Dr Rachel Franks

Promoting and facilitating access to historical collections for Indigenous communities has recently increased across Australia. Such activities have been integrated into the practices of archives and libraries seeking to reunite Indigenous people with materials that not only document their past but also inform their future. Challenges in accessing these materials go beyond retrieval and include concerns about their emotional content. The State Library of New South Wales is working to create trusted environments for Indigenous peoples and collections with both physical and digital spaces. Through the presentation of work undertaken at the State Library, this article explores how the digital environment can be an effective extension of the physical site in which cultural collections are held. In addition, this article looks at issues that must be addressed to ensure the success and ongoing viability of Web spaces, specifically, the long-standing power dynamics that often dominate interactions with Indigenous collections and that have displaced power from the traditional owners of Indigenous knowledge.

The offering of electronic content was once considered a value add to physical collections. Today, the majority of clients expect libraries-as well as other collecting institutions such as archives, galleries and museums-to facilitate access to digital material as a standard service. In response to these expectations, many different types of library services, and other information agencies, have worked to establish an online presence to complement and enrich a physical presence. The processes required to select items, digitise them and subsequently make them accessible online are essential to the development of any digital collection. This article argues that the usefulness of such collections can be greatly enhanced if digitised objects are presented as part of a story. Moreover, this article acknowledges that librarians have always been storytellers, while suggesting the need to build on this craft to ensure that storytelling takes place in both physical and digital settings. In particular, this article will look at the ideas of curating and choreographing, and will highlight how these concepts can work together to produce creative online environments that facilitate the establishment of a series of emotional connections between clients and collection materials. © 2013 Australian Library and Information Association.

Crime fiction first started to gain widespread popularity in the 18th century, a popularity which dramatically increased in the 19th century. Today, almost one in every three new books published in English falls into the crime fiction category. Since the early days of crime fiction the genre has evolved into an incredibly diverse area of fiction, making it one of Australia¿s, and the world¿s, most popular. There is, literally, a dead body to suit every reader¿s taste. Such scale and scope of choice, however, can create challenges for readers wanting to read crime fiction for the first time or wanting to extend their reading past a favourite author or series. This overview of the genre identifies the main sub-genres of crime fiction, providing a set of concise definitions illustrated with international and Australian examples of crime fiction works. © 2011, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. All rights reserved.