Alright so before we start I want to acknowledge the the traditional custodians of the land from which we are broadcasting this webinar and recognise their continuing culture and contribution and we thank all their elders past and present and extend this respect to other indigenous peoples.

So today we'll be looking at the ways at which we can explore the National Library's collection to inform our writing. Whether it's researching the setting of a specific place, finding character through biography and personal papers, or discovering stories based on historical events. Whether you're looking at recounting the facts in historical fiction writing or creating new stories based around those settings. 

I hope you find today's session useful for getting you started on your research with our collections. We've got quite a bit of ground to cover in the next hour but there will be opportunities for questions as we go. 

Okay so to start I wanted to give you some examples of how writers have been using our collections. Dr Gabrielle Carey who was a National Library fellow in Australian literature last year underwent research focused on the personal papers of Australian writer Ivan Southall, looking at the hundreds of letters in the collection written to him from his readers, mostly young adults, through the 1960s and 70s. Through understanding the unique reader writer relationship built through this correspondence she was able to explore new perspective of, new perspectives on Southall's work and on Southall himself through his own personal relationships with his family, particularly his father, as both a creative writer and a creative thinker and a critical writer about literature. Dr Carey was able to approach this body of work on a number of levels in exploring and understanding these relationships which formed the basis of her recent book "Falling out of love with Ivan Southall".

Shastra Deo was one of last year's National Library summer scholars. Shastra is a writing of poetry. She uses research to construct work in the same way that writers would historian fiction light. Her research at the Library explored the medical history of World War one with a particular focus on field surgery looking at official reports such as published histories and comparing them with personal accounts contained in wartime diaries, letters and journals of participants. Reflecting on this experience she finds a creative work as a happy side effect from immersing yourself in archival archival records. Creating a speaker or persona based on the text that she reads and then plays at writing a poem even if it's just as the means of processing and absorbing the collections the creative work is more something that she's happy to let development so as she reads and internalizes her research. 

Of course we have a whole range of writers to reach out to us for help connecting with the collections whether they're novelists biographers playwrights journalists etc. These are but a few of the kinds of questions that we often receive through our ask a librarian service. One question here is asking about the social conditions of life in Adelaide in 1973, another looks for personal papers for writing biography and other details around the murder case in the 1890s and another is asking about legislation that regulated the nightlife of Melbourne in the late 1960s. Many of these kinds of questions seemed to investigate real people and places from the past as a way of words remaining historically faithful but also immersing themselves in these landscapes or personas. 

To highlight the significance of the National Library to these kinds of endeavors it's important to touch upon why we have a national library. The Library's role as defined by the National Library of Australia Act of 1916 is to ensure that documentary resources of national significance relating to Australia and the Australian people as well as significant non-Australian library materials are collected, preserved and made accessible accessible. As outlined in our strategic priorities this is described as collecting today what will be important tomorrow, connecting creations with their national collections. 

As such the main strength of the National Library is in its Australian collection materials which make up the most vast majority of the collection. We receive a copy of almost everything that is published in Australia through the legal deposit requirements of the Copyright Act and curate collections of unpublished materials. We also actively collect materials from Asia and the Pacific including languages other than English and selectively collect other overseas materials of significance to Australia. 

In this collection the Library has around 260 kilometres of material or approximately 10 million items and every year we add to that with roughly 270 millimeters more. Of course in this digital age there are enormous collections of digital content also been collected everything from ebooks to archive websites and bound raw materials. So to give you more of a breakdown of this collection we have print collections which include all kinds of government publications monographs a books serials such as magazines newspapers and journals. And as I mentioned we received these through legal deposit which means that if it was published we should have it in our collection. 

Then we come to some of our more interesting things. We have over 600,000 maps in our collection. We also have our ephemera collection which includes various kinds of print material such as catalogs, menus, programs and flyers. We have an extensive picture collection including artworks such as paintings edgings and sketches as well as photographs and posters and the collection that you'll probably be quite interested in accessing for research is the manuscripts collation these are often personal papers of individuals or families and national significance but can also include corporate records and archives such as those belong to a company association or political party. 

