going to the state library was interesting for a multitude of reasons. i don’t tend to visit the library very often – or ever, really – and so that means that when i have gone i have done so for purely studious reasons and have never taken time to actually appreciate the place.

while waiting for our tour guide, we all went and had a walk around and looked at the museum part with all the art. it was really beautiful and i knew there was some art there, but not such a high calibre and so much of it. one might say it was almost like being in the louvre…

when it came time to meet up with our tour guide, we were first warned that never come to study and leave your belongings because they will 99% of the time be stolen and so, even if you’re just going to the toilet, take everything you own with you.

after that slightly concerning warning regarding the state of thievery in melbourne, we then got onto the juicy parts. i usually stick to using the rmit library or just google scholar for finding books, articles and images and it never even occurred to me that the state library would have their own web archives! we basically got a crash course in the best and most effective way to utilise our time on the website and how to make sure we’re truly getting the resources that we’re looking for and not a whole load of mumbo jumbo. he told us about copyright and how to use images and credit them accurately.

what i found most interesting was the way they document the newspapers – using microforms, i believe they’re called. i had never seen these tiny film forms before and i do find them truly interesting and how you can document so much – all the tiny writing and images – in such tiny film form. modern technology, though using a quite old tradition of film, has truly come a long way and it’s very impressive to note.