ACTive ALIA

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Number 232: March 2003

CIT's Weston Library saved | APSIG Preservation seminar

CIT's Weston Library saved
Everybody seems to have their Canberra bushfire story to tell and the tragic loss of the irreplaceable science collection at Mount Stromlo brought it home to CIT Library staff just how close things came to us on that day.

During that horror weekend in January, I was in Sydney for three days of ANZIIL (Australia and New Zealand Institute for Information Literacy) meetings, and had no idea of the severity of the fires in Canberra until Saturday evening. My husband had left messages to say that the situation was very serious but fortunately did not threaten our home in a rural environment east of the ACT.

I went into Sunday's meeting knowing that the Weston Creek area had been severely hit by the firestorm. That evening staff phoned to say that the Weston Campus was affected by the fires, and I naturally supposed that our horticulture collection had gone up in flames. I began mentally preparing for the worst, thinking about our disaster plan and how we would replace the collection, knowing that some vital items would be irreplaceable.

During the information literacy workshop on the Monday, all Canberra attendees were on tenterhooks waiting to hear about progress of the fires to those suburbs on alert. Some left there and then to return to their homes.

As the plane descended into Canberra on the Monday evening the atmosphere was fearful and quite eerie, with no visibility due to the smoke. But to my great relief, I heard the following day that the Weston Campus (and therefore the library) had miraculously been saved. The fires had come so close to the campus.

When I visited the library shortly after, the smoke had gone but the smell still lingered. Some of the trees that form part of the Library's outlook had been burnt, but amazingly the gardens at Weston that have taken more than 10 years to create had suffered very little damage. We could not believe how lucky we had been. Our collection seems even more valuable to us now.

Helena Zobec
Institute librarian
Canberra Institute of Technology

APSIG Preservation seminar
Thursday, 20 March, 12:30pm-1:30pm, in the Conference Room, 4th floor, NLA. Refreshments will be served. All welcome. There are two topics:

Preserving digital heritage
Colin Webb, director of Preservation Services at the NLA, is completing a special project for UNESCO involving contacts that may be of interest to members of APSIG. Colin is preparing material for a UNESCO campaign on preserving the digital heritage of developing countries - those things in digital form that need to be kept for future use.

Regional consultation meetings in various places around the world have been a feature of the project and Colin will discuss the meetings held in Canberra and Managua, Nicaragua.

The Penang Story
Anya Dettman, Librarian, Indonesian Unit, Asian Collections, NLA, will report on The Penang Story: preserving historic Southeast Asia (see the website at http://www.penangstory.net), re-evaluating and promoting Penang's 'built and living' heritage. In part this is to support the nomination of Penang, along with Malacca, to UNESCO World Heritage status, and in part also to explore the conservation issues and their likely impact on local communities.

Marie Sexton