Finally we have the oral history and folklore collation which records the voices that could describe asterisk all intellectual and social life inflating over 45,000 hours of recordings of interviews and traditional music. Sorry you might be wondering that's all great but how does it all work? How do I find and get these collection? Well firstly it's important to note that unlike some libraries that you might be familiar with we are a non lending library which means you can't take collections home with you. Most of the physical collections are held in storage either inside the building or at an off-site storage facility so you can't actually browse the shelves. Instead you needs a central collection things in our catalogue which you can also use to request items and have them delivered to our reading rooms for viewing. 

You need a library card so I'm gonna put on quick pause. Just out of curiosity how many of you have a National Library card? So as you can see the vast majority of us no of you have here for those of you who don't have one it's pretty straightforward to get one. If you're here in Canberra you can actually just come to the main reading room and fill out the online form but if you but if you're from home if you if you're away from Canberra it's still pretty straightforward process of going to the main website which get a library card and that will take you to an online form where you can fill in your details. Once you've done that you can come to us in the main reading room or if you're not based in Canberra we can mail your card out to you. It's still quite valuable for the requesting of materials in advance before visiting Canberra or accessing resources from home. 

So once you have a card you can request these materials from the catalogue. Find the catalogue again goes in this website and click on, which may seem obvious but it can be easy to get lost on our website, sometimes people will search search site field in the top right hand corner or get lost in some of our menus but we've tried to make it easy by bringing the catalogue in the middle of the main home page. So have a look out for that and again on our website you can either search straight away or you can just click on catalogue and your interactive mode for searching. 

So on this note as I mentioned before a lot of our collections physical collections which you'll have to come in for but some collections are available for viewing online this includes some digitized newspapers and journals, generally pre 1955 but there are exceptions such as the Canberra Times and the Australian Women's Weekly which are all accessible through Trove along with pictures, maps, manuscript materials, and streaming recordings of oral history and folklore interviews. You'll find a couple of clues on the catalogue that will indicate that you can access it online. They'll often be in a company thumbnail picture in the case of pictures they can click on to view there will also be a link in the catalogue to a National Library of Australia digitized item both in the record and the bottom of the record under online, which click on to view. 

However if these options don't present themselves you will need to request the materials the view in person. And to do this you would click request this next item on the catalogue record. I'm not going to do this right now but we will see opportunities later on where you can see how that works. Once you've requested the item you'll see the word success and it will take you to where you need to go to exit. It'll tell you where you need to go to access the material. The Library has two reading rooms the main reading room and the Special Collections which you can use to access these collections depending on the collection materials. You will need to go to one of these places either the central desk or the newspaper and family history section of the main reading room or the Special Collections reading room when you request materials will deliver the items from the storage and for use in use. And all items are in order for seven days from the date of the request.

So I know what you're thinking: what if I try what if I want access something below this collection and it isn't digitised? This does happen quite a lot since the reality of hoarding such a large and growing collection is that the vast majority of it still hasn't been digitised yet. However we do have a copy direct service that allows you to custom order copies of collection material and have an email sent to you. You should also note though that this is subject to copyright laws and rights agreements that we may have and that we may have with the donors of collection materials. 

So that covers all of the boring procedural stuff that you need to know to get started before we continue to some more interesting content. Do we have any questions so far my questions? Oh I see you've raised your hand did you have a question for us? Okay well if you have a question pop it in the Q&A. Okay we've got a couple of questions. There are various charges for the copies direct service. Yes it really it depends on a number of factors: what you're wanting copy of and what your what format you wanted them. So my head actually jump into the website and you can look at this later if you need to but go to a copy of right one place I'm going take a shortcut and put the address right in there so copyright Club in LA don't deny you and details yes how much these copies cost. There we go so we've got some an indication of the various costs here again. If you want to make a note of that address then you can come back to it and view it at your own leisure. Have any other questions? If not keep thinking, if you have a question in the Q&A forum but otherwise continue. 

So an important part of literary research involves building the geographical and social setting of a place, whether it's a colonial settlement a bustling city or a quiet country town. There are plenty of materials and our collections that can tell you about a specific location. By the way this is a real wall map from a collection. If you happen to be writing a story about wheat farmers that'd be Australia in the 1920s you might find it useful. 

