The year ahead for "Community Heritage" at Moonee Valley Libraries

Happy New Year!

2014 is going to be a busy year for Local and Family History at Moonee Valley Libraries. There will be renovations, commemorations, changes to the collection, and lots of workshops and events to look out for.

If you’ve been into Sam Merrifield Library lately, you may have noticed that we’ve moved the Local and Family History Collection into the main body of the library.  This is in preparation for a refurbishment project that will make the library space more flexible and modern, and which will add new meeting and training spaces. A small number of items that were on open access are being held in storage. Don’t worry, all these items can still be accessed – just ask staff to retrieve the items required.

The majority of the Local and Family History Collection will remain available throughout the refurbishment project, so the disruption to people researching family and local history should be minimal. The end result will be a collection that is refreshed, housed more prominently, and that is arranged in a way that makes it easier to use. There will even be items made available for loan that couldn’t previously be borrowed. Plus, we’re taking this as an opportunity to rename the collection, so the “Local and Family History Collection” will be known as the “Community Heritage Collection”. I’ll provide more detail about all of these changes on this blog as this project progresses.

On a different note, In August it will be one hundred years since the First World War began. So, we’ve begun planning research workshops and events that commemorate this major anniversary, and we’ve already added numerous new books on the topic of the War to our collections. Around the world libraries, archives and other organisations are releasing publications and online research tools to help family and local historians research the War, so I’ll try to keep you updated about the best of these, and the ones most relevant to our area, on this blog.

Wishing everyone happy researching in 2014,
Julia

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