I discovered a new portal this week; but more about that later. I also learnt much more about Museum Victoria (MV), being the largest public museums organisation in Australia and the state’s first museum, established in 1854.
Among the options for exploring the online collection, is Treasures, exhibited when the museum celebrated 150 years in 2004. The history entries in this section explain how the library and museum shared premises for a century. “Melbourne's Age newspaper had long promoted the view that the rightful home for the National Museum of Victoria was the Public Library building in Swanston Street.”
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| Wax model cherries 1947 |
I was pleased to see that Food is among 10 Pathways offered to explore the Treasures collections. I’d previously struck the wax fruit collection in broader searches at the VSL, each model meticulously photographed, documented and digitised, swelling the search results by hundreds.
A significant Treasure for my research proved to be this 19 century Recipe and Remedy book, with the main entry description written by Stephanie Alexander, Melbourne food identity, formerly a librarian herself.
Features such as ‘Explore this item’ allow closer inspection with zoom facility. The MV site is well organised and the digitized collection easy to navigate. However I found it disappointing not to be able to link back in to the main entry for these items from the Treasures area; but this explains why in some searches there may appear be multiple entries for the same item, in that an item may have separate listings according to the different websites within and externally to, MV and these are not necessarily cross referenced.
Exploring the History and Technology Collections yielded interesting results among the 72,783 records currently online although it took a while to establish how best to search for my topics. The Trade Literature collection (Working Life and Trades collection) is the largest and most diverse collection of its type in any Australian public institution.
While I was surprised to find that the only results relative to my topic were among Agricultural Machinery, I now know that I can find photographs of the SEC library and staff, even if more obtusely relevant. Woman librarian 1946
The Domestic and Community Life collection “... is most significant in relation to domestic life in early to mid-20 century Victoria.” So among the ration coupons, recipe booklets, cheese wrappers, and menus can be found some unique material published in Victoria.
Secret Recipes compiled by the Wardmaster, circa 1923
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| Published by the National Gallery of Victoria Women's Association 1972 |
Here I also happened upon many interesting collections (somewhat confusingly titled Themes in their sidebar) One such contained 316 items, including references to businesses (such as Paterson's Cakes, now also relegated to history) within my present sphere of travel and relative to my own family history.
By experimenting with different search terms relative to food and books, eventually I found the Leisure Collection and more. Findings differ according to how items are tagged at their original source, so one must collect clues from the tags and try options, hence Café Culture yields different results to Coffee Palaces (terms taken from existing tags) with less overlap than may be initially expected. This is another anomaly to be mindful in the era of open access where multiple institutions share resources, however it can lead to some serendipitous and unexpected finds.
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| Cast Iron Decoration - Federal Coffee Palace, 1888-1972 (MV) |
An option within History and Technology Collections Online is Browse by location or map, eg, Melbourne, Victoria currently yields 6818 items. Another option offers to filter by object type but using the search bar in this screen still trawls (the broader) MV Collections. Searching ‘books + libraries’ produced only 1 result; but it isn’t immediately clear whether it is coincidentally a Melbourne object, but as the search results screen shows ‘no locations found’, it would seem not. Thus experimentation confirmed that this result was indeed serendipitous as other searches showed results unrelated to Melbourne.
Each result and tangent provides more clues as to how the data is organised and therefore informs further exploration. So for instance to enter ‘book’ into Search the collections, will yield 1080 results, with 87 Themes showing in tantalising thumbnails in a sidebar, hence I discovered a collection comprising the History of wine labels used at Great Western vineyard-1888-1918, and learnt that they are classified as objects, all 46 items.
Among the Little Lon collections, only 2 items types were listed: Archaeology or Object, and I was surprised to find that a paper and cardboard item had survived. This notebook is unique in that it has Chinese characters, English words and Italian words in it. The reconstructed ink-stone and ink mixing bowl fragrant also listed as 1880, each had differing trench numbers, so I learnt more about archaeological cataloguing, as well as another website feature highlighting when an item is on display, in this case, at Melbourne Museum.
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| Notebook circa 1880 |
I took the opportunity to make an email enquiry through the MV Discovery Centre and was pleased to have a personal response from a MV librarian within 2 days, as the automated response advises that inquiries may take up to 6 weeks. Ironically MV library records are on Trove (NLA), but an online search of the Discovery Centre catalogue is “not accessible to the public from home, but you are able to access it from one of the PCs in Discovery Centres at both the Melbourne Museum and Immigration Museum.” This could take a while!
The most exciting find for me this week however was when somehow I stumbled across a portal I previously didn’t know existed and I don’t feel that this is widely promoted or utilised to the extent that it could be. Culture Victoria links over 700 organisations with cultural collections and this site allows 3 options for views and searches: website/ organisations/ collections, as well as a blog.
I learnt of such unique places as the Maffra Sugar Beet Museum and wondered why I never knew there was a Melbourne Museum of Printing (MMOP). Now at West Footscray, this is renowned as Australia's working and teaching museum of typography and printing, “specialising in retention of traditional printing, both the equipment and the knowledge. “
This image is from the Engravings Gallery (captioned, but not catalogued with provenance) and the site asks that users advise themselves of the permissions through the Copyright Notice page and email the museum to make requests, to which I am awaiting reply.
This is a fascinating and comprehensive collection with a range of programs and holdings relevant to various sectors; but it would seem, a sadly under-resourced organisation, in need of various kinds of assistance to maintain the collection and to present their message.
“The Museum is seeking assistance with the cost of protecting the stored collection for the next four years. Revenues should then be sufficient for ongoing storage. Without support, this world-class collection is almost certainly destined for destruction.”
Continuing through Culture Victoria to find video, led me to discover the Free Media Library at ACMI,for which I had to register, which allows saving of favourites - handy! Many of this media, such as the video I've shown, are not catalogued with provenance, which I found disappointing.
ACMI uses a “Creative Commons Attribution – Non Commercial” licence for the use of content from its Free Media Library resources, and also accepts uploaded contributions within these terms.
Unfortunately I wasn't able to download and embed the high resolution footage so viewers may prefer to link back to source (hover & click on video caption below) for better quality. Enjoy!
