Mt Margaret Mission, Western Australia, 1930s digital archives revamp

Web Indexing Library Catalogue Consulting

In May 2007, the digital archives at State Library of WA were removed because the catalogue cannot access the records and some of the images are corrupted.

To get these PDFs online, I could integrate the library catalogue at State Library of WA with a spider to collect meta data. I am a pioneer in Web indexing. This would be a case of me upgrading the libraries catalogue to handle indexing electronic content.

Contact us if you need similar problems solved in your library catalogue. We are experts in meta data and Web indexing.

About Mt Margaret

My father SP Walker worked at the Christian aboriginal industrial mission run by Rod Schenk in 1940-42 at Mt Margaret north of Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, in the Goldfields (Latitude: -28.7904, Longitude: 122.147). This material was originally at State Library of WA in Perth but they are removing it to redo some of the corrupted images. This is a stop-gap till their copies are available. I asked them to keep the old stuff up there but no they want to do it the perfect way. Archivists are not technical whereas I am and find this stand-off over process most frustrating. One day I will visit Perth and sort out the technical issues as a software engineer and librarian which I am - a rare mix. Most of my colleagues are BA not BSc (comp sci) so have no idea about technology and fight it all the way - rather upsetting for me. The ignorance of people in power that control such vital information assets is very sad and I in my small way hope to stem the tide of technical ignorance in the library and archives fields. Disk space is very cheap but the process seems to be more important than that in archivists' minds.

In these documents are a host of 1930s photos scanned in by the Battye Library, State Library of WA. Some are corrupted but most are OK. The originals will be only accessible at the Battye Library in Perth once they remove the digital versions.

The Schenks donated the photos to the library to be digitised in 2003 (Knowit Jan-Mar 2003, p.2).

Schenk's records at Battye (Katitjin Sep 03)

Good news (4 Aug 2008)!

The State Library of WA has restored the links below so we now have even more Mt Margaret PDFs!

Source: Mt Margaret: A Drop in a Bucket by Margaret Morgan, 1986, Mission Publications of Australia, Lawson, NSW, Australia, ISBN 0646342207 / 9780646342207 / 0-646-34220-7 - out of print.

• Schenk Era 3 part 1 (PDF - 235KB)
• Schenk Era 3 part 2 (PDF - 247KB)
• Schenk Era 3 part 3 (PDF - 261KB)
• Schenk Era 3 part 4 (PDF - 248KB)
• Schenk Era 4 part 1 (PDF - 213KB)
• Schenk Era 4 part 2 (PDF - 208KB)
• Schenk Era 4 part 3 (PDF - 456KB)
• Schenk Era 5 part 1 (PDF - 246KB)
• Schenk Era 5 part 2 (PDF - 213KB)
• Schenk Era 5 part 3 (PDF - 130KB)
• Schenk Era 6 part 1 (PDF - 161KB)
• Schenk Era 6 part 2 (PDF - 125KB) - pic 20D will be removed

New Book

"Enriching Australia through Educating Indigenous People: 'Building a Nation' : WA Goldfield Suggests the Way by the Assimilation Policy" by S Preston Walker, 2008, ISBN 9780646495569

My father has just about finished a new book on Mt Margaret in the 1950s as well as other industrial missions in the Kimberley that educated aborigines and helped them advance in life to major posts in society in Australia, mainly West Australia.

It is due out in 2008. It needed a lot of editing by me (Dwight Walker, his son)!

References

• UAM Messenger, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney
• Moore College Library, Newtown, Sydney
• Fisher Library, Sydney University, Sydney
• New Life, State Library of Victoria, Melbourne and National Library of Australia, Canberra
• National Library of Australia, Canberra, ACT - newspaper room
• Perth Bible College, WA
• new history of UAM written by Stewart Gill due out 2009 (don't hold your breath!)

Groups

• UAM Ministries - office hours: 10am-2pm, Wednesdays - pretty hard to get hold of!

Created 11 May 2007 13:12 Updated 16 Oct 2008 13:37