Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Trove and family history searching

Losing a loved one is an impetus to go poring over and sorting through old family photos. 



Researching family history can be done in a number of online sites these days, such as ancestry.com and cyndislist.com.
I am no expert on this sort of research, and so was pleasantly surprised to find the National Library Trove search page http://trove.nla.gov.au
which allowed me to access photos that have been stored by the John Oxley library and newspaper accounts of family members going back to the 1870s from the Sydney Morning Herald and the Brisbane Courier Mail.
The ability to edit and correct the newspaper transcript as we read the scanned pages is a great interactive tool to allow users to help with the digitisation project, as is the ability to leave comments and information about the photos I had ties to. This is a great way to add to the store of knowledge being presented. I sincerely hope that regional papers such as the Rockhampton Morning Bulletin, a full archive already held on microfilm, may come to be added in to this resource. What a boon for researchers to have it all online!
So if you have done any family research and have old photos of pioneering days, consider sending copies to the John Oxley Library in Brisbane to have them added to this resource. Booklets, diaries, letters, photos and the like are encouraged for their insight into our history.
The State Library of Queensland's John Oxley Library, opened in 1934 and now in its 75th year, is responsible for collecting, managing and providing access to material which documents Queensland's history, development and cultural life.

The John Oxley Library collects widely, assisted by the State Library’s legal deposit role whereby publishers and others are required to deposit a copy of their works with the library. It also acquires the works of Queensland authors.
The collection falls into the following broad categories and access points:
  • Manuscripts Queensland, providing online access to the library’s extensive collection of manuscript and archival material as well as works of art relating to Queensland.
  • Picture Queensland, providing access to those images from the pictorial collection that have been digitised for on line access. In addition to these online pictorial resources the remainder of the library’s pictorial resources are available on site at the John Oxley Library.
  • Published materials, accessible through the State Library’s One Search. This collection includes books, serials and newspapers. Significant printed collections include Rare Books and Ephemera.
  • Maps collection, with particular strengths in historic, land exploration, pastoral and commercial or real estate maps.




Back to the National Library and Trove.
Trove describes itself as "a new discovery experience focused on Australia and Australians. It supplements what search engines provide with reliable information from Australia's memory institutions.
If you are researching in the fields of the social sciences, literature, local or family history, or need inspiration for your school assignment, then this is the tool for you.
Trove was designed to:
  • provide a single point of access to the resources of the deep web
  • facilitate access to a significantly greater range of resources from major sources, including selected digitised material freely available online
  • support searching of, and access to, full-text content
  • enhance ease of discovery by providing improved relevance ranking, refinement by facets, FRBR-like grouping of related items (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records) and exploitation of thesauri
  • engage with communities and individuals through annotation services
  • ensure that relevant information is not missed in a search by reducing the need to search material-specific discovery services separately
  • provide a platform for niche services to query a vast resource of Australian metadata and adapt if for their own needs.


For example if researching images relating to Edmund Barton, our first Prime Minister, results will include descriptions such as people, book, manuscript, map and newspaper articles. A researcher searching for information on Nellie Melba will be presented with a range of results including biographies, pictures, music, newspapers, books etc."

Well worth a look.

Monday, January 25, 2010

Peter Stephenson newspaper illustrator and artist


This is my Father's obituary in the Courier Mail. Sadly, he died on the 14th January 2010.

Artists view life with careful eyes and imagination. They frame life and present it to our eyes. My father loved the Australian landscape, horses and birds, and these are well reflected in his art. Some artists never become famous in the eyes of the world, and few readers would have noticed the signature under his many illustrations in the Courier Mail, but they were the work of a talented artist. His work in the Art Room of the Courier Mail enabled him to support us as a family.
Given time, I may be able to assemble some of them from newspaper microfilm archives. The scanned images I assembled as a Powerpoint for his 80th birthday party can be found at slideshare and below.
As a family we hope to compile a booklet of his life and art.

He left his family paintings, poetry, jazz cds and an illustrated story of his childhood. Most of all he left us an inherited creative streak, a love of playfulness and nonsense, many rambling conversations on all sorts of topics, and a lot of quiet love.
Googling his name I find there are two Australian artists named Peter Stephenson, but to my mind Dad is the original and the best.