November 2013


 12 th Annual Archives Lecture
 Eric Fry Labour History Scholarship
 Database news
New collections available for research
Repository move
 Staff news
12th Annual Archives Lecture
Our annual lecture in September, 'Whose memories, whose records: when the archival legacy of a colonial past meets the cultural records of a post-colonial future', was delivered by Jeanette Bastian, Professor at the Graduate School of
Library and Information Science at Simmons College, Boston. Jeanette spoke about the colonial records of islands, with reference to her work in the US
Virgin Islands, raising issues about their custody, preservation and translation, and their relationship to post-colonial documentation and oral tradition. The lecture is available as a vodcast for those unable to make it to the event.
Jeanette Bastian with University Archivist Maggie Shapley
Eric Fry Labour History Scholarship
The Eric Fry Labour History Scholarship will be offered again next year with support from the ANU Research School of the Humanities and the Arts and the
Australian Society for the Study of Labour History. The scholarship supports

students wishing to undertake research at the Noel Butlin Archives Centre and is valued at $1,000. Information about applying for the scholarship is on our website. and applications close on 31January 2014.
Database news
We continue to add items to the database at archivescollection.anu.edu.au
, concentrating our efforts on uploading item information from electronic lists.
Over half of the University Archives series now have their items attached, including the popular series of photographs of people (ANUA 225) and the
Australian Dictionary of Biography files (ANUA 312).
We are also creating links between the database and the Digital Collections website where we store digitised photographs, and audio interviews and lectures recorded by the ANU Instructional Resources Unit. Recent additions include recordings of ANU Professors Robin Gollan, AD Hope, Beryl Rawson and Ernest Titterton and visiting lecturers Nugget Coombs, Xavier Herbert, and
Gough Whitlam. These were originally on reel-to-reel magnetic tape and have been digitised to preserve their content.
Dr Nugget Coombs addresses a convocation lunch in August 1976 on 'The Future
Bureaucracy' (ANUA 225-248)

New collections available for research
Greg Bell has completed the processing of three series of Melbourne Stock
Exchange records: agenda and minutes of meetings of the Board and various committees (N201), applications by companies for official listing on the
Exchange, 1888-1961 (N221) and guest registers, 1925-1990, which include the signatures of visitors to the Stock Exchange of Melbourne, including Prime
Ministers Earle Page and Ben Chifley (N222).
Margaret Avard is currently processing a new collection of records (N220) from the Melbourne office of HB Selby Pty Ltd, which was for eighty years
Australia's leading supplier of scientific instruments, laboratory apparatus and chemicals for government and private industrial and research laboratories. The collection includes minutes of Directors' meetings, correspondence between their offices in each State capital, financial records, photographs and plans of company warehouses and offices. There is also extensive correspondence between two Selby brothers one in Sydney and one in Melbourne – displaying their good-humoured rivalry and their responses to various attempts to take the company over in the early1980s. The records complement those already held by the Archives from the Sydney office (64 and Z404).
HB Selby and Company display at the Chemex exhibition, 1938 (NBAC N220)
Recent additions to the Pacific Research Archives include the research papers of the anthropologists Michael Young and Michael Monsell Davies and of economist Ron May; author Jim Sinclair's collection of Papua New Guinea patrol reports (early 1900s to 1973); Joe Barr's collection of Pacific disaster

management material and material relating to Tonga collected by government economist Dr John Baker.
Repository move
Acton Underhill, the building housing the Archives repository, was originally built over the road tunnel on Parkes Way as a parking station, and there has been increasing interest in its return to its original purpose in recent years. We are currently investigating an alternative archival storage space on campus for the three kilometres of records stored on its upper level. We will keep our depositors and researchers informed if and when this move goes ahead, which we hope to do with minimal disruption to our services. We will continue to occupy the lower level of the repository where the remaining 17 kilometres of material is held.
In preparation for the move, Helen Hopper has consolidated and reboxed a number of trade union collections including deposits of the Seamen's Union of
Australia, the Federated Engine Drivers' and Firemen's Association, the
National Union of Workers, the Professional Officers' Association and the
Bank Employees' Union.
Acton Underhill where the Archives repository has been located since 1981

Since we reported on Karina Taylor's move back to New Zealand, we received the sad news that she had died suddenly having suffered a stroke. Staff and friends gathered in July to share stories and memories of Karina's six years here as Pacific Archivist.
Pacific Archivist Karina Taylor with Josepha Kappa of the University of Papua New Guinea
Christine Bryan has joined our team as Pacific Archivist and comes to us with extensive experience in archives, museum and library management, having worked at the ACT Heritage Library, the South Tablelands Regional Library
Service, the University of New England Heritage Centre and the Liverpool
Regional Museum.
 Archives database released!
 Anniversary celebrations
 Pacific Research Archives
 Eric Fry Labour History Scholarship
 New collections opened
 Archivists out and about
Archives database released!

