ARTICLE

The Importance of Interdisciplinary Collaboration: Phyllis Mander-Jones, Australian-Pacific Historians, and the Australian Joint Copying Project, 1954–1966

Deborah Lee-Talbot^*

Centre for Contemporary Histories, Deakin University, Geelong, Australia

Abstract

This article discusses the development of a surrogate (copied) archival collection, the Australian Joint Copying Project (AJCP). In the 1950s and 1960s, the AJCP was created as a research collection after the Second World War, specifically for researchers in Australia, New Zealand Aotearoa, and the Pacific Islands. As a social historian, I identify and analyse the collaborative relationships between the AJCP curator, Phyllis Mander-Jones, and Australian-based Pacific historians, to show how historiographical changes influenced the curation of this collection. Focusing on the AJCP as a case study illustrates the fact that the formation of a global network of librarians, archivists, and historians made the AJCP possible. Understanding the formation of the AJCP is particularly prescient now as the collection has been digitised, and present-day archival theorists and researchers are increasingly focused on the best practices for record reclassification and contextualisation.

Keywords: Historians; Research collections; Surrogate collections; Social history; Library

 

 

The creation of the Australian Joint Copying Project (AJCP) on microfilm from 1948 to 1997 enabled the re-distribution of records to researchers based in Australia, the Pacific Islands, and New Zealand Aotearoa.¹ In 1948, AJCP Officers appointed by the Public Library of New South Wales (NSW) and the National Library of Australia (NLA) planned to gather and copy Australian government and colonial records created during the 19th and 20th centuries.² This became the Public Records Office of London Series (PRO-Series).³ To ensure that a comprehensive and far-ranging research collection was accessible to Australian researchers, AJCP Officers also copied manuscripts from libraries, galleries, museums, public organisations, and private collections across the British Isles; this the NLA named the Miscellaneous Series (M-Series).⁴ When the last microfilm reel was received in 1997, the AJCP contained 10,419 reels.⁵ In 2017, a modernisation fund supported the digitisation of the AJCP. This facilitated improved access for those with an internet connection, creating more than 8,000 digital pages.⁶ By 2020, the NLA had digitised ‘the world’s most extensive collaborative copying project’.⁷ In settler-colonial societies like Australia, New Zealand, America, and Canada, surrogate records like the AJCP were an important means for government, institution, community and, in some instances, personal records, to be distributed to audiences unimagined at the time of creation.

As an Australian-Pacific historian concerned with locating evidence of gendered and intercultural encounters in archives, I find surrogate archives (records that are copies of original manuscripts and other important documents) crucial to my professional conversations and research development. The position of being an Australian-based historian specialising in Pacific studies led me to engage extensively with the AJCP for a doctorate. My primary focus was examining the AJCP M-Series London Missionary Society (LMS) records.

As I worked on this collection of evangelical records, I became fascinated with the story behind this archive. The anthropologist Ann Laura Stoler demonstrated that a collection’s provenance records and metadata are used to give authority and efficiency in the archives, and can be used to examine a collection’s biography.⁸ This trend of collection curiosity was exhibited by another social historian, Alexandra Walsham, who, after examining the social history of an archive, asserted that ‘archival cultures are historically specific and contingent’.⁹ Likewise, this article reveals the biography of the archive to illuminate the relationships that made AJCP M-Series LMS possible. An analysis of documents and correspondence from librarian/archivist Phyllis Mander Jones and the Australian National University (ANU) Pacific Historians of the 1950s and 1960s offers a case study of a global network and collaboration between historians. librarians and archivists. This article supports previous studies that show archivists, record-keepers and librarians who selected records for preservation and access shaped the collection by making decisions about accession or deaccession of materials.¹⁰ Additionally, I show that, from the 1940s to the late 1960s, archivist/librarian Phyllis Mander-Jones supported the creation of surrogate records for Australian researchers, giving them access to unique research collections. Involved with the AJCP, Mander-Jones believed surrogate archival collections allowed Australians to ‘be adequately equipped to know our own history’.¹¹ Acknowledging Mander-Jones’s involvement with Pacific historians, such as Jim Davidson, Harry Maude and Dorothy Shineberg, reveals the importance of a reciprocal flow of information between historians, librarians, and archivists when building a collection. The collection was created when Pacific History emerged as a new and innovative discipline in Sydney and Canberra. Their involvement located records by evangelical Christians, such as John Williams and George Lawes, and women in the missions, like Jane Chalmers, for copying. I conclude that as a collection curator, Mander-Jones was subject to historiographical trends brought about by the specific demands made by Pacific Historians for records.

Why be attentive to the social history of a collection?

The relationships between historians and record-keeper are diverse. Canadian archival theorist Terry Cook conceptualised archivists as record gatekeepers with the institutional power to grant or deny historians access to a particular record.¹² Australian archivist Michael Pigott has demonstrated that the archivist–historian relationship ranges from being collaborative to being judgmental of one another’s protocols.¹³ As Walsham has stated, historians and archivists ‘operate as “co-creators” of meaning’.¹⁴ These diverse relationships have increased in complexity. Revered Emeritus Professor Jeannette Bastian, with Ben Alexander, has suggested contemporary scholars find themselves increasingly connected in a global society. A place where oral expressions have value, artificially created collections are emerging more often, and landscapes and cultural activities are incorporated into archival analysis.¹⁵ The professional tensions prompted by access requests and record knowledge between archivists and historians have increased in complexity as collections have diversified with the creation of copies.

