Saturday, November 27, 2010

the first post

Just to clarify, this blog will not be about caravanning. The inspiration for the title came from the Propert 'Trailaway' touring caravan which is part of the National Museum of Australia's collection. The caravan was built in 1956 and is very cute as you can see here http://www.nma.gov.au/collections-search/display?irn=9022. Unfortunately it is currently not on display, so I couldn't get my retro fix last time I visited the Museum, but I bought a postcard picture of it so I can see it whenever I want. It even became my desktop pic for a while. Anyway I'll stop going on about the caravan, but I thought it was important to clarify this point and to save disappointment for all those caravanning enthusiasts who may stumble on this blog.

I'll talk about other interesting things in the world of heritage and museums, as well as my progress through the Western Australia Public Libraries -Learning 2.0 basics training. I'm pretty excited to participate in the training to use these technologies as I'm a bit of a novice to some such as blogs. I've recently started looking at blogs out there -mostly at this stage they're crafty/vintage ones which have pretty pics and some inspiration. I'm yet to discover any on a heritage type topic but I'm sure they're out there, yet to be discovered.

As you may guess I'm not a librarian but work in heritage within a library environment so I have become familiar with some of the aspects of that world, its somewhere I can dip my toes into but when it gets complicated I bail and say 'sorry I'm in heritage, you'll have to ask a librarian'. I think that the technologies presented in the training will become more useful in the library and heritage professions as clients can have more interaction with collections and share these aspects they discover with others, just like I have with the pink caravan. Another interesting site is the Powerhouse Museum which has online access to their collection. I especially like the swatch book http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/electronicswatchbook/ which contains fabric swatches from the late 1830s to the early 1920s.
So that's about all for this first post, hope you enjoy exploring the links and making your own connections with these awesome collections.

4 comments:

  1. Awesome links! I really like the Electronic Swatchbook and may just have to play with it on and off all day.

    I'm looking forward your future posts! Let's get historical!! :P

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  2. The Electronic Swatchbook is fab! There are 906 items under 1837. Considering that the first synthetic dye was discovered in 1856, it is remarkable that they mixed and matched natural dyes to obtain such a variety of colours and gradiations.

    I shall look forward to some more super links.

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  3. I love the pink caravan pic. My brother & sister in law travelled around Oz in one just like it

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  4. Aha, if I had read your first blog I would have known the reason behind your blog name! Apologies. It is unfortunate that we do not have time to read everyone's blogs.

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