User:JEastaugh

I am Jack Eastaugh, Digitisation and Technical Support Officer for BHL Australia, the Australian branch of the Biodiversity Heritage Library since 2023. We are hosted by Museums Victoria. My salary has, in part, been funded by a grant provided by the Atlas of Living Australia (CSIRO).

I'm currently working on a Public Record Office Victoria funded Local History Grant to make the publications of Victoria's regional Field Naturalists Clubs freely accessible and discoverable online on the BHL website (see Capturing the history of the regional field naturalist clubs of Victoria, Australia).

A second grant, the Wikimedia Australia Partner Project Grant, is enabling the creation of Wikipedia pages and Wikidata records for each field naturalists' club, their publications and people, and the uploading of archival images into Wikimedia Commons (see The Regional Field Naturalists Clubs of Victoria). The funding is being used to pay travel costs from Melbourne to each Victorian region to meet with club members and review/capture historic archives and photographs and enable. It will also assist in resourcing myself as a Wikimedian in Residence (1 day/week for 5 months).

The publications of Victoria’s field naturalists contain critical information about the biodiversity of their specific region across time. They also detail the rich history of the organisations themselves and the people behind them. For those who were not white men, these community publications may contain the only published reference of their name (references critical to Wikipedia’s notability requirements).