Acknowledging interdisciplinary relationships illuminates a collection’s social, cultural and political value. Australian historian Melanie Oppenheimer has demonstrated in her discussion of the ‘historian activist’ that historians are inclined to follow potential leads of evidence from one archive site to another and are excellent informants regarding the contents, location, and condition of collections on a certain topic.¹⁶ However, without a network to discuss these connections, much of this information remains with historians. Historians Tiffany Shellam and Joanna Cruickshank’s assessment of the potential of interdisciplinary work around colonial archives shows that scholars tend to work in silos.¹⁷ The lack of connection between scholars in the archive and outside of it limits the development of records for use to only social categories identified at the time of preservation. A recent case-study analysis of decolonial archives and collaborative projects by scholars of indigenous community archives, Krista McCracken and Skylee-Storm Hogan-Stacey, demonstrates that supporting historian–archive relationships can have important social gains for marginalised communities, with official recognition of their important records, leading to acknowledgement of their pasts.¹⁸ Employing a reciprocal process for sharing collection knowledge provides historical information for the archivist to understand manuscripts beyond their original contexts.¹⁹ Knowledge sharing about surrogate records like the AJCP is crucial as copied or surrogate collections are often deposited in multiple sites or not in the custody of a particular archivist (or archive) who knows their origins.²⁰ With an understanding of the history of an archive, historians can be made aware of ethical issues and cultural knowledge that need to be considered before research occurs.

Surrogate collections are more than copies of records; they are unique collections with their own significant social and cultural histories.²¹ Understanding an archive’s social history provides a framework for addressing issues that arise from the past. These findings are relevant as present-day archival theorists and researchers consider the best practices for record recontextualisation, reclassification, repatriation and community custodianship.²²

Confronting such issues can be the difference between the continuation of harmful marginalising processes, the consequence of imperial or colonial preference in the archives, and the recognition of a complex past.²³ Researching the past of a surrogate archive is an additional step that can be difficult given the financial and time limitations. Yet it is a worthwhile endeavour as this process reveals surrogate collections’ social, cultural, and political histories.

The AJCP: A case study of collaborative networks and history–archive relations

To create the AJCP M-Series collection, a global network of librarians, archivists, and historians shared knowledge. Earlier surveys of overseas archives from the 19th century by Australian librarians such as James Bonwick and Ida Leeson, the latter on behalf of the Public Library of NSW in 1927, had revealed that a significant proportion of Australian relevant archives existed in Europe. Before the AJCP, the research collection that proved crucial to Australian researchers’ understanding of the Pacific was the Australiana and Pacific research collections curated by librarians at the Mitchell Library. This specialised branch of the Public Library of NSW was established in 1910 ‘to concentrate entirely on Australian content’.²⁴ Its remit was expanded in line with user demands during the second world war.

The invasive events of World War Two in the Pacific Islands prompted Australian researchers to redefine their understanding of the Pacific region. The strategic demands of the Second World War illuminated the fact that Australia needed improved access to information about other nearby Pacific Island societies and environments.²⁵ As a political and military force associated with the Allies, Australia was an entry point for imperial forces to access information about other cultures, geography, and politics in the Pacific region.²⁶ The Allies’ ambitions to understand the Pacific Islands’ geography and cultures were extensive. Australian libraries involved with the Allied Geographical Section (AGS), like the Mitchell Library, expanded their collections to reflect these research demands. Geoffrey Gray, Doug Munro and Christine Winter’s edited volume, Scholars at War: Australasian Social Scientists, 1939–1945, explains how anthropologists and others in the social sciences were directed to analyse life and societies on Pacific Islands. To create this collection, knowledge was shared across a transnational ‘network of scholars based in Britain, Australia, New Zealand and the United States’.²⁷ These demands for new knowledge merged with new technology and contemporary research practices.

This highly political environment provided Mander-Jones with her foundational training in modern librarianship. It was also a moment when the importance of holding Pacific records was indicated to Australian researchers and collecting institutions. In 1942, prompted by the requirements of war strategists, the Mitchell librarian, Ida Leeson, was asked by the AGS to provide ‘all essential facts regarding books, journals, maps, charts’ about the area then defined as Australasia.²⁸ There was a strong understanding of Australia belonging politically, socially, and geographically to ‘Australasia’.²⁹ While recognised now as a problematic concept for its reduction of a range of indigenous societies and communities, Australasia was an important contemporary political concept in the 20th century. Australasia referred to ‘the Australian mainland, New Zealand, Tasmania, Fiji and any other British Colonies or possession in Australasia (Papua, Solomon Islands, Cook Islands, Tonga)’.³⁰ The term Australasia was used to describe the network of nations and colonies between Malaysia, Australia, Polynesia, Melanesia, and Micronesia, now collectively known as Oceania. As a political concept, Australasia gave researchers a framework to locate Australian, New Zealand, and Pacific Islands content. Mander-Jones, supervised by Leeson, ‘dug up photos which showed the coastline, descriptions of islands, maps, charts, and books on every aspect of the Pacific’.³¹ Her training at the Mitchell involved locating and preserving Pacific records as much as Australian records. This merger of geographical places reinforced the idea that Australia was part of Australasia.

The expansion of Australian research collections benefited from training in new copying technologies. After seeing and learning of the devastation military action had on cultural heritage and records during World War Two, settler colonial states, like Australia, sought to procure copies of official and unofficial records preserved in Europe. The staff of the Commonwealth Library and the State NSW Library recognised that they shared the ambition to acquire Australian-centric manuscripts, they sought to produce a financially efficient microfilmed collection.³² Initially microfilmed collections were deemed as a solution to the increasing fragility of a record.³³ For librarians like Harold White, Australia’s national librarian, microfilms were a core technology by which Australian libraries could construct ‘active information systems’ – systems that could grow in response to user demands.³⁴ Microfilm, at this stage, had been used commercially for almost two decades, and it was refined to the point that ‘readable copies were produced from microfilm in exactly the same way as for standard photographs’.³⁵ White visited the Library of Congress in 1939 to understand the important process of copying records. There, he learned that ‘microphotography was the key to…building a comprehensive and specialised collection, overcoming its [the Library’s] problems of shelving space, and nationally coordinating the creation and exchange of bibliographic information’.³⁶ Microfilm was an important means of preserving and sharing the past for future researchers.³⁷ The AJCP Officers were trained in microfilm to copy images of records, artefacts, and ephemera.

