Friday May 7, 2010
Find and get with Trove
Rose Holley from the National Library of Australia spoke about Trove at the State Library’s reference seminar this week. Trove is a ‘discovery service’ that lets you search the combined collections of Australia’s libraries, museums and galleries. The search picks up more than just books – you’ll find also paintings, photographs, maps, newspapers, archived websites, diaries and letters, as well as music, sound and video.
Friday February 26, 2010
Search the local paper from your PC
The Mosman Daily has been publishing on the web for a year or two now. If you want to find or share a story, Google Search can be a quick and effective tool. Especially if you use the “site:” query. For example, site:mosman-daily.whereilive.com.au coffee will return results for the keyword ‘coffee’ from The Mosman Daily domain only.
But not everything that appears in the printed edition is published on the web. The letters page, for example. But there is a way to search these online.
Electric Library is a database that offers more than 2,000 full-text sources, including magazines, newspapers, books, television/radio transcripts, maps, pictures, and audio/video clips. You can access Electric Library from home or work using your Mosman Library card. (Remember that your Mosman Library card starts with a capital X!)
Electric Library gives you access to Australian newspapers in full text including The Mosman Daily, Manly Daily and other Cumberland newspapers. Mosman’s local paper is available on Electric Library the day after it is published (usually Friday) and is indexed back to July 2001.
You can also search the Australia/NZ Reference Centre with your Library card. ANZ Reference Centre is a general database of Australian and international content with articles in health, current affairs, science, social science, business and literature.
Tim, our Lending & Information Services Officer, built this search box for direct access:
Need to go back further? Mosman Library holds copies of The Mosman Daily from 1920 and each issue has been indexed so that articles can be located.
Mosman Library offers its members access to many other free online databases. See what’s available.
Friday February 19, 2010
Mosman to 2030: a valuable information resource
For information on Mosman’s demographics (current composition and future trends) visit Mosman Council’s website and check out the Community Profile, the Atlas and Forecast.
This is an excellent resource for students, researchers, community groups, Council, the business community, and the community in general as it provides information on current population and future trends and answers questions such as How many people live here? Who are we? What do we do? How do we live?
The Forecast section, which predicts changes in Mosman’s demographics up to 2031 in table, graph and map format, has recently been upgraded and enhanced with some useful new features:
- A ‘Data mapping’ tab which allows for the creation of thematic maps, including number, percentage and change in number, for any of the datasets, for any year of the forecast period
- A new home page giving an instant snapshot along with detailed contextual ‘role and function’ text
- Thumbnail maps on each page showing the location of each selected area to provide additional spatial context
- Information for ‘males’, ‘females’ and ‘persons’ available instantly for each dataset
- More extensive summary and key results information
- Summary of the major components of population change represented on one page for easier analysis.
The information in the Forecasts is underpinned by:
- The Community Profile which includes results from the 2006, 2001, 1996, and 1991 Censuses of Population and Housing, presented in table and graph format with commentary. It enables detailed analysis of the changes to the Mosman community over a 20 year period.
- The Atlas which presents the above information as interactive maps. Based on data from the 2001 and 2006 Censuses, each map is prepared using Census Collector Districts providing the finest level of detail to help identify spatial patterns and trends in the area.
Monday January 4, 2010
Plain language guides to the law
Mosman Library is part of a statewide initiative of the Law and Justice Foundation of NSW and the State Library of NSW that provides free access to legal information for the community. In our reference section you have access to a regularly updated collection of plain language books about the law.
Now some of the most well used and useful Tool Kit titles have been put on the Find Legal Answers website in full text:
- Defend yourself: facing a charge in court
A practical guide to defending a criminal charge in court which covers arrest and questioning, bail, dealing with lawyers, court procedure, how to plead, hearings and trials, preparation, evidence, proof, examination in court, sentencing, and appeals. - Guilty your honour: representing yourself in NSW when charged with drink driving
A practical guide to defending a drink driving charge. Examines the offence and penalties, whether to plead guilty, whether to get a lawyer, how to prepare for court, and what happens on the day of court. - Guide to wills and estates
A practical guide to the creation of wills, changing, revoking, or challenging a will, rights of creditors and beneficiaries to a will, probate and intestacy, and legal fees.
Having these books online is a great step, as it allows you easy access to some fantastic legal resources.
Tuesday November 24, 2009
Discovery & serendipitous search
Children playing in the sand at the Mick Simmons’ Radio Club picnic, Balmoral Beach – Sam Hood (State Library of NSW)
Search the National Library of Australia’s new online catalogue and you’ll find not only books but photos, newspaper articles, journal articles and conference papers, music scores, biographies, pictures and archived web pages. It’s a holistic view of materials located in libraries, museums and archives all around Australia.
The NLA has called this new service Trove “as in ‘treasure-trove’, being a collection of valuable or delightful things. Trove is derived from the French verb trouver, meaning to find or discover. Thus, the name encapsulates the concepts of a collection, of treasured and valuable collection items and of the process of discovery” (Gateways, October 2009).
