It was a hugely successful and inspiring day at Mosman Library last weekend with significant photos and stories relating to Mosman’s WWI history scanned and recorded.
More than 40 people brought in family photos, diaries and battlefield souvenirs to the SCAN-A-THON collection day and over 300 items were digitised. Many contributors expressed relief that precious, often fragile photos and letters were being saved for posterity.
We saw some intriguing objects, like a beaded necklace made by Turkish prisoners of war, and a dum dum bullet from the little known 1914 action at New Guinea transformed into a piece of trench art. A letter taken from a Turkish trench on Gallipoli was also digitised. We think it is written in the Ottoman Turkish language used prior to 1929. The letter has never been translated, and Mosman Library will contact the Turkish embassy to ask their help in revealing its secret.
A diary by
Other rare and interesting items included:
Photos of Mosman nurse X in New Guinea
The
Diaries
It wasn’t just men and women of the Australian Imperial Force that were represented. One couple brought in photos of their grandfather who was a medic in the Russian forces.
With scanning almost complete, cataloging begins. You can expect to see the results of this labour in December at mosman1914-1918.net.
Thanks to Dr Tim Sherratt who is leading the project, Mosman is pioneering a new approach to presenting collections online, allowing local items to be linked with those in national and international institutions. The project builds on successful online community initiatives like Mosman Memories of Your Street and Mosman Faces that continue to record our unique heritage with residents past and present, and share it with the world.
Leave a comment