From the 1940s to the late 1960s, Mander-Jones advocated that Australian researchers had access to unique archival research collections on microfilm. When the Second World War officially ended on 2 September 1945, Australia’s demands for historical records concerning the Pacific Islands did not cease. Soon after, Mander-Jones was appointed the Mitchell Librarian in 1946, Mander-Jones acquired the ‘responsibility for the administration of the [State] archives’.³⁸ She applied for a grant to attend the British Library, research their archival system, and bring some historical records back to Australia. Due to Australia’s political status as a settler nation, many manuscripts, maps, diaries, letters, and paintings relative to Australia’s history were situated in the imperial archives of Europe. Using the earlier surveys of Bonwich and Leeson, Mander-Jones identified records in the British Isles at official and private institutions and determined the magnitude of materials that needed to be copied and returned to Australia.³⁹ This journey was a turning point in Mander-Jones’s career as a librarian. Mander-Jones explained the Library ‘knew what I was interested in was archives and special library work’, but, as she soon found out, the [British] Council could not identify the location of ‘sources of Australian history’.⁴⁰ Mander-Jones realised that specialised librarians and archivists were needed to create the Australasian historical collections as intended by the NLA and NSW libraries.

This training trip proved a serendipitous training moment for Mander-Jones. A side trip to France ensured that Mander-Jones attended an archives conference where, in Paris, the British archivist Sir Hilary Jenkinson was ‘the star’ presenter.⁴¹ Jenkinson, a foundational scholar of modern archival theory, was a fierce advocate for librarians to act as archivists, while also being advocates for researchers’ needs.⁴² Based in the imperial space of the British Public Records Office, Jenkinson asserted the importance of establishing principled structured duties, archival authority, storage, and the ‘unbroken chain of custody’.⁴³ Today, his legacy is recognised as an earlier attempt to create a universal, Eurocentric system for record selection, preservation and agreed-upon codification systems.⁴⁴ This professional encounter ensured that Mander-Jones understood the importance of provenance and the value of specialised researchers when working on future collections, such as the AJCP M-Series.

As directed in Jenkinson’s A Manual of Archival Administration (1937), Mander-Jones provided the State and scholars with the required ordered and catalogued records.⁴⁵ Jenkinson’s approach, realised by a man embedded in the British PRO, was enacted differently in a settler colonial state like Australia. In England, records were created and retained in the nation of record creation. In Australia, reports, letters, and pamphlets were produced and sent outside of the site of creation for preservation in imperial archives or at least kept elsewhere in the British Empire. These well-travelled records needed to be retrieved if historians were to produce local histories. Unlike the British PRO situation, Australian records would have to be re-contextualised for Australian users, showing the unexpected addition in provenance.

As Mander-Jones supported Jenkinson’s advocacy for the continuous custody of records to ensure archival quality she also provided the means for scholars to draw on these records to produce Pacific-centric histories. If a document’s nature was ‘understood and proper custody proved’, she wrote, ‘the historical scholar can rely on his source with confidence and satisfaction’.⁴⁶ As archivist Verne Harris (2002) demonstrated in his discussion of race, power, and social life of public records, it is important to pay attention to such details. Changes in provenance can displace the initially decreed use of a record. As analysis of an imperial state’s record-keeping practices is illuminated, these records become an unexpected means to challenge the dominant social memory. Records collected in the imperial centre become evidence of how marginalised groups exhibited agency and interacted with dominant social and cultural forces.⁴⁷ Crucially, Mander-Jones came to assert that it was not the sole responsibility of the archivist or librarian to identify items for preservation. Mander-Jones explained it was ‘the original research of individual scholars that often gives the impetus to a comprehensive scheme and which must be done even when a general plan exists’.⁴⁸ This professional worldview meant that a network of scholars, including historians, had a particular role to play alongside Mander-Jones in acquiring materials to complete the AJCP M-Series.

This training led Mander-Jones to unofficially assume work on the AJCP in 1948. There were important post-war period communications between White, and C.A. Burmester, who was employed by the national library in London as an AJCP Officer. White wrote to Burmester in 1948 that ‘[i]n view of the disturbed state of Europe, there are urgent reasons for quickening the rate of copying’.⁴⁹ With the belief that the Australian and Pacific records held in Europe were under threat, Australian librarians supported using surrogate records to build unique collections for Australian researchers. It was not just the instance of one nation’s history being lost, but many, with the past of Australia and New Zealand intertwined with that of the Pacific Islands, and sharing history with the United Kingdom. A letter from Burmester to White, written on 26 November 1948, indicated that Mander-Jones was directly involved in the AJCP technical and logistical planning phase.⁵⁰ With additional financial support from the Carnegie Institute, Mander-Jones had extended her overseas trip to undertake archival training in America.⁵¹ In her words, what was planned to be a 3-month tour ‘stretched out a bit’.⁵² Then she visited various libraries and research spaces to learn about microfilm preservation. On 3 January 1949, Mander-Jones wrote to Burmester and White, informing them what machinery needed to be purchased by the national and NSW state libraries to ensure the AJCP was a success.⁵³ This input by Mander-Jones demonstrated not all AJCP decisions were made by those officially appointed to the project. The formation of a global communication network was critical to the success of the AJCP.

