Benjamin Thorn has received an $1100 grant from the NSW government to help him continue cataloguing the stories of veterans of the print industry.
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As the curator of the Museum of Printing Mr Thorn has been collecting the oral history of veterans on the print industry for six years.
The money will help his project to further understand the history of printing.
“When you’ve got a museum you’ve got to put the equipment you’ve got into context such as knowing about the people who use it,” he said. “A lot of things people have told was when they started work a job would be spread over three of four days, now with computers people expect it in half an hour.
“This is one of the drawbacks of modern technology, you can do anything and you can do it really fast but you don’t have time to think about what you’re doing.”
Mr Thorn said while there were a lot of changes in printing he thought the industry would exist for a long time.
“People forget over 50 per cent of the printing industry is packaging and quite frankly that is going to continue,” he said. “You go into the supermarket and every product has printed packaging. I think books will continue on for a while and I think newspapers will as well. Even if newspapers go purely digital there is still a lot of printing related activities such as design.”
Northern Tablelands MP Adam Marshall said it was great to be able to support historical studies.
“This funding will help Mr Thorn with his research and the transcribing of the many interviews he’s conducted.
“Since beginning this project he’s interviewed more than 80 people; the oldest was 99 and began working in the printing industry in 1930,” he said.