Project: Cataloguing Australian Children's Books in Foreign Languages
Project : Cataloguing Translations of Australian Children's Books
We are delighted to announce the conclusion of this Lu Rees project. In April 2010, we began a campaign to raise funds to catalogue 462 Australian children's books, DVDs, puzzles and games published in 32 languages. We are immensely grateful to all those individuals and organisations that provided funds to make this possible. Our grateful thanks go to the following donors and supporters:
- Victor Crittenden
- Scholastic Australia
- Australia-Japan Foundation
- Scandinavian Australian Association
- Embassy of China
- Embassy of Denmark
- Embassy of Finland
- Embassy of Germany
- Embassy of the Netherlands
- Embassy of Russia
- Embassy of Spain
- Embassy of Sweden
- Embassy of Thailand
Initially, Lu Rees volunteers copied information about each item and sent this to CAVAL, a specialist cataloguing service in Melbourne. CAVAL spent 8 months using language experts to catalogue the materials. Many of the 32 languages would be familiar, but books in Icelandic, Tetum from Timor-Leste and Zulu were special challenges. All the cataloguing is now finished and these details are being linked with the particular items as the final step. Our aim was to ensure these cataloguing records were available through the online service, Libraries Australia. The world then knows these books exist and are publicly available. Most importantly, such translations demonstrate the importance of children's stories and their ability to link people of all cultures through common stories.