A return to the Mitchell Library in early 1951 saw Mander-Jones advocate publicly for the importance of surveying, preserving, and providing access to historical documentary evidence. There she worked to provide research-finding aids and catalogues to library patrons to dispel the notion that the ‘Mitchell Library [w]as a ‘jealously guarded treasure house where catalogues might not be consulted freely’.⁵⁴

A Royal Historical Australian Society event that dealt with constructing Australian archives required material from other nations as:

There will be parallel records…in England, of voyages of exploration in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, of contacts between Australia and the outside world, and of the development of trade, missionary enterprise and scientific investigation.⁵⁵

Mander-Jones, likely drawing on Leeson’s survey and her own research in the British Isles, explained that these records ‘should be found in Spain, Portugal, France, England, Holland and their dependencies’.⁵⁶ She asserted to her audience that the importance of a surrogate collection like the AJCP was ‘obvious’.⁵⁷ Aware of the magnitude of what she was proposing, she told her audience, ‘[w]e are at the beginning of a long road if we are to be adequately equipped to know our own history’.⁵⁸

Mander-Jones continued the argument for an Australian-specific collection in a three-part series about ‘the Sources of Australian History’ for the Wellington Times (Sydney, NSW).⁵⁹ Here, her awareness of the importance of place in relation to historical records for historians is apparent. Mander-Jones emphasised in these articles that there needed to be diversity in primary sources acquired for historians, with the acquisition of pictures, maps, books, newspapers, printed leaflets, advertisements, catalogues, and manuscripts.⁶⁰ In 1955, she advocated for records from Australia’s early days to be stored in a library ‘where they can add to the story of our national life’.⁶¹ The issue was how to define the national agenda for archival acquisitions.

Once Mander-Jones was officially appointed as the London-based AJCP Project Officer in 1960, she set strict research boundaries for this transnationally run research and administrative team. In her role, she received instructions from Sydney and Canberra libraries about what content to collect for Australian users and, in turn, guided AJCP research staff to locate ‘letters of interest from a policy, scientific or historical point of view’.⁶² Such content was to be ‘filmed unless obvious duplicates or copies of originals existed in Australian libraries’.⁶³ Occasionally items were not pursued due to access rejections by owners (often family members) or 50-year exclusions for personal letters.⁶⁴ In a confidential letter from Mr H.L. White on 10 November 1960 titled ‘Miss Mander Jones’s Responsibility’, it was explained that:

Miss Mander-Jones’s responsibility is to make a number of surveys of records not yet microfilmed to indicate the quality and, so far as it is possible, such practical and other considerations as affect the order in the copying programme.⁶⁵

The remit was an echo of her work with the AGS. The AJCP gathered records from ‘Australasia, the South Pacific Ocean, Eastern Indian Ocean, Antarctica, Indonesia, Borneo, Philippines and Malaya [sic] from the earliest times’.⁶⁶ White explained that officers could adapt the project as they determined. Therefore, the AJCP officers had the autonomy to decide what to copy, without confirmation needed from Canberra or Sydney. They were to keep in mind, however, if it was determined by the Officer, there were records that:

[C]onstitute the general background of colonial administration or of relationship between the United Kingdom and the colonies or dominions, then the copying of the whole series is considered to be more useful than the listing and copying of Australian papers [alone].⁶⁷

The AJCP gave a preferential voice to the more authoritative figures and groups in a collection.⁶⁸ This provided evidence of provenance and, thereby authority to the copied project. Combined with the other Jenksonian practice of serving the State or researchers, Mander-Jones was trained to expand the project’s remit. This meant including voices that may challenge the dominate imperial history narratives that were so popular at the time.

The LMS records and Pacific Historians

Mander-Jones’s professional training, and the directives she received as an AJCP Officer influenced the creation of a unique, Australasian-centric LMS collection within the AJCP M-Series. This framework includes records from the LMS archive that were created by missionaries, teachers, and supporters during the 18–20th centuries. The 118 microfilm reels of LMS records copied for the AJCP make it the most extensive collection in the AJCP M-Series. As a non-government collection, the LMS collection is a mixture of institutional and private papers. The content record AJCP researchers preserved records concerning the activities of LMS members and associates in the Pacific Islands from 1796 to 1906. This timeframe was chosen as it adhered to contemporary copyright legislation in the United Kingdom.

The creation of the AJCP M-Series LMS collation resulted from merging research trip notes and direct collection experiences from 1927 and into the 1960s. During a survey trip in April 1948, Burmester visited the LMS archive at Livingstone House, London. There, he assessed the holdings for possible processing. A year later, Mander-Jones created and then provided an LMS survey list to Australia’s national library. She suggested that the LMS manuscripts be copied from British archives. When she wrote to Burmester in June of 1949, Mander-Jones echoed White’s directive. She asserted that to successfully copy the LMS records for Australian researchers, AJCP Officers must copy Australian and Pacific materials.⁶⁹ Referring to the 1927 archival survey undertaken by Leeson in her letter, Mander-Jones told Burmester and White that they should plan for the AJCP to go beyond the original survey by Leeson and ‘all [records available] should be copied’.⁷⁰ Her letter indicated she applied the concept of Australasia as a defining framework to the AJCP. Mander-Jones wrote, ‘I think it is a good idea to carry on with the London Missionary Society Papers’ and the New Zealand content in the British archives should also be copied as the expense could be justified due to ‘the great values of it to students in Australia’.⁷¹ In October 1953, K. Bernie, the second AJCP Officer appointed to the London office, continued the survey work started by Leeson, Burmester, and Mander-Jones. He held formal discussions with the LMS Board of Directors and the librarian archivist, Irene Fletcher, to start the filming of Australasian materials.⁷²

Knowledge of the AJCP LMS collection survey spread amongst the Australian researcher grapevine. The lack of content concerning the Australasian past led researchers concerned with the Pacific, such as historians Jim Davidson and Harry Maude, to rely on copied records more than Australian-focused others.⁷³ The creation of the Research School of Pacific Studies (RSPS) at the Australian National University 1948 was a means for researchers to continue learning and promoting the Pacific after the war. The RSPS intended to address Australian foreign policy issues.⁷⁴ Almost a decade later, Davidson shared a vision for Pacific-centric history at ANU in his 1954 inaugural lecture. Davidson urged the emerging class of Pacific historians to prefer indigenous voices and scholarship and frame their scholarship through an island-centric approach. As ANU was not in the habit of acquiring ‘microcopies [sic] of large manuscript collections’ directly, the AJCP became a means for the Pacific history records to be preserved and accessible for researchers.⁷⁵

