National Library of Australia - Gateways

ISSN 1443-0568
No. 30
November 1997


CONTENTS

NLA representation overseas

The collections

NLA and Australian libraries

Events

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National Library of Australia Gateways is issued bimonthly and prepared by the Services to Libraries Division of the National Library of Australia. Subscriptions are free. Back issues are at http://www.nla.gov.au/pub/gateways


'Captive Lives: Looking for Tambo and His Companions'

Walter Palm Island (left) with Paul House, a representative of the Ngunnawal people in the ACT, at the opening of the exhibition

The international cooperation of more than 30 archives, libraries and museums, together with the guidance and support of North Queensland Aboriginal communities and the commitment of a remarkable scholar, Dr Roslyn Poignant, has allowed the National Library to open a ground-breaking exhibition of material never before seen in Australia. It tells a shocking Australian story.

In 1883 an American showman removed nine Aborigines from North Queensland for display by Barnum and Bailey's Circus. They were stared at by thousands in the fairgrounds and dime museums of America. On show at a new town every few days, and promoted to audiences as savage cannibals, they were plunged into a world of spectacle and exploitation. Then, from being sideshow curiosities of the American circus, they travelled on to be measured, studied and photographed by the anthropological societies of Europe. One by one they died.

In 1892 the same man returned to North Queensland and enticed away another eight people, of whom only two are known to have returned home.

Although little trace of Tambo and his companions remains in Australia, a decade of research by Dr Poignant has recovered much of their story. To the National Library's considerable resources on relations between colonists and indigenous peoples in nineteenth-century Australia, she has added a saga extracted from scores of overseas museums and libraries. One of the most emotional moments of her work was her involvement in the identification of Tambo, the first of the nine to die, whose mummified body was discovered in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1993. Tambo's return and his burial on Palm Island, off the Queensland coast near Townsville, close the exhibition.

'Captive Lives' was opened on 3 November at the National Library by the Governor-General, Sir William Deane and will continue until March 1998. Walter Palm Island, the traditional owner of Palm Island, and his brothers contributed to the opening of this unique travelling exhibition by performing a ceremony which last occurred at the release of Tambo's spirit in Cleveland. Together with senior representatives from the ACT's Ngunnawal people, Sir William Deane, and Roslyn Poignant, they completed the official opening ceremony by placing their hand prints on the final panels.

'Captive Lives' will tour to museums, galleries and libraries in remote areas of Queensland before concluding at the Museum of South Australia in mid 1999.

Tribute to 'a greying cherub': Michael Leunig

They came from everywhere when the creator of Mr Curly arrived in town!

A crowd of more than 500 visited the National Library on Sunday 5 October when the Friends of the Library celebrated the life and work of the much-loved Australian cartoonist, Michael Leunig. The building's theatre filled rapidly to maximum capacity which meant that a special viewing area had to be set up to accommodate the remainder of the enthusiasts.

Richard Walsh, Managing Director of Australian Consolidated Press, started the proceedings with an a series of humorous anecdotes about his working relationship with Leunig at the Nation Review, later paying tribute to the cartoonist's ability to give us insightful glimpses of human nature. Leunig's typically warm and whimsical response reflected his gentle personality, prompting Norma Allen of the Canberra Times to describe him as 'a greying cherub'.

The Chair of the Friends, Joy Hooton, presented Leunig with the celebratory award and launched the charmingly designed publication

A Celebration: Michael Leunig -a selection by Australian personalities such as Rolf Harris, Phillip Adams, Alison Croggan and Andrew Denton of their favourite Leunig offerings. Later, a line of enthusiastic fans spiralled around the National Library foyer eager to congratulate and thank Leunig, ask for an autograph and, if they were lucky, collect a personalised cartoon.

The Celebration is an annual award given by the Friends of the National Library to a writer, publisher, printer, designer, illustrator or editor for their contribution to Australian book culture. Previous recipients include Ruth Park, Geoffrey Serle, Alec Bolton and Morris West.

Copies of A Celebration: Michael Leunig can be bought from the Friends office for $9.95. Please call (02) 6262 1698.

[Illustration 1, p.2]

Left: Michael Leunig enjoying the occasion.
Below: Television Sunset reveals a less sanguine view of the world. Cartoon published with the permission of the artist and The Age newspaper

[Illustration 2, p.2]



An invitation to the dance


[Illustration 1, p.4] [Illustration 2, p.4]

National Library designer, Kathy Jakupec (right) and (left) her award-winning invitation

The skill of National Library designer, Kathy Jakupec, was recognised recently when she took out a first-for best invitation-in the 1997 Museum Publication Design Awards. Kathy won in category A, competing against every major exhibiting institution in Australia, with her very elegant black and white invitation to the National Library travelling exhibition, 'Dance People Dance'. The award was presented at the 4th National Conference of Museums Australia Inc., held in Darwin in September.

Kathy has left her mark of excellence on many National Library exhibitions, publications and catalogues over the past decade. In addition to the award described above, there were also two honorable mentions this year-for catalogues to accompany the National Portrait Gallery's exhibitions, 'Decade of Flair: The Seventies' and 'A Face in the Crowd'.

Customer Service Charter draft released

As signalled in the last issue of Gateways (no. 29, September 1977), the National Library has just released the consultative draft of its Customer Service Charter, setting out the organisation's key service obligations. We have decided at this stage that it will be more effective to have a single charter, rather than two as suggested in September.

[Illustration 3, p.4]

Your opinion on the charter is very important to us. The feedback and comment we receive will help ensure that we have provided you with useful information, nominated the most important services and that we are providing them in the time you require.

The draft Charter is now on our Web site at: http://www.nla.gov.au/survey/cschart/ . If you would prefer us to send you a print copy please phone (02) 6262 1666 or write to the Assistant Director, Executive Support Branch at the National Library of Australia, CANBERRA, ACT, 2600.

Support for community heritage projects

[Illustration, p.5]

Senator Margaret Reid (centre) and the National Library's Dr Jan Lyall (front left) with representatives of this year's community heritage grant winners

Twenty-two community heritage organisations from every Australian State and Territory have received grants totalling $70 000 to assist them during the coming year with the preservation of documentary heritage collections in their custody.

Representatives of these organisations were presented with their grants by the President of the Senate, Margaret Reid, at a ceremony at the National Library on 2 October. The Community Heritage Grants Program, which is administered by the National Library, provides grants of up to $5,000 to assist in the preservation of documentary heritage material judged to be of national significance.

Since the program's inception in 1994 over 80 communities have benefited from funds provided through Australia's leading grassroots documentary preservation initiative. In this time, a total of $260 000 has been distributed to libraries, historical societies and community organisations to help them with the preservation management, storage, microfilming and digitisation of their valuable documentary collections.

Successful applicants this year include the:

· Furneaux Historical Research Association on Flinders Island

· Tranby Cooperative for Aborigines

· Barnardos Australia

· Maritime Museum of Townsville

· Ngarinyin Aboriginal Corporation near Derby in Western Australia

· Victorian Services for Deaf Children

· Spastic Centre of New South Wales

· Melbourne Hebrew Congregation

· Friends of Goolwa and Kumarangk, to preserve the Hindmarsh Island Bridge Collection.

As a result of the Community Heritage Grants Program, future generations of Australians will have access to valuable documents and photographs which might otherwise have been lost due to the effects of age, light, dust, humidity and insects. The program recognises and supports the distributed national collection of significant document-ary heritage materials-a collection which is located all over Australia, not just in the national collecting institutions of the capital cities.

