Great to hear last week from a colleague at another NSW public library planning a community project ahead of the centenary of WWI. They wanted to know more about our website scope and specification, and this post is a summary of development so far.

We’ve posted previously about the five diaries of W.J.A. “Allan” Allsop held at the Mitchell Library. Since the Buildathon another has come to light, in the possession of Allan’s son John. Thanks to Geraldine Walsh, Mosman Library has a scanned copy of the diary. Help us transcribe it.

The five diaries of stretcher bearer and despatch rider W.J.A. “Allan” Allsop at the Mitchell Library, collected in 1919 and now scanned and transcribed, are a fantastic resource. But they’re somewhat hidden within the State Library of NSW website and the viewing experience is not the best. See, for example, the album view and transcript of Item 4 on the SLNSW website. How can we bring the diary contents to life?

An important step taken this week.

We had a name but knew we needed a strong visual identity for the project. Pinterest made it easy to put together a mood board from which our designer Kasia developed these striking figures of a soldier and nurse against the geographic outline of Mosman.

Libraries are full of stories, some of them we tell together.

Mary Lou has posted to the ALIA Sydney blog today as we prepare to embark on a new adventure to the years 1914-1918. She references Mosman Memories of your Street – where we crowdsource local history – and Mosman Faces – a more curated approach to telling stories. This project aims to do a bit of both, while exploring the possibilities afforded by the increasing availability of digitised materials.