10. Careful Curation for Serendipitous Discovery

Libraries and archives have long been tools for serendipitous discoveries where an unexpected connection is found seemingly by accident.

“[S]cholars can become inspired by visions of wandering through vast corridors of deserted stacks and then happening on a passage in some long-dormant volume that unexpectedly reveals a special insight. For some, the promise of such treasured discoveries is at the heart of deeply felt sentiments about the library’s role in scholarship.” – Patrick Carr, College and Research Libraries

Sometimes good curators can nudge this along. This photograph of Betty Broadbent from 1938 is part of a set of images from PIX Magazine acquired by the State Library of New South Wales as part of a larger acquisition, as seen on the Flickr blog and the State Library of NSW’s blog.

That image, when uploaded to Flickr Commons, was put into four different albums so that viewers could find it alongside other images which shared certain characteristics.

1. Images of Ms. Broadbent

2. Images from PIX Magazine

3. Images from Australia Consolidated Press including this basket of puppies

4. Images that are uploaded with known date information which has some serendipitous discoveries of its own

4. Homegrown Outback Exploration

Australia has always had a DIY caravaning culture. Christmas holidaytime can often involve getting outside with your tent.

The first caravan park opened in Victoria in 1924.

The Great Depression left many Australians out of work and somewhat itinerant. The Victorian and New South Wales governments funded the construction of tourist roads as a jobs program for people needing work. These got used in earnest once the prosperity of the post-war era and two weeks of paid annual leave became more commonplace in a movement that Caravan World calls the Great Holiday Boom.

The State Library of Queensland has assembled photographs of caravans from many eras from the homemade to the high style.

Looking closely at Australian camping and caravan culture can be one lens through which Australian culture can be understood and appreciated.

“…themes like freedom, mobility, escape, utopia; images of domesticity on wheels, décor and design, materials, technology, DIY production and Fordism; caravan parks as homes and as itinerant and long-term accommodation. These themes and images are also necessarily interwoven with class, gender, sex and age. We are interested in the possibilities of using the caravan as a carrier for making sense of postwar Australia.”