So firstly and this seems obvious we need to know the name of the place that we research. From any of our collections if it's related to a specific place such as the town city or even our hotel or Church then this will be included in the catalogue record however there are a few things to bear in mind. Some places can be ambiguous with names such as Kensington Windsor or Sandringham in which case and should clarify using the stage. As well if you don't get many results consider a wider government areas such as from the end of the Shire. And finally be mindful of historical place names that may have changed particularly things like parish names. Quite often you may need been the first messenger to be researching the place and Historical Society publications can be a great starting point both to get an overview of a place and also find the references of other primary sources that the Library might hold. 

So here if you search for a place name on the catalogue along with the phrase Historical Society isn't then this would be a good start. For example hello bang and you'll see that we have quite a few resources that tell the history of a - which it's a place that I randomly picked but it seems like an interesting place. But for example if you search for another place go to the other end of Australia. Again we have some interesting resources about the history of -town prepared by their historical societies. ELISA Street directories can also be very insightful for showing how roads and properties change through the years especially those Street directories and coming up every year or so in this case. Though one of my favorite of the oldest street directories is the summer atlas of the suburbs of Sydney which is fully digitized and you can look through just published back in nation the - and shows you various all the suburbs of Sydney where you can really zoom in and out to quite good detail. And I really could spend quite some time just thinking through this. 

And mentioning what life is like in the 1880s similarly yeah you can get a sense of how new suburbs operative for certain periods of time. So in Melbourne in 1960s back in 67 few years ago this area of the eastern suburbs of Melbourne was largely a lot more sparse but you can see it growing through 17 years until the eighties when much of the rest of belief and similarly publications like Street directories can also provide you with ellipses of aspects of society from a certain time such as the lists of driving cinemas that were present in the 60s or information on how you might go about catching train using the public transport system back in 1988 and Melbourne. 

Moving on to our map collection topographic maps can give you a real sense of the landscape. And this is a great one because it's not only doesn't show you things like the coastline and the contours of what is quite a hilly and rugged area but like many of them maps this one is fully digitized and so you can view online. And again what's really great is that you can zoom in and see quite a bit of the detail. And I quite like some of the place names here which again give you a sense of the landscape place it's like Black Hill and Eagle's Nest which I imagine would provide a slow gentle any hill which I can picture being a nice Saturday afternoon stroll. Or my personal favorite first Michael Hill which I imagine might be more challenging. And also note while these days the town is called Apollo Bay. back then it was called the township of crambo so that's worth noting if you're doing some research on the history of this place. 

Parish and council maps can show who are in the land of property in certain historical points of time which again is a good way of linking places and the people who live there. So this is an old sketch map showing the, a lot of the ownership of the land around what became Canberra. And then there are other kinds of maps that can tell a different kind of story. The Melbourne and metropolitan Board of Works plans can often show details of specific buildings. Here's one from Hawthorne in Melbourne. It shows some of the banks and hotels in that area at the turn-of-the-century. And similarly the fire and accident maps in Sydney show a lot of internal details of buildings such as when they haven't had a fireplace and they often include information such as the materials they will building. And again note that many of these are digitized and other libraries such as the State Library of Victoria in the case of BMW plans and the State Library of New South Wales in the case of the fire accident underwriting maps. 

But getting back to Apollo Bay local newspapers can be a valuable way of focusing your research on to our local community. Not only through the stories of day-to-day goings-on but also the advertising pages that show the various businesses that were in operation. While many of the major metropolitan newspapers have all been already been digitized and are accessible through trove, there are smaller local newspapers also being progressively added. So we can see here we go to our trove digitized newspapers and search for the phrase Apollo Bay many of the results come up for the Collac Herald you can see here after the two major newspapers, which would have been a local newspaper for the area. And again you can go in and start you can start seeing the kind of stories about incidents going on in the in the area. 

However if it's not digitized you can also request many of these newspapers to be delivered to the main reading room on microfilm and and to be clearer in the newspaper family history area. And you talked a bit about how to request materials if you go to a catalog record at the bottom you click in the library click request this it's going to ask you for your user ID and family name but then you can use that which will be on your library card and then you can use that to request materials for the reading room. And again if you are unable to come to Canberra you can also see if the microfilms can be sent to you via local library on interlibrary loan.

Moving on to pictures, photographs can often show what places looked like a different times and they can complement the mass in that respect/ Of you think back to that coastal map of Apollo Bay you can see from here the township and the rugged hilly coastline in the background. And similarly promotional material such as tourism posters from the pictures collection an advertising material can also be found in Geographic ephemera, such as pamphlets, accommodation guides and postcards. And these show more the social aspects of life in this place such as how it was marketed to audiences and what people did there for fun.