NLA representation overseas

Z39.50 meeting-in Copenhagen

by Judith Pearce, the National Library's expert on all things ZIG

In August this year I attended a meeting of the Z39.50 Implementors' Group (ZIG) in Copenhagen. The meeting was held from 20-22 August and was preceded by a one-and-a-half day tutorial. Sixty people attended, including 35 from Europe, 21 from North America and two from South Korea. There were three Australians: Sonya Finnigan from the Distributed Systems Technology Centre (DSTC), Janifer Gatenby from Stowe Computing, and myself.

Discussion at the meeting was led by a core of North American members with a long-term involvement with the standard, some going as far back as the original Linked Systems Project, others from the period after 1992 when the functionality of the standard was significantly enriched by the involvement of commercial information retrieval systems like CAS, STN and Silver Platter. Newer to the group, but vocal in their areas of expertise, were representatives of a number of consulting and software development enterprises specialising in Z39.50 applications.

The National Library of Australia was first represented at a ZIG Meeting by Lesley Bezear, who went to Brussels in August 1996 to present the first draft of the Z39.50 Union Catalogue Profile. The Union Catalogue Profile originated from work by Lesley, Janifer Gatenby and myself under the auspices of IT/19 (a joint Committee of Standards Australia and Standards New Zealand) to identify a suitable protocol for integrating maintenance of a union catalogue into creators' workflows. Lesley and Janifer both attended the Brussels meeting, where the profile was well received.

My objective in attending the latest meeting in Copenhagen was to ensure that consensus was achieved on the update mechanisms needed for the Union Catalogue Profile, as a precursor to applying for its registration as an internationally registered profile (IRP). This objective was achieved, but not without heated discussion that ranged from questions concerning the very relevance of the Database Update Extended Service in a Search and Retrieval protocol through to the need for a conditional replace parameter in the batch text edit function.

On a more general level, there is nothing to replace attendance at a ZIG meeting to advance one's understanding of the Z39.50 standard and the issues implementors are currently facing. At Copenhagen it became clear to me that the work of the ZIG is no longer focused on the development of the standard, but on its deployment, and the resolution of interoperability issues at the semantic as well as the protocol level. Implementations are now widespread in the library, museum and scientific communities and the standard is still seen as the best strategy for these communities to ensure access to databases not directly accessible via http protocols.

The library community is currently directing its attention to identifying and exchanging holdings information via Z39.50. Following many months of discussion, agreement was reached at Copenhagen on an architecture for the exchange of holdings information. This should cater for the full range of union catalogue models and work is now proceeding within the ZIG on finalising the technical details.

The museum community is leading developments in the provision of access via Z39.50 to collections of digital objects and is also taking an interest in strategies for ensuring interoperability between Dublin Core metadata repositories and library and/or museum catalogues. The next meeting, to be held in Orlando, Florida, will tackle this issue in more detail.

The key risk now faced by the ZIG is that the standard may be seen as too complex by potential implementors, or not relevant to the Internet environment. The ZIG is addressing this risk on a number of fronts, including development of a document aimed at expressing Z39.50 in its simplest terms, to assist first time implementors.

Australia has a surprisingly high profile in the ZIG. DSTC's initiative in developing a new SQL-based query type has attracted a lot of interest among ZIG members and is breaking new ground for the standard. As well as representing Stowe and being one of the Australian 'owners' of the UCP, Janifer Gatenby plays an important role in the ZIG because of her involvement, at an international level, in a number of other standards groups. However, an initiative led by Sonya Finnigan to have the April 1998 meeting held in Brisbane, while initially attractive to the group, failed when it came to the vote. The tradition of having the 'fall' meeting in Europe is to remain unbroken. Next year it will be in Spain.

IFLA '97-Copenhagen

A record number of (almost) 3,000 delegates from 141 countries, attended the 63rd IFLA Council and General Conference held in Copenhagen from 31 August to 5 September. Eight National Library staff were able to participate, several combining IFLA attendance with other travel.

IFLA '97 witnessed major changes within the organisation's main steering bodies. There is a newly elected president, Mme Christine Deschamps of the Bibliotheque de l'Universite‚ Paris V-Rene Descartes in Paris, and several new executive board members. This IFLA conference held special significance for Australia because it marked the end of National Library Director-General Warren Horton's final term as a member of the executive board and IFLA treasurer. Mr Horton was given a special commendation and the IFLA medal for his services to the organisation; notably his role in improving significantly IFLA's financial position during his term as treasurer.

The conference programme

Over 150 papers were delivered on a wide range of themes, including: 'Financing and budgeting in a time of change'; 'Cataloguing for the 21st century'; 'Issues on ownership and availability of electronic information'; and, 'Public libraries and lifelong learning'.

The full text of all IFLA '97 conference papers can be accessed on IFLA's Web site at: http://www.ifla.org/ .

Guest Lectures

Three guest lectures were given at IFLA '97: Sir Roger Elliot, chairman of the ICSU Press, spoke about the 'Impact of Electronic Publishing on the Scientific Information Chain'; Ms Ursula Owen, editor and chief executive officer of Index on Censorship-the only international magazine for free expression-spoke about censorship, access to information and freedom of expression; Ms Esther Sibanyoni, Woman of the Year and librarian at the State Library of Pretoria, South Africa, spoke about the many community projects she has set up since the state of emergency in South Africa.

Workshops

Over 20 workshops were held, many of them highly innovative, such as the joint workshop between IFLA's Section for Libraries Serving Disadvantaged Persons and the European Dyslexia Association on 'Access to Information: Serving Persons with Dyslexia' and the UDT core programme workshop on 'Introduction to Internet Metadata'.

Asia/Oceania issues

There was an unusually high level of participation at IFLA '97 from the developing country library professionals, thanks to the generosity of the Danish government aid agency, DANIDA, in providing sponsorship for 150 delegates. Papers relating to Australia's own region, Asia and Oceania, were given in open sessions, contributed paper sessions, open forums and poster sessions. A highlight of the conference was the resolution, submitted by Chinese colleagues, to make Chinese one of IFLA's working languages (in addition to English, French, Spanish, German and Russian). The matter has been referred to IFLA's executive board for consideration.

New initiatives from IFLA

This year's conference theme, 'Libraries and Information for Human Development' was interpreted by the Europeans and particularly the Nordic countries as reflecting the wider impact which today's information revolution is set to have on society as a whole, not just on librarians and information professionals. This was echoed in two major council resolutions passed during the conference. The first formally established IFLA's Committee on Freedom of Access to Information and Freedom of Expression (CAIFE) and the second formally established IFLA's Committee on Copyright and Other Legal Matters. The chairpersons proposed for these committees are: Marianne Scott, National Librarian of Canada, for the Committee on Copyright and Other Legal Matters, and Alex Byrne of the Northern Territory University Library in Australia for the Committee on Freedom of Access to Information and Freedom of Expression (CAIFE).

Australian involvement in IFLA's professional groups

IFLA conferences comprise two linked but separate activities: the conference sessions, papers and workshops, and the working meetings of IFLA's professional groups-the sections, round tables and core programmes. Besides the important work done by Warren Horton and Alex Byrne, mentioned above, Australia has traditionally been active in the Preservation and Conservation Core Programme, through Dr Jan Lyall of the National Library, and has recently taken a role in the regional division, which represents library professionals from the developing world. At IFLA '97 Amelia McKenzie of the National Library was elected chairperson of the Regional Section for Asia/Oceania for a two-year term.

Addressing a topical concern, the National Library organised a meeting at IFLA '97 to discuss the permanent naming of electronic resources, an issue on which national libraries need to take coordinated action. This initiative, together with the library's work on the PANDORA archive and its decision to implement a PURL (permanent URL) resolver service, has attracted a good deal of inter-national attention. The library will now assess its strategy for further involvement with the IFLA professional groups on information technology issues.