Our database is now online at archivescollection.anu.edu.au
with information about all deposits in the Noel Butlin Archives Centre, all series in the
University Archives, and all the organisations and people who created them.
There are 1800 descriptions of deposits and series and over 1200 authority records for creators.
There is also a search box on our website homepage at archives.anu.edu.au
and ‘Help’ text is available there if you want to undertake more advanced searching. To do a simple search, enter a name or topic in the search box. For example, entering ‘Hancock’ brings up a description of Professor Keith
Hancock’s official papers, his research papers and the research papers of Jim
Davidson, his biographer.
Professor Keith Hancock, a member of the ANU Academic Advisory
Committee from 1947 to 1949
Records relating to the Pacific are subject-tagged as ‘Pacific Research
Archives’ and all collections in the National AIDS Archive Collection are also subject-tagged.
The database uses the ICA-AtoM (Access to Memory) software based on the
International Council on Archives standards for archival description. At this stage only 10 percent of individual record items, such as files, are entered. We will be continuing to add item-level descriptions over the next few years including audiovisual items, photographs, maps and serials. We will also be able to attach digital objects (images of records) to the database in the future.

Greg Bell acted as the Database Archivist this past year and all staff have researched and entered data including our valued casual staff member
Phuong Dang. We are happy to have feedback on the database to butlin.archives@anu.edu.au
.
Anniversary celebrations
The R. G. Menzies Building where the Archives’ reading room is located recently celebrated its 50 th anniversary. The Archives provided many photographs of its construction and of the people who have worked in the building, as well as a film of its opening by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, for an exhibition in the foyer of the building. The film and other images were also projected onto the building as part of the ‘ Thinking Spaces ’ Centenary of
Canberra event. Historian Jill Waterhouse provided information about the dignitaries who participated in the ceremony on the Library website at anulib.anu.edu.au/events/menzies-50 th . The exhibition will be on display until the end of the year.
Queen Elizabeth II opens the Menzies Building on 13 March 1963
In the reading room there is a small exhibition ‘Certain Women at ANU’ which celebrates the achievements of the first female PhD students,
Professors, Research Fellows, a Deputy Vice-Chancellor and a Pro-Chancellor.
It also includes material about the Women’s Studies Program at the
Australian National University which was established in 1976 and the social and community activities of the ANU Club for Women and the University
House Ladies’ Drawing Room which present a different perspective on women’s roles in the University. The research for the exhibition was undertaken in support of a Centenary of Canberra project, an online exhibition ‘From Lady Denman to Katy Gallagher – A Century of Women’s
Contributions to Canberra’ in association with the Australian Women’s
Register.

Pacific Research Archives
Pacific Archivist Karina Taylor has returned to New Zealand to take up a position at the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington. Karina was the inaugural Pacific Archivist starting work here in February 2007. Since that time she successfully established the Pacific Research Archives: developing a collection policy, a website, finding aids to collections, and three online exhibitions. She also pursued and obtained many donations of significant
Pacific material of former administrators and researchers, gave presentations to a number of Pacific conferences and seminars, and held information sessions for Pacific students in the College of Asia and the Pacific. The results of her work can be seen at pacificarchives.anu.edu.au
and in our database.
Karina Taylor, our former Pacific Archivist

A number of transfers have been made from the Pacific Manuscripts Bureau to the Pacific Research Archives in recent months, including the papers of the
Reverend Shirley Baker and Reverend Dr Sione Latukefu relating to Tonga.
Eric Fry Labour History Scholarship
The Eric Fry Labour History Scholarship for 2013 has been awarded to
Brendan McGloin of Victoria University who is undertaking research for a
PhD entitled ‘The Factory Occupation’ which references the recent Occupy
Movement. Last year’s scholarship holder was Alexis Vassiley of the
University of Western Australia who visited the archives to undertake research for his Honours thesis on trade union support for Aboriginal rights during the Noonkanbah dispute. The scholarship application form is on our website at archives.anu.edu.au
and applications close each year on 31
January.
New collections opened
Three large collections have recently been processed by archivist Margaret
Avard and can now be more easily used by researchers:
 McEwan’s Limited was established in the early 1850s supplying hardware to storekeepers on the Victorian goldfields. Its records date from then until the 1980s when it was taken over by Repco Limited, and include many photographs of stores in Victoria, Queensland and
New South Wales (N218).

Evonne Goolagong leaves her handprints in McEwan’s Bourke Street store
‘walk of fame’
 The Federated Confectioners’ Association of Australia was registered in 1925 but its NSW Branch records include records of predecessors dating back to 1889 (N194).
 The Professional Divers’ Association of Australasia began in 1969 and later became part of the Seamen’s Union and then the Maritime Union of Australia. Its records include files about diver training and health and safety issues as well as photographs and maps (N205).
Archivist Helen Hopper has been concentrating on repository management including reboxing material in cartons into acid-free boxes and consolidating and listing collections at the same time. These collections include the records of the Australian Government Senior Executive Association 1957-93 (N217), the Federation of Scientific and Technical Workers 1943-72 (Z413), the
Undertakers’ Assistants and Cemetery Employees Union of Australia from
1910 (Z464), and the Australian Postmasters’ Association records from 1915
(Z558). Work is progressing on the records of ASX and its predecessor stock exchanges with material from Hobart (N197), Brisbane (N199) and Adelaide
(N200) now accessible.
Archivists out and about
Senior Archivist Sarah Lethbridge presented a session at the National
Archives’ ‘Shake Your Family Tree’ day for family historians where we also manned an information stand. University Archivist Maggie Shapley participated in the recent professional update on the UNESCO Memory of the
World program hosted by the Institute for Professional Practice in Heritage and the Arts at the Australian National University. Maggie also gave a presentation to the Australian Society of Archivists about the ‘Principles for
Access to Archives’ as a member of the working party which developed them.
The principles were endorsed by the International Council on Archives in
August last year and can be accessed at www.ica.org
.