Now that we've established our city now learn to move on possibly to a more interesting part of the research the people. A little while ago I was helping a reader from Newcastle research the life of Florence Austral who was a world-class opera singer and she died 15 years ago. So once again and once again if we're searching on the catalogue we look for collection materials that are specifically related to that person and in this case it would be catalogued under the name Florence Austral. We get to following, very important that you stole people's names correctly as well otherwise you won't get the results you want and so when we search that those names we get the following kinds of results. And as you can see we've got a selection of books, pictures, a painting, more books, music, some ephemera from concerts, some personal ephemera, personal papers and a scrapook. So it's a really interesting variety of different results that have come up just from searching for that person's name. 

Note that the name Florence Austral is quite a unique name but other names can be more ambiguous such as John Clarke. Here we have John Clark bushranger, John Clark the theatrical producer, John Clarke the satirist and another guy by the name of John Clark whose images are all found in the National Library's collections. Obviously they're not the same person, some helpful hints would be to look at the life dates in the catalogue record and check that you've spelled their name correctly. 

In terms of books if the person is of some cultural or historical significance there'll often be a written biography which can give you an overview of their life. Australian dictionary of biography is a good starting point. And one advantage the Australian biography is that it's also freely available online. Similarly the Who's Who of Australia is a great resource, although for the Who's Who you'll need to know the year that the person was significantly active in. 

Speaking of books the Library has many collections that have previously passed through the hands of prominent people in the past. And through looking at the provenance of the book we can also find some interesting details of that person's lives and their interests. So that collections come from named collections such as the Nan Kivell and Ferguson collections being some of the more significant. By looking across these formed collections we can also come to understand the interests of the person who collected them and piece together the list of books that were previously owned by individuals by searching on the catalogue for their name in the words 'former owner'. For example we have a collection materials formerly owned by George Mackaness and again in the catalogue there'll be an entry here that says 'Mackaness George former owner'. By clicking on that subject heading you can see the rest of the books that he collected which ended up in the National Library.

Many of these books will also have personalized book plates which which in themselves tell you a lot about the character and the story of the owner. For example we have here a book plate found in a book from the collection of Nan Kivell which is a bit about this person and his areas of interest. Nan Kivell collected material documenting explorers such as Dampier, Tasman, Cook, Flinders and particular - which are depicted in the names on this map in the illustration the tiki represents his interest in the Pacific region similarly the books here name a number of prominent artists his works in collected. 

If the person that you're researching was active prior to 1955 then Trove's newspapers are another excellent place to search for people. Continuing our example of researching Florence Austral a search for a name in this resource will bring a multitude of results and again I've just session the name  Florence Austral in the digitized papers. And what's quite interesting is if you open up you can see that the vast majority would have been back in the 1920s and 30s, particularly in the thirties when she reached worldwide acclaim. 

If the person that you are looking for is more recently active than there's still a chance there was a story published in the Canberra Times or other publications such as Australian Women's Weekly for which we have more recently digitized issues. The Sydney Morning Herald archives from 1955 to to 1995 is also a fantastic electronic resource which you can access the Library's e-resources using a library card and this provides for to digitize full text from the period for through till 1995. 

Some of you may be familiar with the Ryerson index this is a great online tool for finding death notices and obituaries which can also be valuable source of information when researching biography. We wanted to search for Florence Austral, we would put in here. And no results found but because I've already done a bit of research I realized that Florence Austral was actually a pseudonym and her actual name surname was Mario. If you search for Florence Mario there we are and one of them even references her pseudonym Florence Austral. And from this I can I find that I can find some information to different people but we already know that she died in 1968 so I can dig up the Sydney Morning Herald for the 26 of May 1968 and find that obituary which I have included here. 

We also have biography files. These are clippings files that were developed by the Library mostly in the nineteen sixties and seventies. Unfortunately these files are rarely comprehensive but they can still be valuable in finding obscure articles that haven't been indexed anywhere else.

Ephemera collections can also be a great source of materials. In the case of Florence Austral there is an extensive collection of pronouns from the performances both within Australia and overseas as part of a PROMPT collection performing arts programs and ephemera. It's also worth looking at organisations and venues that the person was associated with in this case we have an extensive range of ephemera material from the Promenade concerts at the Royal Albert Hall in London where Austral performed. 

