November 2014
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2015 Eric Fry Labour History Scholarship
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Database launch
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Annual lecture
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Move to Birch building
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Archives out and about
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New acquisitions
2015 Eric Fry Labour History Scholarship
The closing date for applications for this scholarship is now the end of March each year. It is open
to honours and postgraduate students who intend using collections in the Noel Butlin Archives
Centre in their research. Click here for more information.
Database launch
The Director-General of the National Archives of Australia, David Fricker, launched our database on
6 June 2014, the 30 th anniversary of the operation of the Archives Act. The database is accessible
from the home page of our website at archives.anu.edu.au.
University Archivist Maggie Shapley, Director -General of the National Archives David Fricker, ANU
University Librarian Roxanne Missingham and Senior Archivist Sarah Lethbridge at the database
launch.
We have just upgraded to version 2.1 of the Access to Memory (AtoM) software which includes
some small enhancements which we contracted Artefactual Systems Inc to develop to make it
easier to input our data. We now have 45% of item lists on the database.
At a ceremony in University House on 24 November, the ANU Archives team was awarded the
Vice-Chancellor's Award for Innovation and Excellence in Service for our work on the database,
providing access to collection information and digitised material online as 'an integral part of the
historian's toolkit, regardless of location'.
Vice-Chancellor's award for Innovation and Excellence in Service
Annual lecture
Professor Joan Beaumont of the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre in the ANU College of Asia
and the Pacific delivered our annual lecture on 23 September on the topic 'The Real War? Battles
on the Australian home front 1914-1919'. A vodcast is available on the ANU Channel on YouTube.
Members of the audience at the annual archives lecture
Move to Birch building
More than 22,000 boxes of records were relocated from the upper level of the Archives repository in
Acton Underhill (the Tunnel) to the Birch Building, the old Research School of Chemistry building.
The move took place over three weeks without disruption to public services but required meticulous
planning so that we could reuse existing shelving: boxes were placed on trolleys, shelving
dismantled then re-erected in the new location, ready to be filled with boxes again.
Farewell tunnel!
Hello Birch!
We now have a circular courier run from the Menzies Building to Acton Underhill to Birch and back
to Menzies each day. The bulk of the collection (17 kilometres) remains on the lower level of Acton
Underhill. The move was completed in time to hold a Halloween Party in the repository for students
at the end of October.
Getting into the spirit at the Halloween party
Archives out and about
University Archivist Maggie Shapley delivered a paper at the International Council on Archives
conference in Girona, Spain reporting on the implementation of the ICA Principles of Access to
Archives at the ANU Archives. Archivist Helen Hopper gave a presentation at the Australian Society
of Archivists' conference in Christchurch, New Zealand entitled 'Sugar, Science and Super Smiles',
reporting on the use of the CSR Limited collection to launch a new product which had first been
developed and tested in the 1970s.
Two very different books have been donated recently to the Archives by researchers illustrating the
breadth of our collections: David Lawrence's book The Naturalist and his 'Beautiful Islands': Charles
Morris Woodford in the Western Pacific, published by ANU Press (press.anu.edu.au) and Salute to
the Hudswells: The story of the Colonial Sugar Refining Company's Hudswell Clarke locomotives in
Queensland and Fiji, by Ian Stocks,David Mewes and John Browning, published by the Australian
Narrow Gauge Railway Museum Society (sales@angrms.org.au).
The ANU Reporter recently featured an article about the Archives treasures, some of which are
currently on display in the Archives reading room. These include the medals of Professor Frank
Fenner and Sir John Crawford and correspondence of some of the early University aca demics such
as Manning Clark, Noel Butlin and Keith Hancock.
Just some of the medals Frank Fenner was awarded in his career
Students from the Practical Skills in Exhibition Design and Delivery course in the College of Arts
and Social Sciences have curated a small exhibition in the Archives reading room. 'A biography:
The story behind the story' is about Laurie Fitzhardinge's biography of William Morris Hughes.
Toad Hall is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. There's an exhibition in the foyer of the
Menzies Library building which draws on research in the Archives and students' own records.
New acquisitions
Noel Butlin Archives Centre:
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Research papers of Dr John Ballard (1930-2014) relating to AIDS in Australia
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The 7 August 1891 agreement between the Pastoralists' Federal Council of Australia
and the Amalgamated Shearers' Union of Australasia relating to the employment of
shearers, signed by WE Abbott, New South Wales pastoralist and member of the
Legislative Assembly and WG Spence, trade unionist and later member of the first
Federal parliament
The 1891 agreement
University Archives
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Annual reports from Mount Stromlo (1956-1975) donated by June Faulkner
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Minutes of meetings and reports from the Electron and Ion Diffusion Unit, 1961 – 1991,
including the papers of Professor Robert Crompton
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Papers relating to a survey of British migrants by Reginald Thomas Appleyard in the
Department of Demography in the 1960s
Pacific Research Archives
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Edward Adley Owen's photograph albums of the CSR Limited Labasa mill from 1909,
donated by Barbara Sheppard
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Professor Mervyn Meggitt's Enga genealogies resulting from his research in the Papua
New Guinea highlands in the 1950s.