[Illustration, p.7]

At IFLA '97: Marie Sexton, Amelia McKenzie and Jan Fullerton from the NLA with Virginia Walsh, executive director of ALIA (second from right)

Asian regional office report

The National Library's regional officer for Asia, based in the Australian Embassy in Jakarta, has two principal functions: to represent the library in the region, and to acquire Indonesian publications for its Asian Collections branch. The first function-representation-encompasses the presentation of the the library's interests in interactions with various Southeast Asian organisations, including national libraries, the ASEAN Secretariat, the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and the Centre for Scientific Documentation and Information (PDII-LIPI).

The second function-acquiring Indonesian publications-affords a practical contrast to the formalities of representation. (This contribution to Gateways by Oliver Mann was written on the Argo Gede train which links Jakarta with the provincial capital of Bandung, a scenic two-hour journey through a steep countryside of carefully contoured rice fields fringed with banana palms. Oliver, the regional officer, visited Bandung on a book and map acquisitions trip, with an associated courtesy call to the library and publishing section of the Bandung Institute of Technology-ed.)

The fragmented nature of the publishing industry in Indonesia makes it a constant challenge to find out what is being published and then to track down a source of supply. Acquiring commercial publications in Jakarta is relatively straightforward because the regional officer is on the spot and effective use is made of a network of contacts and local suppliers. Conversely, government publications are more elusive.

Purchasing material published outside Jakarta is best accomplished by actually travelling to the provinces to do the buying. Publications with a provincial emphasis (and in regional languages rather than Bahasa Indonesia) are simply not available outside the specific province-yet they constitute a vital component of the culture of publishing in Indonesia. The National Library of Australia's provincial acquisitions trips are planned in consultation with the Library of Congress Office in Jakarta to ensure that itineraries do not overlap and information is shared about the best bookshops and agencies to visit. For example, the Library of Congress representative recently visited Sumatra while the National Library's regional officer visited Bogor and Bandung in West Java.

Publications acquired by the regional office are despatched to the National Library on a regular basis: topically important publications and the main newspapers and serials are sent by diplomatic bag from the Australian Embassy each week, but the bulk of the acquisitions are airfreighted-60 cartons at quarterly intervals during the year. The regional office produces the Indonesian Acquisitions List which details the publications acquired in Indonesia. It is available both in print form and at the Web site http://www.nla.gov.au/asian/pub/ial/

Enquiries regarding resources in the National Library's Indonesian Collection can be made to Tieke Atikah (email tatikah@nla.gov.au), tel. (02) 6262 1647,

fax (02) 6273 4327.

Oliver Mann, can be contacted in Jakarta on email at omann@indo.net.id, fax 62 21 522 7229.

Interlibrary lending: the bigger picture

Charu Sood, the director of Interlending Services at the National Library, embarked on four weeks of travel for professional purposes at the conclusion of IFLA '97. She presented a paper on interlibrary infrastructure in Australia at 'Interlending and Document Supply': 5th International Interlending Conference, Aarhus, Denmark, 24-29 August 1997 and attended several other conferences and seminars in the United Kingdom and the USA, in addition to visiting libraries and document suppliers. The focus of the extended trip was on interlending and document supply developments.

From both the content and the attendance at the Aarhus conference, as well as the interlibrary loan-related activities at IFLA, it was clear that interlibrary loan is now being recognised as an important library activity. Resource sharing was the theme of the international conference at Aarhus and in both the UK and the USA there now appears to be renewed focus on maximising the use of existing collections in libraries.

The resource-sharing agreements now proliferating vary in size, formality and administrative arrangements from informal agreements between libraries to highly sophisticated co-operative systems. The OHIOlink project in USA is an example of a highly developed co-operative scheme through which the academic libraries in the State of Ohio have successfully managed to shift some of the burden of interlibrary loans to the end user by converting ILL between Ohio libraries into a circulation activity. Laser, an independent company in the UK, facilitates resource sharing between 1,200 libraries via a bibliographic database with holdings linked to a sophisticated ILL management system. The British Library's dominant position as the major and only supplier of ILL to academic libraries in the UK will be challenged by the development of co-operative eLib projects such as LAMDA (London and Manchester Document Access) and SEREN (Sharing of Educational Resources in an Electronic Network) which were aimed at improving the sharing of resources between groups of academic libraries in London, Manchester and Wales. Resource sharing in the mixed print and electronic environment presents libraries with the new challenges of ownership versus licensing restrictions, complex copyright negotiations and the needs for sophisticated patron validation and authentication schemes.

The Aarhus conference

The Australian ILL infrastructure was the envy of delegates from many countries at Aarhus. With ABN providing a national union catalogue for the holdings of Australian libraries, the ILL subsystem for managing requests and JEDDS http://www.gu.edu.au/alib/iii/docdel/jeddshom.htm for document delivery, we have all the elements necessary to enable efficient resource sharing amongst Australian libraries. Australia is also unique in having an agreed country-wide ILL code with accepted pricing.

Many of the countries were lamenting the absence of even a union catalogue. A librarian from Romania spoke of the difficulties faced in paying for international ILL because of foreign exchange problems and there is no union catalogue, which makes internal resource sharing very difficult. Attention was drawn to the various legal, technological, financial and cultural issues which make it difficult to achieve free flow of materials from one country to another.

Copyright is a major issue for all libraries and document suppliers. For commercial document suppliers and large suppliers like the BLDSC, copyright negotiation is now an integral part of the business with dedicated staff and well-developed systems for handling copyright payments. Getting publishers to set a copyright fee for supply from print journals appeared to be a matter of routine for the large document suppliers. Getting the rights to provide articles from electronic versions of the journals, or converting existing print journals into a digital store for document supply is not easy, however, and there is limited success in this area.

Many major library vendors are involved in developing systems to handle the complexities of the ILL process, and the work of the ILL Protocol Implementors Group (IPIG), chaired by Mary Jackson, is reaping dividends by convincing vendors to build systems which are compliant with the ISO ILL Standard 10160/10161. Charu Sood saw some very advanced systems in operation both in UK and in the USA though not all are standard-compliant. Judging by the reports provided by vendors of library systems at the IPIG meeting, libraries will soon be able to choose from a number of sophisticated ILL systems which will integrate with their circulation systems.

Dublin Core in Finland

Bemal Rajapatirana from the National Library of Australia was one of the 75 delegates who attended the 5th Dublin Core Metadata Workshop in Helsinki, Finland, 6-8 October, 1997.

The primary goal of the Dublin Core workshop series is to promote and develop metadata that is simple to create and maintain, with commonly understood meanings for each basic element. This, in turn, will foster simple resource discovery in environments such as the Internet or across disparate networked collections and indexes.

The Helsinki workshop was able to finalise issues related to the use of simple Dublin Core metadata and reach consensus on definitions for the 15 basic elements: Title, Author, Subject, Description, Publisher, Other Contributor, Date, Resource Type, Resource Identifier, Source, Language, Relation, Coverage, Rights Management.

To help progress unfinished business, several 'post-Helsinki' working groups were established to resolve Dublin Core issues such as Dublin Core sub-elements, data modelling, interaction with Z39.50, and the creation of user guides.

For a full report on this workshop please refer to the 5th Dublin Core Metadata Workshop: a report and observations at http://www.nla.gov.au/nla/staffpaper/helsinki.html . The official workshop report and key workshop deliverables are scheduled for publication by January 1998. For more information about Dublin Core metadata try the Dublin Core Metadata home page at http://purl.oclc.org/docs/metadata/dublin_core/

The collections

Notebook of Thomas Pennant

The National Library recently purchased one of the earliest British manuscripts on the zoology of Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific. It was written in about 1772 by Thomas Pennant and is entitled 'Animals observed or collected by Joseph Banks esq & Doctor Solander in the voyage round the world begun August 25th 1768 ended July 12th 1771'. It is bound in vellum and there are about 100 pages of notes on birds and animals observed at different points of the voyage (including the East Indies and South Africa).