And again the photographs can tell the story and here you can see that we have many photographs of Florence Austral, both in her early roles in costume and then to Australia as popular as her popularity increased. Similarly artists works such as painted painted portraits can tell its own story through the artist's interpretation. 

And again and then there are manuscript collections. The Library often collects our personal papers which can include valuable insights such as notes letters and diaries. Sometimes it might just be one or two boxes of material or they need collections such as the Robert Menzies papers which are made up of over 600 boxes and take up over a hundred metres of shelf space. Manuscripts are often an interesting case because they aren't catalogued to the same level of detail than our other collections are often because it simply isn't practical. The collection is often catalogued in the single record which briefly describes its contents. But for our collections that are larger than a few few boxes we create what we call finding aids to help researchers narrow down their search.

So to give you an example I mentioned items Southall at the beginning of the talk if we search these papers on the catalogue we get this record. And we can see yeah from the extent that it's made up from the description that's made up of 145 boxes total. To give a sense of what's actually in those boxes you need click through to the finding aid. And here you can see a list of the entire collection, scrolling through which is divided into various series's and then the files in each series. Now of course the level of details are quite limited so you're going to need to put assigned time to paste painstakingly go through a lot of these collections sometimes which can be frustrating. But on the plus side researching with manuscripts can also lead to its serendipitous discoveries that you didn't even know were there. 

For example one of last year's summer scholars was researching composers the Peter Sculthorpe and amongst the personal papers this was a recipe for what was described as pink pancakes which he describes as an early Australian variation on the traditional pancake. If you're wondering the vital ingredient is beetroot. Even something as simple as a recipe can reveal aspects of that person's character. like here when he says "I rather like the almost forgot English custom sounding a pancake bell at 11:00 in the morning on Shrove Tuesday: I like pancakes at least once a week but I've yet to take up the idea of sounding a bell". So the advantage to not knowing exactly what's in there is that neither does anyone else. And that's not uncommon for people to find these unique gems of personal detail, whether it's and letters and journals or in annotated scrapbooks of signed photographs. In a way our manuscript collection represents those personal interactions moments and achievements are the most memorable and significant in that person's life and by immersing yourself in those papers you can get a sense in the world that they lived in through their activities and interactions. 

When researching people there are other considerations to take into account as well. In some cases there may not be materials related to the person you're looking for. But once you start working materials related suppose people who are closest to them then you may be able to find valuable information. For example the Library does not have any manuscript collections related to Florence Austral but they do have the papers of the Mario family where John and Mario was Florence's husband. Similarly archives and manuscripts of affiliated organizations can also help highlight some there are, some of the activities of the person it was involved in that organization. 

Okay I'm gonna take a break to answer some questions.

A few questions come through. So earlier on when you were in Trove I think specifically you're in the newspapers Joanne asked can you combine a place search and another item for example Gippsland and Cobb and Co.

Oh look the beauty of Trove is its keyword search. So you're searching for a keyword so we can do exactly that. What was it? What were the places?

Gippsland and Cobb and Co.

Here are so we can definitely do a search and I'll pick up results that include both the place name and company name. Alternately you can just do a search for Cobb and Co and then you can limit your results Victoria, which I know isn't, actually it's probably a bad example because they were they were busy they're active all over in Victoria. But then you can also look at various titles. And so we had a place like Gippland Times,  Bairnsdale Advertiser. So those would be the two that we could narrow it down to. And so now we've done a search for Cobb and Co narrowed down to references of Cobb and Co in the Gippsland Times and then you can narrow it down further depending on the time period. Obviously in the 1870s and 1880s was when these were most active so you can again narrow it down by decade. And so if you're looking particularly at 1875 and we're down 234 results. And again you can narrow down by month. You can refine your search by advertising articles. So if you're looking for a report about something to happen with commentary you can narrow down all the advertising. And then now you down to a nice nice short list and there's records of Cobb and Co, there's news post office arrangements. This is all been arbitrary but it just gives you an example of how you can really narrow down your search from what is flat drawn to start. G

Great. Charlotte is added to that with a question: does the same search for multiple keywords also work in the National Library's catalogue?