The first run of LMS microfilm occurred the year after Davidson gave a lecture about the new directions taken by Pacific History in 1955. Davidson and Maude were determined to find and curate Pacific historical records.⁷⁶ Davidson’s lecture offered a geographical scope for the AJCP surveys and microfilming, including the Pacific Islands with the potential to expand into East Asia.⁷⁷ In her general report for 1961–1962, AJCP, Mander-Jones explained that this scope was formalised in a new agreement made in 1958.⁷⁸ This agreement expanded the project’s scope and alluded to the ideas shared by Davidson in the inaugural Pacific History lecture.⁷⁹ Then, Davidson addressed the problematic issue of historical records. He asserted the poor condition of Pacific records on the islands, the lack with records being kept in the metropole combined with poor record keeping, was:

[N]ow beginning to worry governments as well as historians: and the time seems propitious for a combined attempt by all who are interested, from the point of view of either administration or research, to put records in the islands into proper order before further losses occur.⁸⁰

It was this new disciplinary focus and intention that ensured that Pacific historians became activists in the archive. They frequently reminded White and Mander-Jones of the extensive Pacific records in the archives of the missionary societies that would be suitable for copying.⁸¹ Consequently, shifts in Australian historiography began to influence the AJCP scope of acquisition.

This advocacy for expansion into the retention of Pacific records was supported by the AJCP executive. White explained to ANU staff in a memo, by AJCP Officers ‘[h]aving now practically completed the Public Record Office series relating to Australia, New Zealand and the Western Pacific, the project is at a stage which should permit its extension into other areas’.⁸² The changing remit of the AJCP from Australasian content to targeting Pacific Island-specific material indicated Australia’s complex position in the world, a former colony and imperial power associated with Britain and geographically positioned in Oceania, with Pacific and Asian neighbours.

In 1957, the first round of LMS reels was sent to Canberra. Since the LMS records were of widespread interest to Australian and New Zealand libraries, the Alexander Turnbull Library and the Victorian and Queensland State Libraries also obtained the complete set of 118 reels of LMS microfilmed positives.⁸³ The LMS merger with the Commonwealth Missionary Society (CMS) in 1966 saw these transnational historical records transferred from Livingstone House to the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London.

The second run of LMS AJCP material was created in 1966. This recording mainly captured administrative records unavailable in the first filming period, such as communications between Australian and New Zealand LMS administrators.⁸⁴ The Directors of the LMS then granted permission to microfilm Board and Committee Minutes up to 1918. The AJCP Officer at that time, F.W. Torrington, wrote to the LMS archivist and librarian, Fletcher, on 4 August 1965. He requested access on behalf of the AJCP:

[A]s complete a record as possible of the work of the London Missionary Society in the Pacific Ocean and Indonesian area. We feel this record would not be complete without a copy of the Minutes of the meetings of the Directors of the Society, 1795–1918, and the Minutes of the appropriate regional Committee up to 1918. As the Methodist Missionary Society and the Church Missionary Society have given us permission to copy their Minutes, we feel it would be a pity not to have a similar coverage of London Missionary Society documents…We believe these records will provide valuable source material for scholars in Australia, New Zealand and the United States.⁸⁵

As noted by Torrington, the AJCP was a collection for researchers concerned with the Pacific and instances of imperialism outside of Australia.

Some aspects of the LMS archive were excluded from the copying process based on the judgements of Australian-trained researchers. Written content in Pacific languages was more likely to be excluded from copying than written in English. A memo, undated, but from its position in the archive appearing to be from around October 1965, noted that excluded from the copying process were ‘very rough notes on Pacific languages, some copied from printed books (1 folder). Sermons and talks confined to religion (the pile measure 1 foot in height)’.⁸⁶ The items filmed were records that ‘describe missions or areas visited or which give opinions such as the role of missionaries in native society’.⁸⁷ As an informal report and update, these items were difficult to categorise in European knowledge systems, as rough notes often appeared in Pacific languages. They were consequently excluded from the copying process. It is important to note that across these various memos, letters, and indexes, also excluded from the LMS copying process, was the input of the indigenous intellectual owners related to this material. The exclusion of Pacific Islanders from processing this material was indicative of the Eurocentric copying processes at the time. The AJCP M-Series LMS collection was curated from the interests of researchers in settler-colonial societies as they grappled with the idea of what constitutes sources for Pacific History.

From the early 1960s, Mander-Jones worked directly with the Pacific History department at ANU to create an inclusive, accessible, relevant AJCP LMS collection. In 1962, Mander-Jones was, as an AJCP Officer, an official representative of the National Library and the Public Library of the NSW. These organisations ‘co-operate[d] with other authorities in Australia, especially with the Australian National University’.⁸⁸ With the shared knowledge of historians and other professionals, it is evident that the historian–archive relationship significantly contributed to the collection and return of Australian-Pacific records to their place of creation, if not their communities.

To ensure the AJCP gathered relevant manuscripts for Australian researchers, Mander-Jones used a ‘grapevine’ approach in her AJCP surveys. In her efforts to access content across England, Mander-Jones established connections with ‘book-sellers who specialised in Australiana and by the librarians and other custodians of the major libraries and museums which had important collections relating to Australia and the Pacific’.⁸⁹ She also corresponded with Australian-based Pacific historians from the NSW Government Offices in London. Mander-Jones, at every opportunity, supported the AJCP as a collaborative endeavour with researchers.

