 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group No cringing allowed Carol Daniels cad@melbpc.org.au |
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If you're interested in the minutia of the society, culture or virtually any aspect of American life, you can find it on the Internet. You'll find it in spades. Your main worry will be sorting through all of it.
If you're looking for the same kind of information about Australia, you may find the task a trifle more frustrating. I know I do. Even when I know what I am looking for and I'm using an Australia-specific search site, I often come up empty. Or worse, I find it especially infuriating to have my search return a heap of references with nothing whatsoever to do with the topic at hand. I haven't figured out why this happens, although not for want of trying.
When I find a good source of Australian information I want to shout it to the world. The Australia Cultural Network's Web site is one such site. It gets full marks for quality content and design. It's billed as the gateway to Australia's cultural resources, events, activities, news and Web sites. It delivers. It doesn't even cheat when it could, say by using references to overseas resources for some general topics.
What distinguishes the Web site from other Australian cultural reference sources is that it concentrates not simply on Australian culture and cultural activities, but on those that relate to the use of the Internet to improve public access to Australian cultural organisations and experiences.
What will you find at the site?
- Resources to help you get the best out of the Internet (this is one of the
areas where the developers could have cheated and used overseas references, but they didn't!)
- A cultural event finder (you can also add your event to the data base)
- Links to a selection of Net projects showcasing Australian cultural uses of
online services
- Links to almost 1000 Australian cultural Web sites
- A search engine
- A news section with information about the Australian cultural scene and
related Internet developments.
While you're there, you can also sign up for the Australia's Cultural Network's "ausculture" mailing list. The list is designed to spread information and encourage discussion about the Australian cultural scene.
So what are you waiting for? See all this and more at http://www.acn.net.au/
