We have all been to a countryPub and noticed the framed pics on the walls.
What happens to these gems of history when the pub changes hands or burns down or whatever.....
A project could be a hi res camera and appropriate control software with a couple of willing and keen
Archivests to begin the task of touring and recording these many important gems.
I am too old to begin this project. (It has many commercial possibilities to sustain a long term effort)
Regards,John Hipwell
Replies
What a great idea for a project! The Noel Butlin Archives Centre has photographs through the twentieth century of (what we think is) every hotel in New South Wales in the Tooth and Company collection and these have been digitised and are being posted hotel by hotel - all metropolitan hotels are up and we are now into country towns starting with C so there's still a way to go. Start here and scroll all the way down: https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/handle/1885/2 . We'll be launching a new interface later in the year so this is a back-end preview.
Maggie Shapley
University Archivist
Noel Butlin Archives Centre
Australian National University
Hi Maggie,
glad you think the idea has some merit.
A pilot project of maybe 30 or more exceptional pics for presentation to prospective commercial companies like
Kodak(ties in with old pics) might help fund basic costs.
Regards,HIP.
Our local pub underwent lavish renovations a number of years ago and just prior to the work beginning, one member of our local historical society took photos of the pictures on the wall. The photos were put into a word document, a pdf was made, and the document went into our local historical society database [an Access database with links to pdfs]. Many of the photos on the pub wall are available at State Library or National Library but the captions were added by local people many years ago and that information would have been lost if we hadn't collected the photos.
Collecting these items was the main reason why our local historical society was formed 9 years ago and we now have over 3,000 pdfs in our database. Just recently I transferred a copy of all the pdfs to our society's Google drive account for better accessibility and as a secondary backup of our data.
I'm from a small country town in Victoria and I know when our pub changed hands the "memorabilia" always stayed with the pub. When the pub closed down all that stuff was then given to the Community group or Historical Society. I know our Community Association has a heap of historical stuff that should/needs to be catalogued but finding the time (amongst other projects we have going) to get the funding and then time to do the work is an issue.
There would be some amazing pics and information just laying around out there.