Demonstrating that the AJCP was an active information system, a characteristic of modern libraries, more LMS reels were created and added to the AJCP in 1966. The historian Maude bypassed White and corresponded directly with Mander-Jones about records that needed to be made accessible in Australia. Maude became a staff member at ANU in 1957. As a former colonial administrator trained in anthropology, Maude came from a tradition of colonial service.⁹⁰ As a ‘Pacific bibliophile and documentation expert’, Maude was heavily invested in gaining documentary evidence for Pacific scholars to access.⁹¹ His expertise and passion for Pacific sources were evident as ‘his mornings were frequently taken up in giving audiences to the numerous people who came to him for bibliographical advice or Islands information’.⁹² Maude’s philosophy was like Davidson’s – Pacific historians were to foster indigenous voices and scholarship by taking an island-centric approach. Maude suggested where records for the AJCP M-Series were to be located. This was a crucial moment in the collecting process, where historians’ knowledge of dispersed records made it possible to create a valuable surrogate research collection.

Mander-Jones relied on people like Maude, with experience in colonial institutions in the Pacific, to tap into an international knowledge network that could locate historical documents for the AJCP. Australian archivists Monica Wehner and Ewan Maidment explain that ‘[t]he detail and contents of individual documents are usually of secondary interest to archivists’.⁹³ Communication with others who knew these collections was key to identifying the best records for copying. In a letter to Professor Robert W. Heussler of Nuffield College, Oxford, in 1962, Maude questioned the retention of original Pacific manuscripts in London. He indicated the records should be retained elsewhere as ‘Britain takes a small and steadily decreasing interest in the Pacific Islands’.⁹⁴ Letters from Maude to Mander-Jones demonstrate his appreciation of her AJCP work. These letters, spanning two decades into the 1980s, highlighted the ongoing and crucial connections between the ANU and the NLA – a factor that influenced the project’s growth.

Dorothy Shineberg, a former student of Maude’s and Pacific historian, also corresponded with Mander-Jones at this time. Shineberg defined, through her research and teaching, the parameters of Pacific history in the 1960s. Amongst numerous folders of thermal paper and photograph copies of Pacific archival material from imperial archives at ANU archives are Shineberg’s course notes and teaching cards. On an undated card, likely written after 1964 (as she was appointed as a Research Fellow in the Department of Pacific History at ANU), Shineberg noted a lesson regarding ‘What is island-centric history?’ In blue pen, half the card is covered in her clear handwriting. She tells the reader, ‘Don’t find it odd [here queer was written, then scribbled out by Shineberg] that Europeans are studying the Pacific history, because at the moment they accidentally happen to be well placed in a physical sense to do so, & therefore they should do it as well as they can to be of use to Pacific islanders to join in the business’.⁹⁵ Possibly written for her students, the question prompted the reader, or listener, to think about who produced Pacific history, who had access to records, and the effect of the emerging sub-discipline on Australian worldviews.

Using the AJCP, Shineberg produced Pacific histories. In 1965 Mander-Jones wrote to Shineberg, responding to her request for information about Captain Thomas Beckford Simpson and Captain Edward Woodin, general traders in the Southwest Pacific.⁹⁶ This information would significantly inform Shineberg’s book, They Came for Sandalwood: A Study of the Sandalwood Trade in the South-West Pacific 1830–1865. According to Maude, Shineberg ‘demolishes the time-hallowed view effectively that the sandalwood trade was in the main predatory – many have suspected that this missionary-fostered theory would not bear too close an examination’.⁹⁷ In 1967, Shineberg corresponded with Mander-Jones about Noumea consular records and provided record details from the Foreign Office, which Shineberg provided to Maude.⁹⁸ As much as Mander-Jones was pushing manuscript information out to scholars, they were pushing manuscript information towards her. In the scope of a larger, Australasian project of the AJCP, Mander-Jones was unable to meet the growing and significant demands of the Pacific historians. A year after Harry Maude penned his arguments for improved access to Pacific Island records in the report ‘The Documentary Basis for Pacific Studies: A Report on Progress and Desiderata (1967), the Pacific Manuscripts Bureau (PMB) was established.⁹⁹ Unlike the AJCP, which concentrated on imperial collections, PMB preserves archives, manuscripts, and rare materials in the Pacific Islands that are at risk of loss or destruction.¹⁰⁰

Shineberg’s requests for LMS material from Europe were echoed by other Pacific historians. The letters and papers of missionaries like George were requested from ANU Pacific School. Mission historian Niel Gunson flagged ‘two categories of material, ‘South Sea Odds’ and ‘Deputation Papers’ as required evidence for Messengers of Grace: Evangelical Missionaries in the South Seas 1797–1860.¹⁰¹ By 1966 historians and early career researchers associated with Maude, such as Patricia Pendergast, wrote to Mander-Jones, and requested the ‘personal letters of some of the early London Missionary Society missionaries, e.g., Lawes, Chalmers…or letters written by their wives’.¹⁰² The result was a collection that targeted records that contained marginalised voices. In 1967 Maude released the impressive The Documentary Basis for Pacific Studies, a survey of Pacific documents in Europe. This paper advocated for the acquisition of island materials not due to military or political ambitions but for the ‘advancement of knowledge’.¹⁰³ Pacific historians’ requests from this period indicate the rapid growth of this sub-discipline and the range of Australasian materials held outside of the region. This approach excluded Australia and New Zealand and supported the study of the Pacific Islands’ particular ‘multi-cultural situations, involving both the Islanders and settlers’.¹⁰⁴ The scope of the AJCP broadened to incorporate ‘the extensive files of the missionary societies, which were predominantly concerned with New Zealand and the Pacific Islands’.¹⁰⁵ Mander-Jones credited Maude with providing ‘copies of lists of value to the Australian Joint Copying Project’.¹⁰⁶ Eventually, the AJCP influenced histories such as Murray Groves’ book, The Motu of Papua: Tradition in a Time of Change, and Patricia Clarke’s Lifelines project.¹⁰⁷ While Jane Samson utilised LMS records on-site at SOAS for Imperial Benevolence: Making British Authority in the Pacific Islands, she accessed the relationships and networks of the AJCP community to access additional historical documents. The diverse analytical focus of Pacific historians broadened, encouraged, partly, by LMS materials being ‘made more widely available on microfilm through the Australian Joint Copying Project’.¹⁰⁸ In 1966, Maude and Davidson established the Journal of Pacific History.¹⁰⁹ This provided another avenue for publication and a professional identity formation for Australian historians fascinated with the Pacific region.¹¹⁰