Yes, yes. You have the choice when you search in the catalogue. You can do, from here you do you can do a broad keyword search. So when you do a search let's just use an example Gippsland and Cobb and Co. One result yeah the probably not the best example. Whereas you can also go advanced search and so you might do a search for Cobb and Co in the title but you might also wanted to narrow it down to subject I;m hoping transportation works and there you go.

So next question comes from Cecily who asks why is Peter Sculthorpe paper entries dated 1839 to 2014, wouldn't 1839 be a little early?

Yes thank You Cecily. I'll back into the catalogue record for the papers. It's an interesting situation so yes I can see what you mean right here in the listing it says 1839. And if we look, if we look at the finding aid you can see three consignments here. So it seems the latest consignment we've received 2015 contained papers which dated back to 1839. So firstly it's not uncommon for people to have personal papers that predate their own life especially if there are things that the person has collected or inherited. Whether they're family letters or papers or scrapbooks of old articles. However it's also entirely possible that this is simply a typographic error and it is meant to be 1939 which would be more in line with the range of the other collection. 

So what I'm going to do is I'm going to go and raise this question with our manuscript team and Ithey can make their own corrections as deemed appropriate or they might be able to add more information to the finding aid which points out what is exactly dates back to 1839 if there is something that dates back to 1839.

Our next question from Tom. He asks if a manuscript item is marked 'permission required for research' how do I go about getting that permission? 

Okay um yes this is also very important and well we've got Peter Sculthorpe open up I'll use this as our example. When you're looking at the catalogue record always look under access conditions because it'll tell you what is available for research, if it's an open collection or if it's a closed collection. Now in this case some of the collections are available for research and some requires permission research for and some one requires permission for research. You can see more details down here in 'in the Library'. You can see access details so box, a number of boxes are require permission for research until 2045. It looks like it's just parts of some boxes. So here you've got box 119 file 27 box 121 and files 59 to 60 and so on. And so what this means is with many of our collections, personal papers and company records, can contain sensitive or personal information that the donor doesn't want just publicly available. They would rather that the the researchers sought permission I guess have a chat to the rights holder just so that they're confident that the material be used appropriately. 

And so if you need to seek permission the best way to do so is to contact the National Library directly through our ask a librarian service which you can find from our home page. We go link ask a librarian click on enquire now and then just put the details of what you want to access. Say I understand that permission is required can you help me help me seek that permission. And and then what we'll do is either we'll provide you with the contact details for the person that you need to seek permission from or we will contact the rights holder on your behalf. And so it's really important to note that this can take some time so do check the catalogue for those access conditions before visiting us. Because sometimes people arrive and the spot and didn't realize they require permission and it can become a frustrating and disappointing. 

Great and our last question I think for this question break, Jo asks what does the abbreviation DAAO stand for and I think that's on the slide.

Yes yes so my apologies acronyms and abbreviations and sometimes I can get a bit lazy and just write ADB or DAAO. Of course ADB I mentioned for the Australian dictionary of biography. DAAO is the Design and Art Australia Online website. And we can actually looks like it's a great free online resource to find out biographical information about designers and artists from Australia. Here we've got one for Sidney Nolan and what's great about it is get some thereby this is all the biographical and there's all the vital details of their biography. We've got they actually have two biographies. Here one appears to be a peer-reviewed. So there's plenty of information if you just wanted to if you are doing some scoping research and just need all the basic details. But we also have things like collections so you can see a list of all the collections that hold his artwork, have a list of works. These are not always comprehensive but they do often have a decent portion of their works. It's like past exhibitions. So it's a great little resource for researching artists and designers. And of course you can find it at DAAO.org.au. 

And one other thing I mentioned you can also associates. So these are people that they were related to or associated with, friends, they might have collaborated with them. So if you're looking for contemporaries of an artist and this is also a really good resource for that.

So moving on we've already looked a bit at researching places and people. Now I want to explore how we research events in history. When we think about events they usually involve a place a time and date and a person. So we can use some of our earlier tactics to find information about a place and a person in our collections and then narrow them down by the date. Similarly there may be organizations that were involved in engaging with or organizing the event and you should be able to find collection materials related to specific events by looking up those organizations.

Regarding their kind of search terms, common phrases that we use to refer to specific events in the history can vary substantially and they're often not always consistent. There are a couple of ways to approach this issue. Firstly you can search for a popular phrases such as Bombing of Darwin or the Whitlam dismissal and identify from the titles the items that are most relevant. And then look at the subject headings so you'll find other matching collections. 