[Illustration, p.10]

Thomas Pennant (1726-98) was a notable gentleman scientist who was well-known to most of the leading naturalists of the late eighteenth century, including Banks, JR Forster, Georg Forster and Gilbert White. A Fellow of the Royal Society, he was probably involved in the decision to send HMS Endeavour to the Pacific in 1768. Banks wrote to Pennant the day after he returned to London at the end of the voyage in 1771 and they remained close friends for some years. Pennant drew heavily on Banks' writings in his books and incorporated information about Australian fauna in A History of Quadrupeds (1781) and the fourth volume of Outlines of the Globe (1798).

Markings in the notebook suggest that Pennant used it in his later published writings. It is therefore a very early and important document in the dissemination of information about the natural history of the Pacific among the European scientific community.

Above: Notebook of Thomas Pennant, c.1772: Wolves and foxes

The Hallstrom Pacific Collection

At one time Sir Edward Hallstrom's name was closely linked to a refrigerator and to the Taronga Park Zoo in Sydney. However not everyone knew that he was a pioneer aviator, a passionate naturalist and a philanthropist with a deep interest in the South-East Asia and Pacific region.

In 1948 Sir Edward bequeathed a sum of money to the Commonwealth Government to establish a library of Pacific affairs and colonial administration at the Australian School of Pacific Administration, Middle Head, Sydney. The resulting research collection of 1600 volumes now belongs to the National Library but, as a large number of its items were already represented in the library's extensive runs of material on the Pacific, arrangements were made to place the collection on indefinite loan with the University of New South Wales Library to ensure that it continued to be available to users in the Sydney region. A function on 8 October marked the transfer.

[Illustration 1, p.11]

Some significant works include:

· a first edition of John Gould's Birds of New Guinea

· James Cook's account of his explorations, dating from 1777 and 1785

· Hawkesworth's edition of Cook's explorations, 1773

· Huet's Memoirs of the Dutch Trade..., 1700

· An essay on the East India trade, 1600

· Robert Knox's An Historical Relation of the Island of Ceylon in the East Indies, 1681.

As well as works relating to the Pacific, Australia and South-East Asia, the collection contains material on a number of other topics including law, anthropology, history and psychology.

The University of New South Wales Library will be responsible for the storage and care of the collection, and records for individual items will be represented on the Australian Bibliographic Network.

This long-term loan arrangement is the latest in a number of cooperative placements of material in Australian libraries by the National Library, aimed at making research materials widely available and accessible.


Sir Edward Hallstrom and friend, 1969. Reproduced with the permission of the Sydney Morning Herald

Peter O'Shaughnessy as Hamlet, 1961 [Illustration 2, p.11]

The National Library's collection of portraits of eminent Australians has been strengthened by the addition of an oil portrait of the actor, writer and director, Peter O'Shaughnessy.

Born in Melbourne, O'Shaughnessy formed his own theatre company in 1954. He produced a number of plays in Australia before taking the expatriate route to England in 1959 to work at the Bristol Old Vic. O'Shaughnessy eventually returned to Australia in 1965 with his production of the Diary of a Madman.

The portrait, by Clifton Pugh, was painted in 1961.


Angas sketches help Ophir researchers

by Linda Groom

On a clear winter's day on 1851, George French Angas stood on the bank of Summerhill Creek, at Ophir near Bathurst, watching diggers pan for gold in the frenzy of Australia's first gold rush. It was a busy scene: dozens of men worked beneath the tall trees at the water's edge, turning over nearly all the ground. Angas sketched the scene, hoping to be the first artist to sell sketches of the gold rush to pubishers in Sydney and London.

Angas was an artist, naturalist and traveller. The various facets of his personality-the artistic talent, the curiosity of an explorer, and the systematic observation of a skilled naturalist-combined to create a valuable legacy in his many sketches of Australia from the 1840s to the 1870s.

Angas was also a person of great stamina. His wealthy father provided little support for his wandering, sketching son. Angas reached the Ophir goldfields from Sydney by travelling on foot, apparently unable to afford a horse. His London publishers delayed payment for years or failed to pay entirely. Even the critics were cool. A reviewer of his first exhibition in Adelaide in 1845 described his work as far too detailed; it lacked the desired 'general effect' and was 'essentially limited'. He was also faintly praised as having the 'perseverance of an amateur'.

Angas would probably have been delighted, and perhaps have felt vindicated, at the response of Robin McLachlan and Michael Pearson to his sketches nearly 150 years later. Dr McLachlan, a senior lecturer in history at Charles Sturt University, and Dr Pearson, a Canberra consultant and archaeologist, were commissioned by the Cabonne Shire Council to produce a heritage report on the Ophir site. Their task included identifying places of particular significance. As Dr McLachlan explained while he was examining Angas' sketches in the National Library's Pictorial Reading Room in September, it was no easy task. Mining has continued almost without break at Ophir since 1851, and the evidence on the ground is hard to read. The very precision which caused some scorn from Angas' critics was a boon to the two researchers. It enabled them to translate Angas' scenes into map references and to pinpoint sites of settlement and activity that may other wise have gone unrecorded.

Dr Pearson described the experience as sobering for an archaeologist. Angas' sketches show sites, used for tents and huts, which are archaeologically almost invisible because they were short-lived; there is often only a bench in the hillside to echo their existence. In Dr Pearson's words 'It shows that archaeological work does not replace historical documents'.

During the hours that he pored over Angas' sketches in the Pictorial Reading Room, Dr McLachlan developed quite an affection for the artist. He speaks with some indignation of the treatment of the sketches by various publishers, who had cropped the originals or shortened the captions, cutting out some of Angas' valuable detail. The combination of an uncropped version of Angas' sketch of Fitzroy Bar and his caption:

...on the left of the picture, across the creek, is Meyer's Store. The view is sketched from the front of Messrs. Thom and Gilbert's hospitable tent on the Junction flat

allowed the two researchers to identify the site of Meyer's Store and several tent sites.

The National Library holds over a hundred of Angas' sketches from Australia and other places. Interested readers of Gateways can see some of them on Images 1 at http://www.nla.gov.au/images1/ by typing in 'angas' as a search term-another development that would have intrigued, and we hope, delighted the ever-curious and systematic Angas.

[Illustration, p.12]

Dr Michael Pearson (left) and Dr Robin McLachlan inspecting the Angas sketches in the Pictorial Reading Room

Oral history directory and database launched

[Illustration, p.13]

WOMEN
Lord Howe Island 1949: Mrs Kirby & Graham.

F. Moore Collection, NLA
, (Cover detail)

The Biennial National Conference of the Oral History Association of Australia in Alice Springs was the venue for the launch of the Towards Federation 2001 publication, Australia's Oral History Collections: A National Directory.

The directory is the first attempt to provide a comprehensive coverage of Australia's oral history collecting activities and resources. The publication and the database from which it was derived, give access to more than 450 oral history collections, highlighting a national resource in recorded sound and transcripts. Some of the largest collections are maintained by State libraries, museums and archives, while more than 200 entries are for small collections held by local government bodies, libraries and local history societies. There are many small but important collections that have been developed by schools, religious or professional societies, companies, government departments, and representative community bodies. Educational and academic institutions play an important role: about 30 universities are listed, focusing on anthropology, English, language, music, science and other departments. Twice as many collections again are in the hands of private researchers, reflecting a variety of research interests.

The directory is an outcome of the 'Towards Federation 2001' Conference Working Group on High-Priority Cross-Sectoral Projects. A national committee, comprising representatives from State and Commonwealth collecting institutions, and the Oral History Association, developed a questionnaire with the aim of providing a new research tool in the field of oral history. The number of responses revealed considerable research activity at all levels. In practical terms, the variety of formats supplied by respondents presented initial problems. These were overcome by development of a Microsoft Access database which allowed considerable flexibility both in terms of input and product.

