Some of you may have noticed that my Hacking a research project post featured a file from the National Archives of Australia embedded as a Cooliris widget. Huh? To jog your memory, here it is again:
No, it’s not just an image, it’s a little 3D wall. You can pan and zoom to your heart’s content. [...]
discontents
working for the triumph of content over form, ideas over control, people over systems
archives
Embedded archives
Hacking a research project
Amongst the holdings of the National Archives of Australia are some of the most visually arresting documents you’ll see — thousands and thousands of forms from the early decades of the twentieth century, each with a portrait photograph and palm print, each documenting the movements of a non-white resident. Along with many other certificates, regulations, [...]
Archives in 3D
The new version of my Greasemonkey userscript, RecordSearch Image Tools, gives RecordSearch’s digital image pages a rather new look. My previous version had done away with the tired ol ‘lemon-chiffon’ background colour, but I decided it was time to get a bit more adventurous, so I blitzed the old design and rebuilt the page from [...]
Treasures
Australia is blessed, it seems, with a frightening abundance of treasures. A quick survey of our cultural institutions reveals an escalating ‘treasures race’, as libraries, museums, and archives bombard the public with accounts of their rarest, most beautiful, and most interesting items. The State Library of Victoria, for example, has published a lavish description of [...]
The history of Australian science
HISTORY OF SCIENCE in Australia is a field intimidated by its subject. Historians have been too slow to examine the local context of knowledge production and use, deferring to scientists and their uncritical catalogues of the past. Historical analysis has given way, too often, to the antiquarian plod or the celebratory frolic.
Unsung heroes
On Sunday I was listening to the local ABC station, 2CN, when a bloke came on talking about “unsung heroes” of Australian history. Apparently it’s a regular spot, and it so happened that the two heroes being sung on Sunday were scientists – Ferdinand von Mueller the botanist, and John Tebbutt, the astronomer. However, my [...]
