EVENT: Friends of the Library talk

Taming the tyranny of distance:visiting the world's great archives from the comfort of home. One of problems facing researchers in Australia who need to access archives about the middle ages and early modern periods is finding the time and the funding to travel abroad, to Europe or the USA, where many of the finest collections and archives are held. Increasingly, over the past 20 years, wonderful resources have been made available online, and a large number of these are freely available to the general public. Others are available to university researchers through institutional subscription. The presentation visits the National archives of Australia and the UK, some of the world’s great national libraries including the British Library, the Free Library of Philadelphia, and The Australian National library, and some of the world’s top galleries, all on a personal computer. We will sample tutorials on palaeography and medieval Latin at the British National archive, ‘turn the pages’ of some of The British Library’s treasures, including Da Vinci’s Notebook and Mozart’s musical diary, and access open records from the National Archives of Australia.