On 15 September Senator John Faulkner presented the annual Archives lecture at the ANU. His lecture was a joint event as it also opened the ‘Labour history and its people’ conference hosted by with the Australian Society for the Study of
Labour History in association with the National Centre for Biography.
Senator Faulkner reflected on the history of the labour movement in Australia and the Australian Labor Party and that a proud past doesn’t automatically guarantee a bright futute.
The lecture us available as a podcast
Senator John Faulkner with Maggie Shapley, Acting University Librarian and
Professor Melanie Nolan, Director, National Centre of Biography and General
Editor Australian Dictionary of Biography (Photo by Greg Bell)
This exhibition tells the story of the development of Anthropology as an area of study at ANU. It includes research papers and photographs from the ANU
Archives, publications from the ANU Library and objects and tools of trade from the Department of Anthropology. The exhibition launch coincided with a

conference of the same name and shows some of the challenges researchers have faced including negotiating for permission to conduct research in other countries and earning the trust of local people
Katharina Hobiger from the Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology at the University of Vienna visited the ANU Archives Program in October to use the collections of Professor Stephen Wurm (ANUA 233) and his wife Dr Helen
Groger-Wurm (ANUA 260) for her Master’s thesis entitled ‘Stephen Wurm - The early years of the linguist. His influence and importance for Cultural and Social
Anthropology’. The Wurm collections were donated to the ANU Archives
Program after Dr Helen Groger-Wurm’s death in 2005. The Wurm collection is the largest personal collection held by the University Archives. It is stored in 200 acid-free archives boxes that take up over 45 metres of shelf space. The collection contains personal letters between Stephen and Helen as well as detailed notes on the linguistic intricacies of rare languages from around the world. Stephen Wurm was a renowned linguist and the first professor of linguistics at ANU. He is thought to have been able to converse – either simply or fluently – in 50 languages. Wurm is probably best known professionally for his contribution to the study of Papuan languages, the development of publisher Pacific Linguistics and his series of language atlases. Ms Hobiger spent the month focusing on the
German language documents in the collection. She was also able to take the opportunity to speak to many of the ANU Linguist Alumni in Canberra who knew
Professor Wurm.
Katharine Holbiger using Stephen Wurm's records in the ANU Archives reading room. (Photo by Karina Taylor)

In 2007 The Australian Agrivcultural Company gave the Noel butlin Archives
Centre funds to help digitise some of the comapny's historic maps and plans.
These includebuildings on properties at Windy, Corona and Warrah as well as the
Peel Estate and a map of the Port Stephens grant from 1829. You can see these and more in the ANU's digital repository at digitalcollections.anu.edu.au
.
Port Stephens Grant. Map to accompany Mr Armstrong's Reports of Jun-Jul 1828 and May 1829 (Noel Butlin Archives Centre)

UNESCO Australian Memory of the World Register inscription
Minute books of pre-Federation Australian trade unions held by the Noel Butlin
Archives Centre have been inscribed on the UNESCO Australian Memory of the
World Register, in a joint nomination with 11 other institutions: Broken Hill City
Library, James Cook University, National Library of Australia, State Library of
New South Wales, State Library of South Australia, State Library of Victoria,
State Library of Western Australia, University of Melbourne Archives, University of Newcastle, University of Queensland and University of Wollongong.
We hold 211 of the 317 extant minute books, and the earliest minute book which dates from 1848, when typographers employed by the Sydney Herald formed a union. We also hold the first minute book of the Sydney Branch of the
Amalgamated Society of Engineers which was formed on board the Frances
Walker in 1852 as 26 members of the British union emigrated to Australia. The minute book of the Melbourne Lodge of the Operative Stonemasons’ Society records the strike in April 1856 which started the 8-hour day campaign.
Other minute books relate to trades which are no longer common today, such as coopers, lumpers, glass-bottle makers, shipwrights, felt hatters and tailoresses.
The trade union activities of three future Prime Ministers are documented: Chris
Watson, Joseph Cook and Billy Hughes.
This is the second successful nomination for the Noel Butlin Archives Centre: in
2003, the records of the Australian Agricultural Company (which date from 1824) were included on the Register. The Memory of the World website is at www.amw.org.au
.
Ray Edmondson (AMW Committee), Maggie Shapley (ANU University Archivist) and Richard Flanagan (Tasmanian author) at the inscription ceremony at the
State Library of Tasmania, 1 April 2011