Conclusion

This paper has shown the workings and outcomes of the relationship between historians and archivists. The reciprocal relationships that transferred information between Pacific historians and Mander-Jones amounted to a co-curation of the AJCP M-Series collection in the 1950s and 1960s. Giving attention to the relationship between Mander-Jones and Pacific Historians highlights how changes in historiography affect the desired scope of a surrogate collection and its use.

Historian–archive relations in the 1950s and 1960s re-framed imperial archives for use in Australasia and Pacific Island-centric history by describing the surveying and copying of primary sources for the AJCP. The LMS reels were created in the context of the 1950s and 1960s regional political ambitions. They were also created as new social histories – histories focused on indigenous people and women’s experiences – broadened researchers’ understandings of what records were worth preserving in an archive. The AJCP M-Series LMS records were thus acquired for Australian researchers and curated in association with the interests of ANU Pacific School researchers. There is an evident impact of a particular historiography and social and cultural era in the AJCP M-M-Series LMS material in particular.

Alongside Pacific historians, Mander-Jones alternatively accepted and contested Australia’s European historical records for preservation. The call by Davidson and other Pacific historians at the ANU School for new, island-centric histories enabled these European records to be reinterpreted and framed in a manner other than the Australasian knowledge networks preferred by the libraries. Mander-Jones library training guided an interdisciplinary and transnational network of scholars to assemble the AJCP M-Series LMS collection. Acknowledging Mander-Jones’s involvement with Pacific historians, such as Maude and Shineberg, revealed a reciprocal flow of information between historians and archivists.

With the creation of the AJCP M-Series LMS records, Pacific historiography had sources for research, expanding output concerning trade, mission, and indigenous histories. Maude later recognised this by writing to Mander-Jones that a debt was owed to her ‘by Pacific historians in particular’.¹¹¹ These copies supported ethnohistories that presented a more nuanced, Pacific-centric understanding of the past. The lack of Pacific Islanders involved in this step towards democratising history was unexplored by both groups and indicative of their eras’ politics and social mores. Paying attention to researchers’ intended use of the newly digitised AJCP records will facilitate a new generation of reciprocal relationships and collection improvements.

Acknowledgments

The doctoral research project Kaleidoscopic archives: a history about London Missionary Society records, 1813–2022 (Lee-Talbot 2023) was supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship and a NLA Summer Scholarship (2022). Further research was possible with a State Library of NSW, CH Currey Memorial Fellowship (2023). The mentors, Associate Professor Helen Gardner and Professor Tiffany Shellam, who continued to support the development of this research are also thanked. Hon. Professor Bronwen Douglas is also thanked for offering access to the personal records of Dorothy Sheinberg. The anonymous reviewers are also thanked for their careful reading and valuable feedback.

Note on contributor

Dr. Deborah Lee-Talbot is a historian who lives on unceded Wurundjeri Country and specialises in Pacific histories. Dr. Lee-Talbot’s research interests lead her to consider issues concerning archives, ethical research practices, gendered histories, and the social and cultural value of maps. She has contributed to publications such as History Today, the Journal of Pacific History, and Australian Policy and History. Active in the academic and professional history communities, she is affiliated with the Contemporary Histories Research Group, Deakin University, Australia.

