We're shortlisted for the Museums & Galleries National Awards!

The time difference between Western Australia and the Eastern States isn't always a bad thing! We got up this morning to the exciting news that we'd been shortlisted for the Museums & Galleries National Awards, otherwise known as the MAGNAs.

Our shortlisting is in the permanent exhibition category and is for our Virtual Museum: to be known and distinguished as Carnamah. The winners of each category will be announced at a function during the national conference of Museums Australia, which is being held later this month in Launceston, Tasmania.

Our virtual museum is our simple but effective way of sharing some of our collection and history with online audiences who are beyond the physical reaches of Carnamah. It was made possible thanks to financial support from the Department of Culture and the Arts. It can be viewed online at: www.virtualmuseum.com.au

Launch of Australian Curriculum resource for Milk Cream & Butter

We launched the first of our Australian Curriculum education resources at the 2013 conference of the History Teachers' Association of Western Australia. Amid champagne flutes of chilled milk and gifts of butter we unveiled the education resource that accompanies the Milk Cream & Butter virtual exhibition on our website.

The first resource, and another eight which are on the way, provide information, activities and worksheets for teachers that can be used from the classroom with content on our website. This makes them useful for schools located anywhere in Australia! They are mostly suitable for lower primary years and directly connect to the new Australian Curriculum. The resource can be previewed or downloaded in full from:

www.carnamah.com.au/education

Please register your name and e-mail address if you'd like to be updated when we add new resource packs. If you use our Milk Cream & Butter resource we'd appreciate your anonymous feedback via our very short feedback form. We'd also love to share any work created by your students here on our blog - simply e-mail copies and some info to andrew@carnamah.com.au.

As an aside, we surveyed some of the attendees on their favourite flavoured milk. Chocolate, coffee and banana were the stand-outs with appearances of caramel, strawberry, skim, vanilla and good old plan milk. Our thanks to all of those who attended our session and to Maree Whiteley who spurred this project on with a comment on our Facebook wall back in April 2012.

Our Milk, Cream & Butter resource was made by Ignite Your Audience for and in partnership with the Carnamah Historical Society. It was possible thanks to support from the Western Australian History Foundation.

We're Recruiting Virtual Volunteers!

We are a small organisation hoping to keep up the pace at doing big things, and request your assistance whether you are near or afar!

The team working on preparing information for the Coorow-Waddy, Carnamah-Winchester and Three Springs databases presently stands at a grand total of two - it's highest number to date! We are very keen to increase the content and and names represented in this rich and nationally unique resource.

We are hoping to index Commonwealth Electoral Rolls for the subdivision that our districts fell within. The benefit is that instead of having a massive pile of electoral rolls we will have a list of names, their occupation, address and the range of years they were enrolled. This information can then be directly and very quickly added to the databases.

So how can you help? We will send you electoral roll images and you simply add the details to an online document. If the details are already there (from an earlier or later roll) then you only need to add the year! We will be very happy to acknowledge all assistance received on our sources page.

If you'd like to assist, or would like to know more, please send an e-mail to andrew@carnamah.com.au

Update 20/08/2013:

You can now volunteer online at our Virtual Volunteering website