The original objective of the steering committee was to produce the publication launched at the OHAA conference in September. With State by State access and indexing by subject and place, the publication is an important first step in providing collection-level access in this emergent field of research. This stage having been completed, the database is to be added to the NLA Web site in 1998 as part of the library's server strategy, which allows for mediated online update and amendments. It is anticipated the online version will provide keyword searching on title, subject and place names.

Following the initial data collection, management of the directory project became the responsibility of the library's Oral History section in June 1996. The original MS Access shell was developed by the National Film & Sound Archive. Systems staff member Morgan Cheng, who has since left the library, developed a conversion database which consolidated the Word and Macintosh documents provided by State coordinators. The data was then loaded onto the MS Access database. IT's Annabel Heath provided further development of the database, particularly the formatting required to produce a publication. Members of the library's publications team then helped pull the work into shape in time for the conference.

Australia's Oral History Collections: A National Directory is available at a cost of $14.00 through NLA's Sales and Distribution, tel. (02) 6262 1374 or email nlasales@nla.gov.au

'Inhabiting the Archive'

[Illustration 1, p.14]

It's no longer there, but in October the National Library was resident host of a surprising art installation inspired by items in its ephemera collection.

After studying the collection with its custodian, Richard Stone, sculptor David Watt chose dream homes and shoes from trade catalogues to rejuvenate as colour and monochrome friezes on the library's balconies and steps-'a retelling of the material conditions of another time'.

The library was one of 11 national archiving institutions collaborating with contemporary visual artists in a larger, multi-venue art event called 'Archives and the Everyday', organised by the Canberra Art Space. The intention was to create new works by discovering and uncovering the surprising connections that open up the extraordinary in our everyday lives.




Rare circus posters come to town

[Illustration 2, p.14]

The National Library recently enriched its holdings of Australian circus materials with the acquisition of two rare posters. Originally in the collection of Francis Schoeller, famed collector of circus memorabilia and founder of the Cirque de Paris, the posters were acquired at auction in Paris in April of this year. Staff at the National Gallery Research Library had alerted the National Library to the Australian posters in the auction. After consulting with circus experts in Australia and other collecting institutions, bids were faxed to France. It appears that copies of the posters (or similar ones) are not held elsewhere in public collections in Australia.

The French connection features in the poster R. Abdy et ses kakatoes. Dating from about 1890, it shows 10 groups of sulphur-crested cockatoos performing various acts such as pulling a carriage, firing a canon, riding a bicycle and doing sundry acrobatic tricks.The existence of the Abdy family's cockatoo circus in France in the 1890s has been verified in a published history of travelling shows in France by Jacques Garnier, Forains d'hier & d'aujourd'hui, (Orleans, 1968).

The second poster depicts the renowned Australian equestrienne, May Wirth. A member of the famous Australian Wirth family circus, her reputation overseas as a bareback horse rider was greater than she enjoyed in her native Australia. The poster, published in the USA in the 1920s, shows May Wirth performing with the combined Ringling Bros & Barnum and Bailey circus, the self-styled 'Greatest Show on Earth'. She is billed as 'The greatest bare back rider of alltime[sic]'.

Both posters have full catalogue entries on ABN.

NLA and Australian libraries

The Australian Conspectus and electronic access

Earlier this year a working group, representative of Australian Conspectus users from different States, was formed to look at the issue of incorporating electronic access considerations into Conspectus methodology. The definitions, in particular, have been revised for this purpose and were drafted under the auspices of the Research Libraries Group, the Association of Research Libraries and the Western Library Network (WLN).

The Australian Conspectus has proved to be a valuable tool for the assessment of library collections. Hitherto, Conspectus has related only to traditional library collections, i.e. 'books on shelves'. It has been recognised, however, that for Conspectus to retain its utility as a library management tool, it needs to take account of the changes in library service provision which have followed from increased access to networked electronic information and the associated change in collection focus from 'ownership' to 'access' of material.

The objective of the working group was to assess the suitability of the WLN revisions for incorporation into the Australian Conspectus Manual. The group communicated by email and held one teleconference on 7 August 1997, at which it was agreed to incorporate the WLN electronic access revisions into the Australian Conspectus, with certain minor amendments.

These amendments:

cover refinements to the definition for electronic resources in an Australian context;

provide guidance in the use of the revised Language Coverage Indicators for Australian Aboriginal languages; and

provide for the optional use of Collection Level 3c, not previously available for Australian Conspectus users. The impetus for this decision came from a desire to make the Australian Conspectus methodology more consistent with its international counterparts.

The incorporation of electronic access considerations into the Australian Conspectus represents a substantial shift in the functional locus of the Conspectus methodology. There was some discussion during the teleconference as to whether the alterations require libraries to undertake separate or integrated Conspectus assessments for print and electronic resources. It was concluded that fully integrated print/electronic Conspectus assessments are the intention, even though, as part of what may turn out to be a transitional arrangement, the revisions to the collection level definitions distinguish between print and electronic resources.

Having agreed to the changes to the Australian Conspectus, the working group has now turned its attention to their implementation and promulgation. The Queensland University of Technology Library has offered to be a test site for the revised definitions and there is a possibility that a second test site will be established in another State. It is anticipated that the changes will be put to the test over the coming months, with the experience being used as the basis for a promotional and training campaign during 1998.

The new definitions for Collection Depth and Language Coverage Indicators, incorporating the amendments agreed by the working group, are detailed in the Australian Conspectus Manual amendment which is available on the National Library of Australia's Web site for Conspectus at URL: http://www.nla.gov.au/niac/conspectus/manual.html . The revised definitions will shortly be distributed to all Australian Conspectus users. If you are not a Conspectus user at present, or you don't have access to the Internet, copies of the revised definitions can be obtained from Maggie Bond, email mbond@nla.gov.au.

Technicians visit the National Library

The 9th National Library Technicians Conference, held at the National Convention Centre Canberra from 23-26 September, opened with pre-conference activities in the National Library. Over 200 delegates registered in the foyer before attending discussion group sessions and tours of the library.

The eight discussion groups covered topics such as ILL/Document Supply; Reference; Cataloguing; Serials; and Acquisitions.

Twelve tours of the library took place on the first day. These were repeated on two other afternoons of the conference, allowing technicians from all over Australia and overseas delegates from Canada, Fiji and the United States, to see at least part of National Library in daily work mode.

Distance learning for library preservation-an online experience

Back in 1992, Wendy Smith, then a member of the National Library's Preservation Services, was awarded a grant from IFLA to develop a specialised training course in library preservation for people working in libraries worldwide. It was intended to deliver the training by distance education mode, and so avoid the need to present costly in-house training workshops. Although the course work was written, until the World Wide Web came along it was difficult to identify any satisfactory method of delivering the course itself. Early this year discussions were held with the School of Information, Library and Archive Studies (SILAS) at the University of New South Wales. The school was developing expertise in the area of online delivery and, as a result, the course has now found a home as part of its degree program.

Working with SILAS and a specialist in telecommunications and instructional design from the University of Texas at Austin, Wendy has further developed the content for delivery in distance mode, with the Internet used by the school as the primary delivery mechanism. One of the benefits of this cooperative approach has been that the scope of the initial course has been expanded to cover archival as well as library preservation.

Students can either enrol in this subject-Preservation Administration-as a single studies unit, or as part of a diploma or Master's degree program. As far as the school and Wendy have been able to ascertain, this is the first subject in preservation management to be delivered, in distance mode, entirely over the Internet. The subject has been endorsed by the National Library and Wendy has maintained her involvement with it as principal content writer and tutor-a change from her day to day activities with the PANDORA electronic archiving project.

