Australia and New Zealand

Eric Lease Morgan and I recently were the guests of the National Library of Australia at their 2008 Forum, held at the Powerhouse Museum.  I talked about authority files, primarily VIAF and WorldCat Identities.  Eric talked about the future of catalogues.

This was my first trip to Australia and I was very impressed with Sydney, the National Library (which has a lot of things going on) and Australians in general.  Luckily I got a chance to rehearse my talk in front of a large group at the National Library in Canberra and was able to adjust my talk to Australia a little better.

I was also pleased that the museum (named Powerhouse because it is housed in a building that was once a power house) was able to connect their catalog up to WorldCat Identities just before the conference.  Here's an example of a page with links to WorldCat Identities on it.  If you scroll down, in the right-hand column there is a 'Person' section, and clicking on any of the [view on WorldCat] links will bring up a corresponding WorldCat Identities record.  I used Bob Carr in my talk, and his page, though not perfect, is a pretty good example.  Seb Chan manages Web services at the museum and is a great advocate for the advantages of linking between institutions such as museums and libraries.  They took all the names they thought they might link to Identities and searched for links in batch.  This lets them know before a page displays whether there are any outside links, and who they are to.

One of the adjustments to my talk was to substitute Phar Lap for Man 'o War as an example of animals represented in Identities.  Phar Lap was born in New Zealand and you can see his skeleton in the Te Papa Museum of New Zealand in Wellington.  You can see the outside of Phar Lap in the Melbourne Museum (which I didn't get to) and his heart in the National Museum in Canberra (I was in Canberra, but didn't get a chance to go to the museum).  Australians and New Zealanders take horse racing seriously!  If you ever get to New Zealand, I can recommend the train trips available.  Both the TranzAlpine and TranzCoastal have spectacular scenery.

--Th

Comments

[Nigel]

Yes the train trips are great - I would include the Overlander in the spectacular scenery description. You can book direct and possibly get better value on www.tranzscenic.co.nz