Don’t assume you’ll find the perfect item straight away, the more you look the more

you’ll find and so be patient.

There are many different ways to search for things in our catalogue, perhaps the first

if you know a particular book that you want to find is just to search for the book title.

I’ll have a search for one that I’ve used a lot for my own local place history and in

knowing the title you just type in the title name and click find.

It’ll then bring up a list of results that match that search but the first one is the

book that I was after, Canberra following Griffin which is a really good history of

the early development of Canberra.

On a record such as this there’s already some things you can start to explore further

with.

Looking at these subject headings will effectively be links to groups of items on that same subject

so even if you find just one item that you think is going to be useful that’s the way

to then look at the subject headings, it has to find what else is on that same subject.

So again if you get stuck, just finding one item of use is really the best way to get

into things.

Another simple way to search is by keyword which is probably the broadest way to search

so I’ll have another go at that as an example.

The simplest way is just the placename that you’re interested in and history.

This is going to get a lot of different results but there are ways to narrow things down into

things that are more useful for you.

If you get too much to begin with you can use things such as these narrow search options,

just select just a particular format within that great range of things that we’ve been

talking about.

If you just want to have a look at things that are online and easy to see rather than

print materials or again those subject headings to see in this large result what are the related

subjects and by clicking on these you’ll get into those little smaller groups of items

that may be a bit easier to comprehend.

You can also arrange your search results in different ways.

The date oldest to newest is probably the best, particularly if you’re looking at

things such as historical books but if can also break up what you’re looking at by

date as well.

So don’t be put off by perhaps getting too many things in the first result, there are

all sorts of different ways that you can then break down that large list of items so things

may be a little bit more specific for you.

So these are examples of where we’ve digitised the map, the book, the oral history recording

that you may be looking at.

Things that are viewable online will have this icon on the left to click on and that

will then take you into the actual digitised view of the book where you can effectively

then read the book as it were in front of you.

To search for general works about the history of a place a good way to use is the browse

function.

You can’t browse a book yourself in a Library collection but you can browse lists of books

that have a catalogue.

So I’m going to the Browse alphabetically option, select what you want to browse subjects

and then type in a subject and for local histories the best format to follow is the placename,

the state and history.

So there you can see how it’s already starting to bring up that browse option.

By clicking on the top one you’ll see this kind of arranged list of subject headings

and by clicking on one of them you’ll get to the actual records of the books that match

that heading.

So always try that simple format of placename, state and history as the best way to get started.

In searching for a placename if the first result doesn’t get too much then think about

searching a bit broader for that same area such as think about searching for the region

rather than the actual placename itself.

You may find that there are items that are a little bit broadly discovered rather than

just under that one location.

Or think of a nearby placename or a shire name or the next neighbouring town as other

ways to get to perhaps some material about the particular item place that you want to

have a look at.

But this basic structure is the one to use, the placename, the state as an abbreviation

and history as a subject to look for.

You can also search for personal names such as a significant individual or your own family

member perhaps or family name and also look for property names.

If we can try one that we’ve had a look at before and that’s actually the item that

I showed you, some of those station books and you can see other things related to that

station name you're looking for.

While history is perhaps the best subject to be looking for from the start there are

all sorts of other subject headings that may be useful for finding out about the history

of a place, things such as city planning, description, travel, genealogy and social

life.

So using that same structure of placename, state and a subject, something like social

life and customs will bring up another grouping of things that may be useful to find out about

the history of that place.

But some basic advice on using the catalogue is to be patient, be persistent, think laterally

if the first result you get doesn’t get something that you want and if you find a

thing that is a match for what you want explore further from there through those subject headings.

There is a help page on the catalogue with tips for using the catalogue and also various

how-to videos that can be used to actually show how to search through our catalogue.So

I’ll just get back to our presentation.

The key thing in actually using the Library’s resources is to have a National Library card.

While you don’t need a card to search our online catalogue or to view digitised collection

items the card is used to log into our eResources to see that online content and if you come

to the Library building in Canberra, use to request and view items here in the Library

building . To get a Library card, apply online through our website to get a Library card

and we will then post the card out to you.

So once you find what you want what now?

If you're not in Canberra to visit the Library building there are still several ways to access

our collection.

As we’ve said through each of these formats many items are digitised and can be seen online

through our catalogue, almost six million images and we are still digitising more all

the time.

From home the Library card can be used to access eResources, online journals, eBooks

and newspapers online.

While you can’t exactly borrow books yourself from our collection we can loan many of our

books to other libraries through the interlibrary loan service.

If you find something we have in our collection go to your local public library and ask if

they can request an interlibrary loan and the book may be able to be sent there for

you to use.

You can also use our paid copying service called Copies Direct.

Using this you can order copies of items in our collection as digital scans or paper photocopies.

There may be some limits on what can be copied and how you can use it because of copyright,

access conditions on manuscripts and oral histories, and sometimes items may be just

too fragile to copy.

But submit an order for what you want and our copying staff will check all of this and

let you know what is possible.

Of course there is always Trove as I’m hoping many of you may have already used this.

Trove is like an online discovery service that combines the online catalogues of libraries,

archives, museums and galleries across Australia.

It will show you which collecting institution has a particular item so if you find something

in our collection you like search Trove and you may be able to find another library closer

to you that has the same thing.

In looking beyond just the Library for local history you should also be trying your state

library, state archives and a local public library of the place you’re looking at.

These will have many things that we ourselves may not have in our collection.

Also a local historical society is a great resource to try.

These are great sources of local information but as they often have very limited resources

or are staffed by volunteers they may not have as much of an online presence as other

sources.

If you’re able to visit Canberra and come to the Library building to use the collection

here we do operate a little differently to most libraries you may have been to.

Our collection is not all on shelves in a room where you can just browse along yourself.

With 11 million items there are just too many to have in one room to let you wander around

so our collection is kept in what we call closed stacks.

Material needs to be requested by you for us to bring it from these closed stacks to

you to use.

You’ll need a Library card for this, to log into our online catalogue and submit requests

for what you want to see and we then deliver that request material to a reading room for

you to use.

Library cards can also be used to pay for photocopying and printing in the reading rooms.

So you have a taste there of the range of materials of Library collections on the subject

of local history in a range of different formats and different ways to present information

and stories.

We hope you can see beyond just the books, there are many other formats to search and

use when researching the local history of a place and to find the story of that place,

how to use the catalogue, how to use the reading rooms and access the collection from home

and what our services are.

For any queries on using the Library such as searching for material, how to research

a subject, how to get copies or permissions, how to access something you’ve found you

can submit an online enquiry form or a phone call through our Ask a Librarian service and

this is available from our homepage.

We can’t do all your research for you but we can guide you on your search and explain

how to use our collections.

We are here to help you on your research to find the history of your place and the stories

that that place can have.

The Library that we have here is full of such stories to uncover and thank you from both

of us.