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ALIA West
November 2004Six months on - a view from Perth (Oct 2004)Some of you may remember the articles sent back by Roberta Cowan during her time in Europe in 2003. Roberta went to London as Australian Botanical Liaison Officer (ABLO) at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (London) for 12 months. She was the first librarian, the first marine botanist, the first person from a university and the seventh woman ever to take up the role. During the twelve months at RBGKew, she started work on a 25-year project - Taxonomic Literature Cryptogamia (TLC) a bibliographic database of non-flowering plant information. TLC will provide short biographies on all authors, information on their plant collections and a descriptive bibliography of their works. Iceland
National Library of Iceland At the end of March 2003 I travelled to Iceland as a 4-day package tourist. Although a lot of travelling and time has occurred since the 'holiday' in south west Iceland this trip remains one of the highlights of my twelve months away from Perth. Iceland is one of the places on the planet where you can stand on the American plate and walk a short distance and stand on the European plate. The site of the first parliament of Iceland in the ninth century was held at Thingvellir, where the plates meet. The summer residence of the president can be seen beside the river. On the last free day I spent time at the small library associated with the Herbarium of Iceland. The herbarium is part of the Institute of Natural History of Iceland. Like all the librarians I met throughout my travels, Palina was very helpful and arranged meetings with botanists who were working on the lower plants, both terrestrial and aquatic, of Iceland. Iceland has provided for all citizens internet access to all the major databases via the National Library of Iceland. The building houses both the national library and the university library.
Croatia
National Library, Zagreb Ten years ago librarians from the herbaria and horticultural institutions in Europe met in London at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew. Each year the European Botanical and Horticultural Libraries (EBHL) meet for 3-5 days. In 2003 the meeting was held in Zagreb, Croatia. I gave a seminar on the bibliographic work I am involved in and had the opportunity of meeting librarians from both eastern and western Europe. The meeting was arranged by the Grodzana, the librarian from the Botanical Institute, University of Croatia. The meeting consisted of talk sessions, workshops and visits to Zagreb libraries, including the new National Library of Zagreb and the Central Library of Zagreb as well as a walking tour of old Zagreb and the botanic garden. The National Library building is a modern library complex, which provides access to the national collection. The Central Library building was the former home of the national collection. At the time of our visit the reading room was being refurbished. From the peak we were given it will be magnificent when completed. The Central Library now houses a very large and important theological collection. We were treated to a 'show and tell' session by the rare book librarian of some of the treasures held in this library. The book being handled by the librarian dates from 1200 and was in incredible condition. Remember this area of Europe was at war very few years ago. The two librarians standing behind the rare book librarian are both from Sarajevo. The trip from London to Zagreb took five hours door-to-door. The librarians from Bosnia had an eight hour bus trip across the mountains from Sarajevo to Zagreb. It was obvious that the siege and the loss of the libraries in that city had taken a great toll on these women. The library at the university in Sarajevo lost much of its collection during the war.
I will be returning to London to work from December to February. If you need information from London collections please contact me by e-mail: roberta.cowan@cbs.curtin.edu.au.nospam (please remove '.nospam' from address).
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