For example here we've searched for the phrase the bombing of Darwin and we get 57 results. However when we look at some of the catalogue records because bombing of Darwin isn't really a standardized subject heading we can look at the catalogue records. Yes and here we go. We can see the heading Darwin NT history bombardment 1942 which is much more accurate subject heading and which refers to the bombing of Darwin in 1942. And as a result we get 98 records then before we had fifty seventy. 

One of the great things about newspapers is that if we know the date of what we want to research then we can really narrow in love the stories that were reported as it happened. For the two examples I mentioned before the bombing of Darwin happened on the 20th of February 1942 and the Whitlam dismissal was on the 11th November 1975. So if we go to trove and browse by date. You go into 1942 and February and we'll go the 20th. And so we can look at different newspapers to see what their front what their headlines looked at looked like at this time. So here we had The Age 'two air raids in Darwin' etc. Similarly we can do a search for the 11th of November 1975. Of course it wasn't reported on until the next day so the 12th of November 1975. And there it is 'Whitlam sacked Fraser is Prime Minister'. And and again don't forget about and Sydney Morning Herald archives through our eresources which also provide the Sydney Morning Herald's digitized newspapers through too March 95. 

Now ephemera can be a great source of detail for small events such as the menu of a dinner or the program at a cultural event which might have some interesting details such as who spoke well and what was on the menu. You can also find a ride range of online ephemeral materials such as menus by searching for these terms in our catalogue. So I've done a search here for menus and ephemera in 109 results. And here we have, and and you can also narrow down your results to NLA digital material which will show you all of our digitized material. And here examples, click on any of these menus. Here's a whole collection of Christmas menus for example. So if you're looking at how people celebrated Christmas through the years this might be an excellent resource to look at. 

The Library also collects federal election campaign material for its ephemera collection which can tell you a lot about the prevailing issues of the time. 

And then again we have photographs some of which have become iconic now and very influential in the way that we view historical events. And seeing contemporary images can also help fill the gaps in the story. So if we're looking for stories about the bombing of Darwin we can also find some images that can show different perspectives on that time. 

And of course we're back to manuscripts. As we've already explored in our personal papers, these primary sources written by those who were there can provide a unique glimpse into one perspective on an event. At the same time we also have manuscript collections that provide a wider range of material surrounding an event. For example all the papers of Jesse's Street and the papers of Gordon Bryant include many documents that surround the activities of the federal council for the advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders who were very active throughout the 1967 referendum on the amendments the Australian Constitution relating to indigenous australians. We can see that within these papers they've got minutes from meetings but they also have things like flyers, circulars, badges and newspaper cuttings from different different statements they were making around this campaign. 

And yes again if we look into the these papers we we can actually narrow it down to just the digitized pamphlets. Many of these have had the images repressed for copyright reasons. But we can see here one of the more famous flyers from the the time that are available for us to look at.

Finally when it comes to more recent events I also recommend looking at all the websites the National library's web archive Pandora. Like newspapers this is an excellent way of viewing events in the way that they were presented at the time. And often such as is the case at the Sydney Olympics website. If you search for terms Sydney 2000 which is the name of the website you can see that there are many recorded instances of the website. As the site changed through time obviously with competitions each day, they were broadcasting results from a daily basis. 

I also recommend keeping an eye out for changes in March as the National Library will be launched is Australian Web Archive which will be a new platform for accessing archived australian web content.

As outlined in the beginning we can use the online catalogue to find the vast majority of these collections and then either view them online if they are digitized or request some for viewing and one of the reading rooms using your library card. In terms of getting copies depending on the number a number of factors you may be able to download a copy for your own research purposes if they are digitized. Otherwise you can either take photos of materials in the Special Collections room or use the photocopier in the main reading room. Or if you're from out of town put in a copies direct order, bearing in mind that copyright restrictions may apply to some of these collections. In circumstances where copies direct order is not possible due to copyright restrictions you might also consider a request an interlibrary loan through your local library. We can provide the service for many of our published collections. 

Of course the National Library isn't the only place that you should be looking. Already a few times we've been searching through trove and the beauty of trove is that it can direct you to other collections such as those in state and academic libraries. If you're curious to know more about trove we also have other learning program sessions that can help you familiarize more with its functions.