The first students were enrolled in the second semester this year and have nearly completed their studies. The 'online class' consists of 17 students- nine from SILAS, and eight from Continuing Education. The Australian continuing education students are from Perth, Canberra, and Armidale, while the overseas students hail from the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Hong Kong, the Netherlands and Papua New Guinea. Solomon Andili from the National Library of Papua New Guinea has been sponsored by the National Preservation Office.

Feedback so far has been very positive. One student wrote, 'I really am enjoying the course and am looking forward to the rest of it', while another said, 'I think it is marvellously designed'. Both Wendy and SILAS are looking forward to reading the students' comprehensive evaluations of the subject so that, if necessary, further refinements can be incorporated into the subject for delivery in 1998.

The handbook and guidelines for the subject can be found on the Continuing Education section of the SILAS server at http://www.silas.unsw.edu.au/silas/cesched.htm#Preservation .

For more information on enrolment, contact Maureen Henninger at SILAS, email: m.henninger@unsw.edu.au

What's happening with PADI?

The PADI (Preserving Access to Digital Information) Working Group has a service for everyone wishing to safeguard their investment in digital inform-ation. The 'What's happening' page at http://www.nla.gov.au/apdi/happen.html on the PADI Web site provides current information on what is happening in the world of digital preservation and access. Entries include Web links and brief descriptions of each linked resource. The PADI group are interested in hearing about related projects or links to the latest developments, conferences and news items.

For those who have not explored the PADI site, http://www.nla.gov.au/padi/, it gathers a range of information in one place to assist creators/publishers, managers, researchers, and all those with an interest in ensuring long-term access to important digital information. For further information, contact Leanne Brandis, National Library of Australia, Tel. (02) 6262 1575, fax (02) 6273 4535, E-mail niac@nla.gov.au.

ABN Standards Committee report

Following a series of teleconferences, members of the ABN Standards Committee met 'live' for the first time this year on 9-10 September.

Accreditation of cataloguers

The biggest issue on the agenda was the accreditation of ABN cataloguers. The committee recommended that the accreditation system should recognise three levels of contribution: Review centre status (institutions accredited to contribute cataloguing without routine checking), Contributors (institutions entitled to contribute cataloguing data and to receive financial credits, but subject to routine review) and Provisional contributors (institutions which have failed assessment for contributor status, whose cataloguing is subject to full review and is not eligible to attract financial credits). The committee recommended that existing and new contributors receive financial credits for cataloguing until they are assessed for accreditation.

[Illustration, p.17]

Standards Committee chair Dale Chatwin with the CJK representative Bik-Har Yeung and visitor Joan Mitchell (Library of Congress)

The committee defined the standard required to earn financial credits. All records must meet the ABN minimum record standard, and no more than two per cent of records should contain major errors. The major errors were itemised by the committee. The ABN Office will provide a simple reference document that focuses on critical quality problems and outlines the specific performance standards required of accredited institutions.

It was also recommended by the committee that in implementing the accreditation scheme, priority should be given to commercial operators, institutions without review centre status, and high-volume contributors of bibliographic and authority data. These priorities are designed to assist libraries which are out-sourcing their cataloguing, and to ensure that ABN libraries receive the best value for the credits paid by the network. In order to protect small and infrequent contributors, no library will be assessed on a sample smaller than 100 records.

The next step is to develop procedures for implementation of the accreditation scheme, including mechanisms for appeal. The committee also noted that it would be worth while to offer accreditation of cataloguing agencies which do not have membership of ABN in their own right, but which catalogue on ABN under contract for their clients. This will be a task for a future meeting.

Nitly cut off time

The committee endorsed the current arrangement, where all review centre cataloguing which is input before 5.00 pm Eastern Standard Time is guaranteed to be included in the Nitly database update. The committee noted that the arrangement was generally welcomed-except in Western Australia, where the effective Nitly cut-off time is 3.00 pm in the afternoon.

CJK matters

The committee noted that holdings for material in Chinese, Japanese and Korean languages are held on both the ABN and the CJK database. However, the coverage of the two databases is not coextensive, and the committee considered whether the holdings on the CJK database should be copied regularly to the ABN database so that CJK users could benefit from the ABN Interlibrary Loan Service. The committee decided not to transfer the holdings for the time being, as the method of outputting holdings from the CJK system would transfer duplicate records into ABN.

The committee also made a small amendment to the standard for Pinyin romanisation of Chinese, in order to harmonise the ABN standard with that used in the CJK system.

Minimum record standard

The committee recommended that the minimum record standard proposed for WORLD 1 be applied to the replacement system which is being implemented by the Networked Services Project. The recommended minimum standard is based on the minimum data required to uniquely identify an item for the purpose of adding a holdings statement.

Members of the Standards Committee will meet again in person in the third week of March 1998, with teleconferences in October and December 1997, and June and August 1998. The papers, resolutions and minutes of the meetings may be found on the Standards Committee home page at http://www.nla.gov.au/abn/committees/abnsc42.html .

Changing the rules

The Australian Committee on Cataloguing has devoted most of its attention recently to the revision and improvement of the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules. For example, ACOC has considered several proposals to incorporate into AACR the various rule interpretations issued by the Library of Congress. While ACOC has supported many of the individual proposals, it also prefers to empower the cataloguer to exercise judgement by applying principles to solve specific problems.

This need to clarify the principles of the cataloguing rules has inspired the 'International Conference on the Principles and Future Development of AACR', held in Toronto on 23-25 October. Australian cataloguers had an opportunity to comment on the issues before the international conference, at workshops conducted by ACOC at the National Cataloguing Conference, Canberra in September. ACOC members gave brief presentations on the major issues, and cataloguers expressed their opinions vigorously. There was surprising consensus on most issues, with strong support for changes to the rules for serials, strong support for developing clear statements of principles to underpin the detailed rules, and confirmed support for cataloguing items primarily in terms of their content rather than as individual versions of the work. Ann Huthwaite, ACOC's representative at the Toronto conference, left Australia with a good understanding of the opinions of her Australian colleagues.

The Australian Committee on Cataloguing conducts most of its work by email and teleconference. See the ACOC home page at URL http://www.nla.gov.au/lis/stndrds/grps/acoc/acoc.html for the minutes of the last teleconference and a summary of the Canberra work-shops. Information about the Toronto conference may be found at URL http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/jsc/index.htm .

Publishers and librarians talk fizzy...

Managing Australian publications on CD-ROMs and floppy disks

Forty publishers and library representatives recently spent a day speaking 'fizzy'. Fizzy is the less descriptive but considerably more manageable term coined by the organisers of the 'First National Consultative Meeting on the Management of Australian Physical-Format Digital Publications'. This meeting, held at the National Library on 27 and 28 October, brought together representatives of the publishers and content providers of Australian publications on CD-ROMs and floppy disks, and representatives from the National and State libraries. The purpose of the meeting was to seek agreement on key principles and an understanding of responsibilities related to the provision of long-term access to digital publications in physical formats. It was acknowledged early in the day that to ensure continued access to information in this form, long and short-term strategies must soon be agreed upon and implemented.

Through a series of presentations and group discussions, those at the meeting grappled with issues such as legal and voluntary deposit, copyright, access, licensing, collection development, cataloguing, migration and emulation. Information from surveys conducted in the months prior to the meeting provided a basis for the discussions.

A common thread throughout the day was an exploration of the roles and responsibilities of content providers, software developers, publishers, librarians and other bodies. A major outcome was the recognised need for cooperation and collaboration between these groups.

Following the discussion with publishers and content providers, the library representatives met for a second day to formalise the outcomes of the discussions into a plan of action. The successful implementation of this action plan will result in agreed strategies for the long-term preservation of access to significant Australian publications in the form of CD-ROMs and floppy disks.

