What happened at the library over lockdown?
15 September 2021
Even though the library was closed over lockdown, staff continued serve library users by phone and email. Digital Discovery Librarian, Dr Mike Dickison even ran events over lockdown! On Saturday 28 August, in association with the Left Bank Art Gallery, he ran an online workshop for local artists and creatives on New Zealand copyright law. This is part of a larger project improving the coverage of West Coast artists in Wikipedia.
Mike has also been working with volunteers around New Zealand to digitise and proofread out-of-copyright books; the team has just finished George Preshaw’s 1888 memoir of the gold rush in Australia and the West Coast “Banking Under Difficulties”. This is now available for anyone to download for free or borrow from the library as an ebook. Volunteers are now working on Iveagh Lord’s 1939 work of local history “Old Westland”. Mike has been running online tutorials on Wikipedia editing and proofreading texts in Wikisource, and would welcome more volunteers who would like to contribute to these projects.
