Quill 102 (7): October 2002

A Devine collection

In September, the Minister for the Arts, Matt Foley, will formally open an Indigenous Knowledge Centre (a.k.a. public library) at Wujal Wujal on the Bloomfield River near Cooktown.

This library will be one of the first round of new libraries in isolated indigenous communities. Over the next three years there will be 31 new Indigenous Knowledge Centres open for business as a result of a very high priority project at State Library of Queensland.

Wujal Wujal (population 450) is special in that as well as the collection provided by State Library of Queensland, there is a collection of approximately 4000 books which have been donated for Wujal Wujal through the co-ordinating efforts of Mrs. Patricia Devine who resides on the Gold Coast.

With the imminent opening of the new library, and the therefore urgent requirement for 'A Devine Collection' to be on the shelves at Wujal Wujal on time, enter Townsville's Mean Machine team. This group of librarians from Townsville catalogued and end processed over 3600 items in Cairns over a three-week period. 85 boxes of books and videos have been shipped to Wujal Wujal. The Team, consisting of consultant Diane Vance, and retired librarians Pat Kirkman, Pauline Antill, Cecilia O'Donnell and myself (a student librarian), estimates that on average 40 items per hour were added to the database.

(Should win gold in any library Olympics don't you think?)

So how did we make it happen?

Some of the challenges were:

• a stand alone PC system which could not accept and merge data from another computer - so all the records had to be keyed into the one PC. Pauline is the fastest keyboard operator, and so she spent most hours sitting at that PC.
• no cataloguing tools - Pat's 'I wish I had a Dewey' laments were frequent.
• spine labels had to be created in Microsoft Word - and the cells wouldn't stay where you put them on the page requiring constant tinkering
• 79 boxes of material which we could not fit into the same number of boxes again no matter what.

You may ask how we managed to do the job without cataloguing tools. The solution was using the state library's internet catalogue Eclectus which was available on three computers at the Indigenous Libraries Unit in Cairns. The hit rate for searches was over 85%, and this was our major, and in fact, only tool.

A report has been prepared for the state library, and the completion of the project was properly celebrated with Sandi Taylor, executive manager, ILS and Wendy McGregor, manager ILU, Cairns, and all of the Cairns staff, who were very tolerant of our invasion and the many disruptions we caused.

'A Devine Collection' as the collection will be known, has some subject area gaps, and maybe some libraries have surplus material which would f ill those gaps. Particular areas include motor vehicle manuals (holdens, fords and four wheel drive vehicles most common), health, and self help guides. If any library might be able to help fill these gaps, would you please contact Wendy McGregor at the ILU in Cairns, e-mail w.mcgregor@slq.qld.gov.au.

Good luck to Wujal Wujal Library!

Patrick Vance