Archives News 2010
November 2010
Prime Ministers at the Australian National University exhibition
Our current exhibition features photographs, documents and audiovisual material
about 12 prime ministers. We actually have material about all 27 prime ministers
in our collection but not enough room in our display cases to feature them all!
There are minutes and files which record their trade union activities and records
about their relationships with the University whether as Chancellor, Council
member, Visiting Fellow, student or official visitor. We also hold files of the
Australian Dictionary of Biography about the writing of their biographies, and
photographs and recordings of prime ministers laying foundation stones, opening
buildings and participating in other events on the ANU campus. The exhibition
draws on our forthcoming guide to records about prime ministers by Michael
Piggott and Maggie Shapley. The exhibition is in the Menzies Building reading
room until June 2011.
Julia Gillard as the incoming President of the Australian Union of Students in
1983 (ANUA 300)
Launch of National Museum of Labour
The Archives provided a display of trade union minute books, certificates,
membership cards, badges and photographs at the launch of the National Museum
of Labour held on 11 November. It was held in the Fitter's Workshop in Kingston,
near the Glassworks in Canberra, which was decorated with union banners from
the Unions NSW collection. The speakers included Ged Kearney (President of the
ACTU), Gai Brodtmann (Member for Canberra), Mike Kelly (Member for EdenMonaro), and Anna Booth (formerly National Secretary of the Textile, Clothing
and Footwear Union and now of Slater and Gordon, a major sponsor). The
Archives is one of the foundation members and will be working with the Museum
in developing travelling exhibitions until they find a permanent home.
Part of the crowd at the launch of the National Museum of Labour (photograph:
Unions ACT)
Audiovisual project
A number of staff have been involved in a project to identify, document and
prioritise audiovisual material for preservation and copying. Margaret Avard has
identified and located audiovisual material from hundreds of collection lists;
Chesley Engram, formerly a conservator at the National Library, is assessing its
condition and recommending treatment; and Amalijah Thompson has been
implementing recommendations and auditing tapes. Once we have reliable
information about our audiovisual material and its condition, we will be assigning
priority for treatment and copying based on physical condition, research value,
and whether it is unique or if copies are preserved in other collections, such as the
National Film and Sound Archive.
Chesley Engram assessing video tapes in the National Farmers Federation
collection (photograph: Maggie Shapley)
Our annual lecture
Dr Peter Stanley, head of the Centre for Historical Research at the National
Museum of Australia, delivered the 9th annual Archives lecture, 'Smiths in
Stasiland: Archival Reminders of an Uncomfortable Australian Past', in
September. He spoke about the bureaucratic paranoia and neighbourhood
vindictiveness reflected in the Military Intelligence files of the First World War,
held by the National Archives of Australia, while emphasising the value of
archives such as these to our understanding of Australian society. A podcast of
the lecture is available on the ANU website.
A full house for 9th annual Archives lecture (photograph: Greg Bell)
Volunteer project update
Our volunteers have been working on a number of interesting projects including
indexing the names of miners employed by the Australian Agricultural Company
in their Newcastle pits. The miners' names appear on pay sheets dating from the
1870s to the 1920s. The Victoria River Downs 'natives ledger' 1932-1950 is also
being indexed. The ledger includes both Aboriginal and European names, birth
dates and the names of other family members.
A volunteer made a surprising find while working on the papers of Betty Reilly,
an active member of the Communist Party from the 1930s: a letter of introduction
printed on a handkerchief and signed by L L Sharkey, General Secretary of the
Australian Communist Party. It is likely that she carried this with her when she
travelled to the Soviet Union in the 1950s; when the handkerchief is folded the
printing would not be seen by government officials. Audrey Johnson's papers
have also been sorted and listed. She wrote several books including Fly a Rebel
Flag, the biography of ALP Senator and trade unionist Bill Morrow and Bread
and Roses, a history of left-wing and trade union women activists, and was
working on a biography of Tom Wright, Federal Secretary of the Sheet Metal
Working Agricultural Implement and Stove Making Industrial Union, at the time
of her death in 2002. The collection includes draft chapters, research material and
interviews with Communist Party members and trade unionists.
A volunteer working on the Audrey Johnson papers (photograph: Amalijah
Thompson)
Recent transfers
In September Senior Archivist Sarah Lethbridge packed up many boxes of
valuable records of the Association of Employers of Waterside Labour in a
disused warehouse in Port Adelaide, shortly before its demolition. This 'before'
photograph gives an indication of the hazards that archivists can face and why
dust masks are often needed.