Trove provides a single point of access to places like the Australian National Bibliographic Database, the Register of Australian Archives and Manuscripts, Music Australia, Picture Australia, Australian Research Online, Australian Newspapers 1803-1954 and PANDORA (the national web archive).
Try a search on Mosman, Balmoral Beach or Clifton Gardens.
Thursday April 23, 2009
The World Digital Library is here
Zooming in on ‘Voyage Around the World by the King’s Frigate La Boudeuse and the Ship L’Etoile in 1766, 1767, 1768, and 1769’ by Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, 1772
The World Digital Library (WDL) was launched on Tuesday at UNESCO headquarters in Paris.
It’s an incredible feat of digitisation.
Initial exhibits include The Tale of Genji; the first Aztec mention of child Jesus; ancient Arabic texts that were used in the formation of algebra; Chinese oracle bone script; an 8,000-year-old African painting of bleeding antelopes; the Waldseemüller map, the earliest map to mention America by name; the Codex Gigas; Samuel de Champlain’s Des Sauvages; an audio recording of a 101-year-old former American slave; World War I recruitment posters; an 1899 Swedish government handbook for Scandinavian immigrants; Doctrina Christiana, en lengua española y tagala, the first Spanish and Tagalog book ever published; an Aleutian translation of the Bible by a Russian saint; Islamic manuscripts from Mali; Hyakumanto Darani; rare photographs originating in Imperial China, the Ottoman Empire, and Tsarist Russia; the first recording of La Marseillaise; the world’s first film from the Lumiere brothers; a photolithographic reproduction of the Constitution of India; calligraphy by Prem Behari Narain Raizda; the Huexotzinco Codex; and the Nuremberg Chronicle.
The WDL makes it possible to discover, study, and enjoy cultural treasures from around the world on one site, in a variety of ways. These cultural treasures include, but are not limited to, manuscripts, maps, rare books, musical scores, recordings, films, prints, photographs, and architectural drawings.
Navigation tools and content descriptions are provided in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. Many more languages are represented in the actual books, manuscripts, maps, photographs, and other primary materials, which are provided in their original languages.
The World Digital Library was developed by a team at the U.S. Library of Congress, with contributions by partner institutions in many countries.
Friday July 11, 2008
Good Reading Online
Mosman Library has recently acquired access to this unique and exciting new Australian resource that contains a wide variety of interesting information on everything about books; including reviews, author profiles and stories, bookshops, short stories, book trivia and much more.
The online edition is an exact digital copy of the print edition but has the added benefits of links to more information, interesting websites and email addresses. You will also be able to browse and keyword search the current issue and growing library of back issues.
Good Reading is available in the library or at home via our website.
Thursday May 1, 2008
ARROW Discovery Service
ARROW is an exciting new research tool provided by the National Library of Australia to provide instant access to scholarly resources for students, academics and members of the public.
This service provides access to the research outputs of Australian universities: many are unpublished theses, preprints or post prints, as well as published journal articles, images, working papers and technical reports.
The majority of items discoverable through the Service are available online at home, and also contain statistics, including tables of the most popular authors and institutions.
It currently contains more than 137,000 records harvested from 23 university repositories and 12 other research collections, including the Australasian Digital Theses program, and several e-journals.
As an example of how it works, a search on “climate change” returns a relevance-ranked result set of 722 records from 21 different university repositories, plus the Australasian Digital Theses Program and an e-journal from UTS.
These results can then be refined to zero in on specific subjects such as climatology resources, or to those dealing with conservation and biodiversity.
Wednesday March 26, 2008
Got a legal problem?
The State Library of NSW has a great site that answers everyday questions about the law in NSW.
Is that broken down fence between you and your neighbour’s property your responsibility? Can anything be done about those barking dogs?
Find Legal Answers can help.
Easy to read, this site has been designed as a support to the LIAC (Legal Information Access Centre) collection available at Mosman Library.
This specialised collection is a service provided by The State Library of NSW to offer access to information about the law for all members of the NSW community.
Tuesday November 6, 2007
Man shortage in Mosman?
A new study of 25-34 year old singles by statistician Bernard Salt based on the 2006 census figures showed Mosman had more available women than men, with just 85 blokes for every 100 single sheilas.
- Sydney Morning Herald, 21 October 2007
How else has your community changed over the past 5 years?
The Mosman Community Profile has been updated with results from the 2006 Census.
The Community Profile is an excellent resource for the business community, students, researchers and the community in general.
It enables detailed analysis of the changes to the Mosman community over a 15 year period, as it presents statistics from the 2006, 2001, 1996 and 1991 censuses in table and graph format.
The Profile shows that there have been no significant changes to the composition of the Mosman community over the past five years.
The population has increased by 2.9% to 26,236.
20.5% of the population is aged between 0 and 17, and 21.0% is aged 60 years and over. The largest changes in age structure were in the age groups 60 to 69 (+645) and 85 and over (+121 persons).
View the Mosman Community Profile.