Eric Fry Labour History Scholarship
Scott Stephenson is the recipient of this year’s Eric Fry Labour History
Scholarship, sponsored by the Canberra Region Branch of the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History and the National Institute for Social Sciences and
Law at the Australian National University.
Scott is an Honours student in History at the ANU and is undertaking research for his thesis on the relationship between the Australian Workers’ Union and Lang
Labor between the two world wars.
The scholarship honours the contribution of the late Dr Eric Fry to labour history as Senior Lecturer in History from 1959 and as Reader 1967-1986 at the ANU, and as a founder of the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History in
1961.
Scott Stephenson working his way through ‘The Australian Worker’, the newspaper of the Australian Workers’ Union, in the Archives reading room
Launch of ‘Prime Ministers at the Australian National University’
The ANU Chancellor, Professor Gareth Evans, launched Prime Ministers at the
Australian National University: An Archival Guide at the Archives on 26 May.
Lord Bruce, a former prime minister, was our first Chancellor so Professor Evans is not only his successor but was a minister in the Hawke and Keating governments.
The book by Michael Piggott and Maggie Shapley challenges the assumption, by many historians and biographers, that records about prime ministers are only held by the National Library, the National Archives and by prime ministerial libraries.
Although prime ministers are not mentioned in our collecting policy and we only began collecting archives in the Menzies era, the ANU Archives holds records about all 27 prime ministers. Trade union records capture the careers of prime ministers such as Chris Watson, Billy Hughes, John Curtin, Ben Chifley and Bob
Hawke, and campaigns against others such as Robert Menzies, Malcolm Fraser and John Howard. University archives record the frequent visits of prime

ministers to open buildings and deliver addresses, and the careers of Bob Hawke and Kevin Rudd as students and Gough Whitlam as a National Fellow.
The book has been published by the ANU E Press as an E View title, and is available online or can be purchased at eview.anu.edu.au
.
Chancellor Gareth Evans launches the book which highlights records about prime ministers held by the ANU Archives
More photographs online
Archives staff have been adding more digital images of photographs to the
ANU’s digital repository at digitalcollections.anu.edu.au
. There are now over
1200 images from the Noel Butlin Archives Centre collection depicting Tooth and
Company hotels, CSR Limited’s activities in Fiji and at Pyrmont, and activities of the Waterside Workers Federation and other unions. New additions include watercolours by John Charles Goodchild of Elder Smith Goldsbrough Mort buildings, maps of Australian Agricultural Company properties and photographs of prime ministers.
Watercolour of Elder House, Grenfell Street, Adelaide by J C Goodchild - just one of the many images added to our digital collections

25 years’ service in the Archives
Archivist Dr Pennie Pemberton was presented a 25-year service medal by Vic
Elliott, Director, Scholarly Information Services, at a gathering of staff and colleagues early this month.
Pennie first joined the ANU Archives of Business and Labour in December 1967 as a vacation student ‘Archives Assistant’ until December 1968, when she left to work for Pilkington Brothers Limited in the United Kingdom. From November
1976 to April 1987 she was Deputy Archives Officer at the ANU Archives and then left to undertake research for her PhD ‘The London connection: the formation and early years of the Australian Agricultural Company’. She returned as an Archivist to the Noel Butlin Archives Centre in June 1998.
Colleagues at the gathering spoke of Pennie’s formidable memory, her generous capacity to teach and to learn, and her ability to draw on her deep knowledge about the Australian Agricultural Company. We also heard about her ingenious way of retrieving records of the Manchester Unity Independent Order of
Oddfellows: the records were stored in the ceiling space of a hall which was then renovated so that the only access was via a manhole in the ceiling. Pennie devised a system of loading records into a basket on a rope and lowering them through the manhole. Just one of many archival adventures in her 25 years!
Dr Pennie Pemberton receives her medal from Vic Elliott, Director, Scholarly
Information Services

We’re on Facebook
The Australian National University Archives now has a Facebook presence, though some of us are just now catching up with this phenomenon. Please visit us at http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Australian-National-University-
Archives/208400385847744 to see images like the archivist (c. 1966) working at his desk in the repository while guarding the archives.
This image appeared in the booklet ‘Business Records at the Australian National
University’ by Professor Noel Butlin, 2nd edition, published in 1966