While the emphasis of this meeting was on digital publications in physical formats, further workshops in 1998 will focus on online and hybrid digital information. Details of the meeting, including papers and outcomes will be available online via the National Library's National Initiatives and Collaboration Branch page at http://www.nla.gov.au/niac/ , or by contacting Charu Sood,

tel. (02) 6262 1571, email csood@nla. gov. au.

On the NLA's Web site...

The National Library's 'What's new in Australian Government' has been redesigned to allow easier access to new activities in Federal, State and local government. There is now a page bringing together links to most 'What's new' pages of each Federal Government department and agency. This complements the current links to media releases and Contacting the Commonwealth.

JEDDS project explained

The JEDDS (Joint Electronic Document Delivery Software) project aims to develop electronic document delivery software that will give library users greatly increased access to electronic information.

The JEDDS project brings together three organisations significant in the library communities of their respective countries:

· The Australian Vice-Chancellors' Committee

· The National Library of Australia

· Joint Information Systems Committee of the Electronic Libraries Programme (eLib) in the United Kingdom

The JEDDS partners have agreed to jointly develop document delivery software which has a MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions)-compliant delivery system. The JEDDS partners are working with The Research Libraries Group Inc. (RLG), based in California, to enhance their existing document delivery product, Ariel® for Windows (TM), to provide the functionality required.

Project timeline

The JEDDS project is being developed in three stages:

Stage 1-Ariel® to Ariel® MIME delivery

Ariel® for Windows(TM) 2.0 was released on 3 February 1997. The enhanced features include:

the ability for Ariel® to use email in addition to FTP for sending and receiving documents, to

acknowledge received documents, and to report errors using email notification facilities.

Ariel® for Windows(TM) 2.1 was released in October 1997. The upgrade was a full 32-bit compliant application which will run under both Windows 95(TM) and Windows NT(TM).

Stage 2-Links to Interlibrary Loan and Document Request Supply Management Systems (ILDRMS) and Interlibrary Loan (ISO 10160/1) Enhancements

Due to be completed by the end of 1997, this stage focuses on the development of messaging and interaction functions to link Ariel® and local ILDRMS. The software will also have the ability to receive a request from a remote ILDRMS and respond either with a supplied document or indicating the inability to supply.

A range of interaction between the local ILDRMS and JEDDS enhanced Ariel® will be possible. The optimal implementation will occur when both requesting and supplying libraries are supported by ILDRMS which are ISO ILL Protocol compliant, and the ILDRMS, or their user interfaces, operate under the Windows 95(TM) or Windows NT(TM) environment.

The CILLA (Co-ordinated Interlibrary Loan Administration) project has released the tender specifications for such a system, dubbed a LIDDA (Local Interlending and Document Delivery Administration system). This specification is designed to create a local ILDRMS which will fully exploit the enhanced features of Ariel®.

Stage 3-Further Enhancements

Stage 3 will be completed by the end of February 1998. It will include:

· further enhancements to ensure standards compliance

· an assurance that the option is available to deliver email to the client desktop, including the identification of suitable viewers

· any necessary user interface adjustments

· the ability to receive documents already in electronic form

· provisions of links to fax

If time permits, these will be completed before the end of the project but, if necessary, some will be developed by RLG after the end of the project.

The JEDDS project will allow the Ariel® product to seamlessly integrate electronic documents into the interlibrary loan process. The emphasis on standards compliance and interoperability will allow users to confidently purchase Ariel® knowing that it can work with request management systems that are standards compliant. Users of Ariel® will also be able to deliver documents to a wide range of sites, using readily available viewers, which has the potential to greatly improve client service.

Further information about the JEDDS project is available from:

Kerry Blinco

JEDDS Project Manager

Division of Information Services

Griffith University

QUEENSLAND AUSTRALIA 4111

Tel: 61 7 3875 7231

K.Blinco@gu.edu.au

or from the JEDDS home page: http://www.gu.edu.au/alib/iii/docdel/jeddshom.htm .

APAIS revision

The National Library's APAIS section recently completed it's annual review of APAIS Thesaurus terms. From January 1998, 20 new headings will be searchable in APAIS. Of these, seven headings have been reintroduced. New headings are created or reintroduced due to an increase in the volume of literature being indexed on particular subjects, or where there is a need to use current terminology. Headings are deleted where there has been a demonstrated decline in the use of a term or where its use is obsolete.

New Thesaurus headings

Athletes

*Athletics

*Basketball

Benchmarking

Business finance

Child sexual abuse

Coaching (Sports)

*Educational fees

*Equity (Law)

Financial regulation

*Golf

Medical technology

*Motor racing

*Oceans

Outsourcing

Paedophilia

Palliative care

Restitution (Law)

Sexual abuse

Whistleblowing

*Previous descriptors

Deleted headings:

Leakage (Information)

Medical equipment

APAIS Thesaurus: A List of Subject Terms Used in the Australian Public Affairs Information Service, 6th ed., Canberra: National Library of Australia, 1997. $35.00 (post incl.) from Sales and Distribution, National Library of Australia, CANBERRA ACT 2600

Tel. (02) 6262 1664

Also available on disc for $150.

The Australian Libraries Network

-our contribution to Australia's Cultural Network

The National Library of Australia has received a grant from the Department of Communication and the Arts (DoCA) to coordinate the development of a library sector network as part of Australia's Cultural Network (ACN). According to DoCA, 'anything there is to know about Australia's culture or cultural organisations will be at the fingertips of people all over the world' via ACN. It aims to be 'the best place to start' for anyone here or overseas who is interested in Australian culture.

The Australian Libraries Network will be an Internet gateway that will promote wide public access to collections, activities and events in libraries. Users should 'find the content fresh, fun and authoritative'. Through the ALN, they will gain access to a wide range of information about Australian libraries, their collections and services, exhibitions and cultural resources, as well as links to information sources which support the Australian library sector and profession. Central to the network will be a directory of Australia's National, State, public, academic, school, special and other libraries.

Both ACN and the ALN will go online progressively from November 1997. Developmental work is already well underway, with two staff at the National Library of Australia working on the project.

Further details of Australia's Cultural Network are at http://www.dca.gov.au/responsi/acn.html . For enquiries about the Australian Libraries Network, contact the ALN Project Officer, tel. (02) 6262 1575, fax (02) 6273 4535, email niac@nla.gov.au.

ILRS Directory on the Web

The Interlibrary Resource Sharing Directory is now available for free searching on the National Library's Web site at http://www.nla.gov.au/ilrs/. You can search on any word in the directory or restrict your search to NUC (National Union Catalogue) symbol, library name, or library address. Entries will be updated once a month and the test will continue until the end of February.

There will be a maximum of 50 users at any one time and, as this is a test site, the directory may be unavailable for short periods while changes are made. Please forward any comments to networks@nla.gov.au.

The ILRS Directory continues to be available for free searching on Ozline and SOFI, and is still available in printed form from the National Library. It also appears on the Serials in Australia CD-ROM.

Events

Tall tales and true: the 'Telling Tales' seminar

In his summing up of the 'Telling Tales' seminar recently held at the National Library, John Thompson commented that not only had the speakers uncovered important issues for libraries and cultural institutions but for humanity itself.

All speakers gave passionate and stirring presentations, several imbued with a strong performance element, highlighting the roles, manifestations and importance of storytelling in Australia-past, present and future. International guest speaker Ib Michael highlighted the anthropological universality of many stories. He used the example of similar personifications of devil-like characters in similar scenarios found in the mythologies of far distant lands-his examples being Scandinavia and Peru. A famous Danish author, Ib Michael also spoke about other aspects of storytelling but closed with his concerns about modern tendencies to homogenise and to sanitise traditional stories in the interests of political correctness, thereby unfortunately diluting their power and messages.

