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Trove government

Resources generated or collected by the Australian Commonwealth Government are available in a number of different locations and formats across Trove. This repository contains tools and examples to work with digitised government publications available through Trove.

See below for information on running these notebooks in a live computing environment. Or just take them for a spin using Binder.

ARDC Binder Binder

Notebooks

Harvest parliament press releases from Trove

Trove includes more than 380,000 press releases, speeches, and interview transcripts issued by Australian federal politicians and saved by the Parliamentary Library. This notebook shows you how to harvest both metadata and full text from a search of the parliamentary press releases. The metadata is available from Trove, but to get the full text we have to go back to the Parliamentary Library's database, ParlInfo.

Harvest details of Commonwealth Parliamentary Papers digitised in Trove

Trove includes thousands of digitised papers and reports presented to the Commonwealth Parliament. However, finding all the Parliamentary Papers is not straightforward because of inconsistencies in the way they've been arranged and described. This notebook attempts to work around these problems and harvest as complete as possible data about Parliamentary Papers in Trove.

Datasets

Press releases relating to refugees

Trove includes more than 380,000 press releases, speeches, and interview transcripts issued by Australian federal politicians and saved by the Parliamentary Library. This dataset contains metadata and full text of items from the press releases collection that include the term 'refugees' (or a number of related terms).

Press releases relating to COVID

Trove includes more than 380,000 press releases, speeches, and interview transcripts issued by Australian federal politicians and saved by the Parliamentary Library. This dataset contains metadata and full text of items from the press releases collection that include the term 'covid' or 'coronavirus'.

Digitised Parliamentary Papers in Trove

This dataset contains metadata describing Commonwealth Parliamentary Papers that have been digitised and are made available through Trove.

Run these notebooks

There are a number of different ways to use these notebooks. Binder is quickest and easiest, but it doesn't save your data. I've listed the options below from easiest to most complicated (requiring more technical knowledge).

Using ARDC Binder

Launch on ARDC Binder

Click on the button above to launch the notebooks in this repository using the ARDC Binder service. This is a free service available to researchers in Australian universities. You'll be asked to log in with your university credentials. Note that sessions will close if you stop using the notebooks, and no data will be preserved. Make sure you download any changed notebooks or harvested data that you want to save.

See Using ARDC Binder for more details.

Using Binder

Launch on Binder

Click on the button above to launch the notebooks in this repository using the Binder service (it might take a little while to load). This is a free service, but note that sessions will close if you stop using the notebooks, and no data will be saved. Make sure you download any changed notebooks or harvested data that you want to save.

See Using Binder for more details.

Using Reclaim Cloud

Launch on Reclaim Cloud

Reclaim Cloud is a paid hosting service, aimed particularly at supported digital scholarship in hte humanities. Unlike Binder, the environments you create on Reclaim Cloud will save your data – even if you switch them off! To run this repository on Reclaim Cloud for the first time:

  • Create a Reclaim Cloud account and log in.
  • Click on the button above to start the installation process.
  • A dialogue box will ask you to set a password, this is used to limit access to your Jupyter installation.
  • Sit back and wait for the installation to complete!
  • Once the installation is finished click on the 'Open in Browser' button of your newly created environment (note that you might need to wait a few minutes before everything is ready).

See Using Reclaim Cloud for more details.

Using the Nectar Cloud

Screenshot of GLAM Workbench application

The Nectar Research Cloud (part of the Australian Research Data Commons) provides cloud computing services to researchers in Australian and New Zealand universities. Any university-affiliated researcher can log on to Nectar and receive up to 6 months of free cloud computing time. And if you need more, you can apply for a specific project allocation.

The GLAM Workbench is available in the Nectar Cloud as a pre-configured application. This means you can get it up and going without worrying about the technical infrastructure – just fill in a few details and you're away! To create an instance of this repository in the Nectar Cloud:

  • Log in to the Nectar Dashboard using your university credentials.
  • From the Dashboard choose Applications -> Browse Local.
  • Enter 'GLAM' in the filter box and hit Enter, you should see the GLAM Workbench application.
  • Click on the GLAM Workbench application's Quick Deploy button.
  • Step through the various configuration options. Some options are only available if you have a dedicated project allocation.
  • When asked to select a GLAM Workbench repository, choose this repository from the dropdown list.
  • Complete the configuration and deploy your GLAM Workbench instance.
  • The url to access your instance will be displayed once it's ready. Click on the url!

See Using Nectar for more information.

Using Docker

You can use Docker to run a pre-built computing environment on your own computer. It will set up everything you need to run the notebooks in this repository. This is free, but requires more technical knowledge – you'll have to install Docker on your computer, and be able to use the command line.

  • Install Docker Desktop.
  • Create a new directory for this repository and open it from the command line.
  • From the command line, run the following command:
    docker run -p 8888:8888 --name trove-government -v "$PWD":/home/jovyan/work quay.io/glamworkbench/trove-government repo2docker-entrypoint jupyter lab --ip 0.0.0.0 --NotebookApp.token='' --LabApp.default_url='/lab/tree/index.ipynb'
    
  • It will take a while to download and configure the Docker image. Once it's ready you'll see a message saying that Jupyter Notebook is running.
  • Point your web browser to http://127.0.0.1:8888

See Using Docker for more details.

Setting up on your own computer

If you know your way around the command line and are comfortable installing software, you might want to set up your own computer to run these notebooks.

Assuming you have recent versions of Python and Git installed, the steps might be something like:

  • Create a virtual environment, eg: python -m venv trove-government
  • Open the new directory" cd trove-government
  • Activate the environment source bin/activate
  • Clone the repository: git clone https://github.com/GLAM-Workbench/trove-government.git notebooks
  • Open the new notebooks directory: cd notebooks
  • Install the necessary Python packages: pip install -r requirements.txt
  • Run Jupyter: jupyter lab

See Getting started for more details.