Milestone for Territory chronicler
A chronicler of the Northern Territory’s rich history was one of 13 Territory Families, Housing and Communities staff who were this week recognised for a combined 225 years of public service.
Beverley Lee has spent the past decade curating the development and expansion of the Northern Territory’s largest online collection of Northern Territory history – Territory Stories.
Territory Stories provides access to almost 750,000 digitised records of life in the Northern Territory, including newspapers, an extensive image collection, Government reports and maps.
Bev has witnessed seismic changes in the way history is collected and shared since she began working for libraries in Darwin in 1986 as part of a pilot program to barcode library collections.
“I was on the cusp of the change from the old fashioned library cards to what were called dumb computers,” she laughed.
“One of the models needed a floppy disk just to start it and then another floppy disk to save any word processing you did. It was horrendous.
“It is amazing that today at the click of a button so much of the Northern Territory’s history is now free and accessible for anyone.”
Bev said the biggest joy of the job was seeing the collection bring joy to people who had discovered links to their past.
“I helped a lady from a remote community track down a photo of her father in our records, it was the first time she’d ever seen what her father looked like,” she said.
“Another lady from Broome recently found photos of her family as she was just doing a browse of our website.
“It is being able to see that very human side of what our history means to real people that makes this job so rewarding.”
Born and raised with four sisters in Millner, just around the corner from the NT Archives Centre, Bev had a fascination with libraries and technology from an early age.
“When I was a student, if you did well using the typewriters at school you got time on the computer which had pong, space invaders and word processing software and that was it.
“I’d always like spending time in libraries and the Northern Territory Government gave me a job and put me through my library technician traineeship.
“I’m really proud of the work that our little team does to preserve Northern Territory history.”
Bev began working for the Northern Territory Government in 1986 before moving to the Department of Justice for 18 years, working in the Graham Nicholson Law Library.
In 2010, she returned to Library & Archives NT as a project officer for Territory Stories.
TFHC Chief Executive Ken Davies said each of the length of service recipients made a significant contribution to the Northern Territory.
“As a Department we are less than three years old but our teams are made up of professionals with rich and diverse experience and an underlying drive and passion to serve our community,” he said.
“We are incredibly fortunate to have so many long-serving staff and we are grateful for the ongoing contribution that they make for all Territorians.”
Territory Stories can be found at https://territorystories.nt.gov.au/
DID YOU KNOW
Digital records are processed in a photography studio and 80 records can be created and uploaded in about 60 minutes.
Prior to 2010, all records were scanned and large photographic collections could take between six and 12 months to complete.