So we're almost done but I'm also keenly aware this has been a lot of information the process. Fortunately the reader services team is available here to help get you started or they'll help trying to fill the gaps in your research process. We have had a wide range of research guides to help you connect with our collections which you can find through our website. Again if you start with 'using the library' find,  research tools and resources you'll see the link to our research guides. And this provides guides to things like  newspapers, maps and things like electoral rolls, australian literature, Gazette's and so on. Click on the A to Z list to see a full list of research guides available.

Of course we'd love to know more about your own creative endeavors especially in using our collection so please don't hesitate to contact us. If you want some assistance you can use you can find the ask a librarian link online from the website. Just look for the words ask a librarian. I've shown it before but here it is again and inquire and click enquire now. And that will take you to the online form to fill out.

So we're reaching the end now but I believe we have a few more questions.

Yes we have a few more um so Ann has asked can you please take us through a picture search they looking for the words of Joseph Wolinski. 

Okay so we're searching for works in the National Library's catalogue. We'd start through the catalogue and what I'm going to do type in the word Wolinski. Of course it's important to make sure you spell these things correctly otherwise you won't get the results you want. Now I'm selecting author here of course Wolinski is an artist but in this context author is, it means the same thing as a creator or an artist. So we will use the author to search. And here we have a range of results. But if we narrow down the search to picture for our format, you can see that we have three works of art by Joseph Wolinski. Two of them have been digitized the third one has not. And so if you want to look at them you can click on the thumbnail and that will take you to the picture. There it is with his paintbrushes. 

You can also search on trove if you're wanting to search a bit broader to include other collections. And in this case I'll go to advanced search again creator and then then you can go to the pictures zone to see artwork by Wolinski. So you can see that in addition to the three at the National Library we've got one at the State Library of New South Wales, the Aboriginal woman in La Perouse. We also have one at the Powerhouse Museum which we can click through to, yep Powerhouse Museum. I'll take us through to the website and there it is. So always make sure you, I mean it's great to check the, start at the National Library but you can also do a trove search which will give you a much broader range of results. 

All right thanks um our next question comes from Lynn who asks access to British newspapers is that possible through Trove using my library membership?

 So Trove generally focuses with its digitized newspapers, so trove generally focuses on Australian content with its digitized newspapers. However if you do have a national library card you can use our eresources to search for a number of  British newspapers. So here look at category and find overseas newspapers. So some great databases that we have the British newspapers online which have papers ranging back to 1600. Another really good one, so this is 18th century journals which cover other kinds of periodicals not just newspapers. The other one I'll show you. Quite a lot of international papers. 19th century UK periodicals are good. And The Times digital archive is a great database because it goes all the way back from 1785 through to what is quite recent issues of the Times. Again these are all available by using your library cards so if you wanted to put in your username and your ID here at the top and then you click through to the resource. You would click accept and that'll take you through to the database.

Excellent alright our last question for today comes from Judith and she asks so this is going back to the earlier question break, one of the early example searches you use which was Cobb & Co and Gippsland Times you just searched for one newspaper title in Trove. She was wondering if there's a method of searching multiple newspapers and she gives an example she's searching for Saunders and Townsville Bulletin and Boundain independent Evening Telegraph etc. So looking at I suppose a few titles newspaper titles within Queensland. 

Okay Judith do that so there is a way it's it's slightly more complicated but if we start with the digitized newspapers area and what we want to do go to an advanced search. So quite quickly I just clicked on this little button that says ADV just an advanced search we want to search for Saunders. What we can do is limit the results by a selection of titles. So looking at Queensland newspaper titles. So the example you give me, so just find Townsville Bulletin, Bowan Indipendent and Evening Telegraph and now you have this list of results that are limited to three titles. Now of course you've still got almost 9,000 results so I definitely recommend looking at it down by the decade and other notes that you're looking for.

Okay great well that's all our questions today um thank you Andrew for that.

So I hope you've enjoyed our session you can find this recording and other recordings of webinars through our Library's website and please keep my eye out for future learning programs. Otherwise I wish you all the best for your literary investigations.

Yeah thank you so much and we'll end today's session now but please keep in mind we do have upcoming webinars if you're interested our next one will be an ebooks webinar so please register through our website for any of those that take your interest. But thank you once again everyone for joining us and have a wonderful rest of the day.