Library program brings history to the people

Jane Harding with one of thousands of images to be found on the Heritage Noosa portal. Photo: Rob Maccoll

By Margaret Maccoll

There’s a lot of nostalgia among Noosa locals and now a new Noosa Library portal called Heritage Noosa is being launched next Wednesday evening that will enable people to view and research Noosa historical information as well as contribute their own stories to build it.

Images of bullock teams at Cootharaba, Gympie Terrace in 1940 or Hoffman’s Weyba Ranch are among the online collections held in the Noosa Library Service Heritage Library that includes images, videos, interviews, documents, maps and memorabilia to be accessed with a couple of clicks on a computer.

Heritage Noosa operates through an online community engagement platform, Recollect, that makes it easy to find information and images. People can log on to Heritage Noosa from their own computers or the computers at the library and can search family histories, historic events or look at old photos. They can access video and audio.

Heritage librarian Jane Harding has spent the past nine months transposing information held in the library or from resident’s private collections on to the platform and is excited to announce it is ready to go live.

“It will bring heritage to where the people are,“ she said. The platform will be available 24/7 any time from anywhere in the world.

Jane said the historic collection was built through the generosity of locals who provided their historic material to the library through donation or for scanning and she hopes many more will now contribute to the online resource directly by adding information or uploading images and videos.

On Wednesday 19 May at 5.30pm as the portal goes live online Jane will host a free event at Lions Park, Gympie to showcase Heritage Noosa while screening some of the collection’s 15,000 historic images on the stage wall.