Australian keynote speaker, Barbara Poston-Anderson, covered a vast array of issues, and set the scene for the rest of the day. One of her important messages was that stories and storytelling can provide a number of 'community services', including a sense of solidarity, continuity between generations, and links or bridges among groups of people in a community. This view was reiterated by many of the speakers in one way or another.

[Illustration, p.21]

Popular Danish author Ib Michael spoke at the 'Telling Tales' seminar

Using highly divergent methods, and coming from equally divergent perspectives, Russian-born George Hofstetters and Aboriginal elder Ernest Grant both emphasised the importance of storytelling in bridging and preserving cultures. Both speakers endorsed the importance of preserving the oral transmission of stories, to convey cultural nuances, and as a vehicle for preserving languages per se. Mr Grant, however, cautioned that while he endorses translation of the origin/creation/explanatory stories of his Jirrbal tribe, he fears that up to 70 per cent of the original meaning is lost. The audience was treated to a recitation of a traditional European tale 'Dickie the Wren' by Mr Hofstetters, known as Yuri the Storyteller in his performing role, and to a tape recording of Mr Grant's mother telling a 'goanna story'.

Ernest Grant identified a looming problem associated with the copyright in indigenous stories published by Western publishers.

Gwenda Davey's wide-ranging presentation explored modern storytelling methods and media. Through graffiti, folksong, personal experience narratives, yarns, reprographic folklore (perpetrated via photocopier and fax machine), the Internet and private audio cassette recordings, a rich tapestry of Australian social history is woven. Dr Davey also observed that many modern myths have their roots in older tales. For example, it seems that the modern 'dole bludger' myth is a version of the traditional 'lazy boy' story. Another of the day's treats was provided by Phyl Lobl, a colleague of Dr Davey, singing the humorous 'Fair Lifter' song from Tasmania.

Librarian Catherine Panich gave a lively account of current diverse applications of storytelling, which she described as an art and a craft-painting pictures with words. While these applications ranged from entertainment and education through to therapy, religious instruction and cultural bridging, she frequently emphasised the educational potential and importance of storytelling. It was her tenet that children should be read to daily, even after they have attained basic reading skills, because she maintains that there is a gap between their reading skill and their ability to internalise language structures. Catherine sees story-telling as the first step toward literacy and the learning of a host of language and communication skills.

It was Helen McKay's task to end the seminar with a look at the future of storytelling by examining the many areas of change and application. She particularly noted that the advent of the Internet has resulted in written versions of transmitted stories and an explosion of story exchange. Some stories are emerging inevitably based on the theme of 'new' technology. Recent support from the Australia Council has established the agenda of storytelling as an important cultural one. Nevertheless, while new opportunities for storytellers in tourism, therapy, education and health are emerging daily, financially viability must be assessed. With the introduction of accreditation, financial rewards have been improved but further professionalisation of the industry is required.

The post-seminar discussion group, chaired by Berice Dudley, was well-attended and revisited many of these and other issues. A special lunchtime performance by Brian Hungerford, head of Rominy in Australia, was entertaining and very moving. He chose to relate his own story 'It's Him'-Recollections of 1943, which recounted the day a young boy's father was returning home from war.

The challenge of history

Winning students in the Australian National History Challenge visited the National Library in September. The students, who represented every State in Australia, had won a trip to Canberra to receive their awards and gain an insight into the historical resources of the national capital.

The trip was organised by the Department of Veterans' Affairs which sponsored its own special category within the major theme of this year's challenge of 'Civic Rights and Responsibilities in Our History'. The students, who entered the Department of Veterans' Affairs category 'Their Service-Our Heritage', were asked to explore the experiences of serving personnel on the Western Front during World War 1. The winning entries ranged in subject from the experience of individual soldiers, to the origins of the ANZAC myth and legend. During their stay, which culminated in a presentation at Parliament House, the students visited a range of institutions, including the National Library of Australia, Australian Archives, the Australian Defence Force Academy and the Australian War Memorial-where they continued their research.

The group's visit to the National Library focused on the creation of 'For King and Country', the Library's recent exhibition about the recruitment campaigns of World War 1. Curator Michael Richards showed the students a selection of posters from the exhibition and discussed the underlying issues of the recruitment campaigns, which provided an added dimension to the issues the students had discussed in their essays. This was followed with a tour of the sound preservation studios where the soundscape for the exhibition had been produced. The students were moved by the recordings of death notices intertwined with music from the Gilgandra Entertainers choir and enjoyed discovering the other treasures of the Oral History Collection, including the John Meredith Collection of folk music. Before leaving, the group also had an opportunity to view some of the dramatic images of World War 1 taken by photographer Frank Hurley.

The visit gave the students an idea of the variety and breadth of resources the National Library has to offer. Each student received a copy of the education kit developed to complement 'For King and Country' , which contained the major text and captions from the exhibition, copies of many of its powerful images, as well as copies of the sheet music and articles featured. The kit, which has been distributed widely to secondary schools in the local area and surrounding regions, has proved invaluable to teachers, many of whom brought their students to see the exhibition in Canberra.

It is intended that 'For King and Country' will be launched as an online exhibition during 1998, thereby making it accessible to schools all over Australia.

Faces of Mandurama revealed

Faces of Mandurama, introduced by John Thompson.

ISBN 0 642 10686 X, A4, rrp $29.95

The National Library's latest publication, Faces of Mandurama, was launched by Senator Margaret Reid after she awarded the 1997 Community Heritage Grants at a ceremony in the library's foyer on 2 October. Ron Hines, who found the glass negatives on which the book is based, and recognised their importance, was there.

Faces of Mandurama depicts aspects of Australian town and country life, as typified by a small community of people living in a scattering of towns and villages in the central west of New South Wales from the late 1890s to the early 1900s. The images are drawn from a collection of glass plate negatives which were recovered from 'Burnt Yards,' the former property of commercial photographer EAJ Lumme, after his death and are now held by the National Library as the Mandurama Collection.

[Illustration, p.23]In launching the book, Senator Reid emphasised the role of the National Library as a cultural institution. She made reference to the importance of the images of ordinary Australians at work, at leisure and at important social events in a period long gone but historically important. The images illustrate both a pioneering past and the arrival of the industrial age. There is also a strong emphasis on youth, with portraits of confident young men and women who, ironically, have no idea that they will soon face war. Senator Reid was clearly captivated by the photographs, the work of photographer Evan Lumme and, almost certainly, of his wife, Rose. She spoke about the Lummes and also acknowledged the importance of John Thompson's commentary, which provides an historical frame-work for the images.

Since its launch, Faces of Mandurama has attracted favourable publicity, with media interest from such diverse sources as the Sun-Herald, the Canberra Times, the Geelong Advertiser and the Central Western Daily in Orange, along with radio programs such as Radio National's Hindsight, 2BL's Drivetime and ABC Radio's Statewide. There have been many enquiries from people who live in the Mandurama area and from others who once lived there.

This is a beautiful book of photographs in its own right but, as John Thompson explains, 'Collectively, these images coalesce to give us a picture of ourselves as individuals, as a community and, in their largest dimension, as a nation.' He adds, 'In looking at the faces of the Mandurama citizenry of a century ago, we are looking at the faces of people who contributed to the building of the Australian nation...These photographs are part of the collective history of all Australians'. The context that John provides adds greatly to an understanding of our heritage and to enjoyment of the images. As one reviewer has said, 'John's text offers lucid and stylish insights into the collection. The Library can be justly proud of such a publication.'

At the launch of the book. Senator Margaret Reid and John Thompson (right) with Ron Hines, who found the glass negatives

At the National Portrait Gallery, Old Parliament House

[Illustration, p.24]