May 2014
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Treasures exhibition
Digitisation of Chinese Chamber of Commerce records
Database news
CAUL – ASA fellowships
Eric Fry Labour History Scholarship awarded
Digital images
New acquisitions
Treasures exhibition
From early June we will be displaying 'Treasures from the Archives' in our reading room and
in the Menzies Building foyer. Documents, photographs, maps and audiovisual records will
feature, including items inscribed on the UNESCO Australian Memory of the World
Register. The exhibition will run until the end of September.
A photo of Circular Quay, Sydney, in the 1890s from the records of Dalgety and Company Limited. Photographer: Henry King
Digitisation of Chinese Chamber of Commerce records
The Noel Butlin Archives Centre has held the records of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce
of New South Wales since 1966. They date from the 1890s and include minutes,
correspondence, financial records, and lists of office bearers and also records of other
Chinese societies in Sydney and Melbourne such as the New South Wales Chinese Empire
Reform Association, the Chinese Debating Society, the Self-Protection Society of Sydney,
and the Kong Chew Society. The records are mostly in Chinese. In2013, Dr Mei-fen Kuo of
Latrobe University facilitated the digitisation of the records by the Institute of Modern
History, Academia Sinica in Taipei, Taiwan. Now researchers all around the world can access
them from our database which links across to our digital repository, Digital Collections,
where there is a digital image of every page
A page from one of the digitised Chinese Chamber of Commerce records
Database news
The Archives database has been migrated to a new version of the AtoM (Access to Memory)
software. Two of the new features are:
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Faceted searching: if you search and have many results you can restrict that search by'
level of description', for example, to just see Noel Butlin Archives Centre deposits or
by 'creator' if you are only interested in material created by a particular organisation.
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On the home page, 'Popular This Week' shows the most searched-for material.
Many more item lists (over 40% of the total number) have been added to the database and
now appear in the left-hand column for each archival description. If the list you want to see
doesn't appear yet, we can provide one by email. Just send your request to
butlin.archives@anu.edu.au with the reference code which will look similar to this: AU
ANUA 431 or AU NBAC Z370.
CAUL – ASA fellowships
The Council of Australian University Librarians in association with the Australian Society of
Authors are offering fellowships to provide artists, authors, scholars and researchers with the
opportunity to work on projects with special collections in Australian university libraries. The
Noel Butlin Archives Centre is a participant as one of the Australian National University's
special collections. Guidelines for the fellowships are accessible here and applications are
due on 30 May 2014.
Eric Fry Labour History Scholarship awarded
Congratulations to Liam Byrne who has been awarded the Eric Fry Labour History
Scholarship to undertake research at the Noel Butlin Archives Centre. Liam is a Doctor of
Philosophy candidate at the University of Melbourne and his thesis relates to the political
culture of the Victorian branch of the Australian Labor Party from 1914 to 1921. The
scholarship is sponsored by the ANU Research School of Humanities and the Arts and the
Australian Society for the Study of Labour History.
Digital images
We have reviewed our copying service, as we no longer have access to an internal
photography service. We now only produce digital images (no contact prints or photocopies)
and deliver them via a Dropbox facility rather than on CD. We also encourage researchers to
use their own digital cameras to make copies for their research where possible. The new
charge of $35 per high-definition image (including GST) is commensurate with fees charged
by other Canberra cultural institutions.Charges for CDs and postage no longer apply.
http://archives.anu.edu.au/using-the-archives/photography-service
We are planning a three-month project to digitise the Tooth and Company hotel cards which
feature photographs and other information about many hotels in New South Wales. Lowresolution copies of all cards will be progressively available (free of charge) from the Digital
Collections website to complement the digitised photographs of hotels currently available
there.
New acquisitions
Recent acquisitions to the Pacific Research Archives include:
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Dr Bryant Allen's research papers relating to drought and frost in Papua New Guinea
Research papers of Dr Mike Bourke on human geography and agriculture in Papua
New Guinea
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Dr John Baker's reports on economic development as an economist to the Tongan
government
papers of volcanologist Dr Wally Johnson relating to Papua New Guinea
We have also received several transfers from Professor David Marr relating to his research on
Vietnam and the records of the ANU Law Students' Society dating back to the 1970s.
Transfers to the Noel Butlin Archives Centre include:
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photographs of twenty-three New Zealand and Australian Land Company stations
taken by Bob Webster, Ted Lowe and Clive Davies in the 1960s and collated and
captioned by Ralph Penn
further deposits from the Australian Society of Archivists.
Bundure station, one of the New Zealand and Australian Land Company stations
Our acquisitions activity is limited by our storage space as we prepare to move over 3
kilometres of records to newly fitted-out storage facilities in the Birch Building on campus.
We will continue to occupy the lower level of the Acton Underhill facility with 17 kilometres
of archives.