Association of Employers of Waterside Labour records (photograph Sarah
Lethbridge)
We recently received a small collection of correspondence about the retirement of
Jim Murray, secretary of the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries, due to
ill-health in 1958. There are letters from prime minister Menzies, federal
ministers such as McEwen, Holt and Fadden, state premiers such as Cahill and
Bolte and many other politicians.
Records have been transferred by several departments of the Research School of
Pacific and Asian Studies including Pacific History, Human Geography and
Linguistics. Professor Ben Selinger, Department of Chemistry, and Professor Jill
Matthews, College of Arts and Social Sciences, have transferred teaching and
other records, and Dr James Jupp, Centre for Immigration and Multicultural
Studies, has transferred material relating to his participation in government
reviews and committees
News June 2010
Eric Fry Labour History Research Grant
Lian Jenvey has been awarded the Eric Fry Labour History Research Grant for
this year. The grant is sponsored by the Australian Society for the Study of
Labour History, Canberra Branch, and the ANU National Institute for Social
Sciences and Law. Lian is undertaking research for her PhD thesis on nationalism
in the trade union movement in the Second World War and is studying in the
Faculty of Economics and Business at the University of Sydney. She has just
spent a week in the Archives working through records of the Australasian Coal
and Shale Employees Federation and has another research trip planned.
Lian Jenvey on her recent visit to the ANU Archives
ANU Archives joins DisACT
The ANU Archives has formally joined the DisACT network with the signing of a
letter of intent at a ceremony at the National Library. The heads of many of
Canberra's archives, libraries, museums and art galleries gathered for the mass
signing, with Vic Elliott, Director, Scholarly Information Services, signing for us.
The ceremony was part of a symposium on disaster preparedness where a number
of institutions shared their experiences with how their disaster plans matched up
to the reality of floods, bushfires and earthquakes. The network was established
for the mutual support of member institutions when disasters may occur, through
the loan of equipment and trained staff. All ANU Archives staff have attended
Disaster Awareness workshops where participants are confronted with a
simulated flood disaster.
Heads of Canberra’s cultural institutions, with Senator Kate Lundy, gathered to
sign up to DisACT (Photographer: Greg Power, National Library)
Queensland Coal Industry records
We have received a large transfer in the form of the Queensland Coal Industry
Industrial Library. It was at one time maintained by the Queensland Resources
Council and contains material from the Queensland Coal Reference Board and the
Coal Industry Tribunal. We were able to transport the library from Brisbane with
the assistance of industry partners covering the freight cost and are now in the
process of reboxing. The Mining Division of the Construction Forestry Mining
and Energy Union funded the purchase of 1,000 acid-free archives boxes to
rehouse the collection.
The Queensland Coal Industry Industrial Library is a rich source waiting to be
mined!
First steps to online database
The Archives is beta testing open-source software developed for the International
Council on Archives by Artefactual Inc. as a first step to an online database. The
ICA-AtoM (Access to Memory) software is due for release later this year and we
have been providing feedback to the developers based on our entry of University
Archives and Pacific Research Archives documentation. We will take a staged
approach with the Noel Butlin Archives Centre collections, tackling the business
archives component first before starting on the trade union and industry
organisations. If you are interested in the potential of the software, you can access
our draft site at www.ica-atom.org/anu. If you search on the word 'Bruce' you will
find documentation for the company Paterson, Laing and Bruce and the
company's deposits and items.
A sample page from our test database
Spencer and Gillen digitisation project
The Archives has assisted a joint Australian Research Council project between the
Australian National University, Museum Victoria and the South Australian
Museum to digitise the ethnographic collection of Francis James Gillen and
Walter Baldwin Spencer. We hold a copy of Spencer and Gillen's work, The
Arunta: A Study of Stone Age People (1927), which belonged to anthropologist
Olive Pink and which she extensively annotated. She gave the book to trade
unionist Tom Wright so it is in his extensive collection of files and publications.
Jason Gibson, research coordinator for the project, visited the Archives to digitise
relevant pages from the book which will be entered into a digital archive of
Spencer and Gillen's work and collections (spencerandgillen.org).
Olive Pink’s annotation identifies the woman in the published photograph