ORCID

Deborah Lee-Talbot

Notes

1.	The original London Missionary Society records remained at Livingstone House until 1973. After that the collection was placed on indefinite loan to the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS).
2.	Ekarestini O’Brien (ed.), Australian Joint Copying Project: Handbook 8 Miscellaneous Series, 3rd edn., National Library of Australia, Canberra.
3.	National Library of Australia, History of the AJCP, National Library of Australia, Canberra, available at https://www.nla.gov.au/using-library/research-tools-and-resources/australian-joint-copying-project/history-ajcp, accessed March 2019.
4.	National Library of Australia, Corporate, In-House Records, Australian Joint Copying Project, M-Series, no series number.
5.	National Library of Australia.
6.	National Library of Australia, ‘Australian Joint Copying Project Reimagined’, National Library of Australia, available at https://www.nla.gov.au/stories/blog/australian-joint-copying-project-reimagined, accessed July 2021.
7.	National Library of Australia, ‘Australian Joint Copying Project’, National Library of Australia, available at https://www.nla.gov.au/using-library/research-tools-and-resources/australian-joint-copying-project, accessed March 2019.
8.	A Stoler, Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 2009, p. 1.
9.	A Walsham, ‘The Social History of the Archive: Record-Keeping in Early Modern Europe’, Past and Present, vol. 230, no. 11, 2016, p. 9.
10.	JA Bastian, ‘Reading Colonial Records Through an Archival Lens: The Provenance of Place, Space and Creation’, Archival Science, vol. 6, 2006, pp. 267–84; T Shellam, Meeting the Waylo, University of Western Australia Press, Crawley, 2019, p. 80; Stoler, p. 47.
11.	M Jacobs, ‘This Noble Task: The Achievement of Phyllis Mander-Jones. Knowing Our Own History’, Archive and Manuscripts, vol. 14, 1986, p. 26.
12.	T Cook, ‘The Archive(s) Is a Foreign Country: Historians, Archivists and the Changing Archival Landscape’, The American Archivist, vol. 74, Fall/Winter, 2011, p. 607.
13.	M Piggott, ‘Archivists and Historians’, Archives and Manuscripts, vol. 35, no. 1, 2007, p. 86.
14.	Walsham, p. 9.
15.	JA Bastian and B Alexander, ‘Introduction: Communities and Archives – A Symbiotic Relationship’, in JA Bastian & B Alexander (eds.), Community Archives: The Shaping of Memory, Facet Publishing, London, 2009, p. xxiii.
16.	M Oppenheimer, ‘The Historian Activist and the Gift to the Nation Project: Preserving the Records of the Red Cross’, Archives and Manuscripts, vol. 48, no. 2, 2020, pp. 171–85.
17.	Tiffany Shellam and Joanna Cruickshank, ‘Critical Archives: An Introduction’, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, vol. 20, no. 2, Summer 2019, p. 2.
18.	K McCracken and S-S Hogan-Stacey, Decolonial Archive Futures, American Library Association, Chicago, IL, 2023.
19.	A Pilger, ‘Archivists and Historians: The Balance Beam of Professional Identity’, Archives and Manuscripts, vol. 20, no. 2, pp. 227–36.
20.	The NLA records indicate Miscellaneous Series (Mseries) reels currently exist in the following locations: the University of Papua New Guinea Library, Central Archives of Fiji, Auckland Institute and Museum, Auckland Public Library, Fencibles Historical Society, Heath & Associates Ltd Library, National Archives of New Zealand, National Library of New Zealand, Alexander Turnbull Library, Nelson Provincial Museum, University of Auckland Library, University of Canterbury Library, University of Otago, Hocken Library, University of Waikato Library. Four Australasian research institutions hold complete sets – the University of Papua and New Guinea and the State Libraries of QLD, VIC and NSW. Partial sets of LMS material were sent to the University of Berkley (United States), Alexander Turnbull Library (Aotearoa/New Zealand) and the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa; National Library of Australia, Australian Joint Copying Project, National Library of Australia, n.d., available at https://www.nla.gov.au/research-guides/australian-joint-copying-project, accessed 24 November 2019; National Library of Australia, ‘AJCP Cooperation with University of Hawai’i-USA’, [manuscripts], 1956–1998, NLA Administration files, Canberra, 120/01/00020; National Library of Australia, ‘AJCP- London Missionary Records’, [manuscripts], 1953–1988, NLA Administration files, Canberra, 120/01/00014; National Library of Australia, ‘Office of the High Commissioner for Australia Australian Joint Copying Project London Missionary Society’, [manuscripts], Australian Joint Copying Project, Canberra, MS8983 Box 10.
21.	Stoler.
22.	BJ Barnes, ‘Becoming Our Own Storytellers: Tribal Nations Engaging with Academia’, in S Warren (ed.), The Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma: Resilience Through Adversity, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, OK, 2017, pp. 217–227; B Marsden, K Ellinghaus, C O’Neill, S Huebner, and L Ormond-Parker, ‘Wongatha Heritage Returned: The Digital Future and Community Ownership of Schoolwork from the Mount Margaret Mission School, 1930s–1940s’, Preservation, Digital Technology & Culture, vol. 50, nos. 3–4, 2021, pp. 105–115; McCracken and Hogan-Stacey; K Thorpe and M Galassi, ‘Rediscovering Indigenous Languages: The Role and Impact of Libraries and Archives in Cultural Revitalisation’, Australian Academic and Research Libraries vol. 45, no. 2, 2014, pp. 81–100; T Shellam, ‘The Collective Nyungar Heritage of an “Orphan Letter”’, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, vol. 20, no. 2, 2019, pp. 1–22, Project MUSE.
23.	Ziino and Condé, p. 101.
24.	State Library of New South Wales, ‘History of the Library: The Naming of the Library’, para. 1, available at https://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/about-library/history-library, accessed 18 August 2022.
25.	C Bryan, ‘From the Archives: Pacific Research Archives’, Journal of Pacific History, vol. 51, 2016, pp. 409–46.
26.	National Library Inquiry Committee, Report of the National Library Inquiry Committee 1956–57 Together With Appendices, Commonwealth Government Printer, Canberra, 1957.
27.	G Gray, D Munro, and C Winter (eds.), Scholars at War: Australasian Social Scientists, ANU E Press, Canberra, 2012, p. 14.
28.	S Martin, Ida Leeson: A Life, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, NSW, 2006, p. 141.
29.	FHH Guillemard, Australasia, Vol. II Mayaysia and the Pacific Archipelagoes, Edward Stanford, London, 1908; A Johnston, Handy Royal Atlas of Modern Geography, W. & A.K. Johnston, Edinburg and London, 1890; FL Mortimer, Far Off: Part II, Oceania, Africa, and America Described, with Anecdotes and Illustrations, Longmans, Green and Co., London, 1893.
30.	D Denoon, ‘Re-Membering Australasia’, Australian Historical Studies, vol. 34, 2003, p. 293.
31.	E Barcs, ‘She Guards Our Storeroom of History’, Daily Telegraph, Sydney, 26 September 1953, para. 20–23, avaliable at nla.gov.au/nla.news-article248759098, accessed 16 April 2021.
32.	G Powell, ‘The Operation of the Australian Joint Copying Project’, Archives and Manuscripts, vol. 4, no. 7, 1972, pp. 4–16.
33.	N Zemon Davis, ‘Foreword’, in A Farge (ed.), The Allure of the Archives, trans. T Scott-Railton, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1989, p. xv.
34.	K Canepi et al., ‘Managing Microforms in the Digital Age’, American Library Association, 2013, paragraph four, available at https://www.ala.org/alcts/resources/collect/serials/microforms, accessed 28 March 2024.
35.	I Batterham, The Office Copying Revolution: History, Identification and Preservation, National Archives of Australia, Canberra, 2008, p. 8.
36.	P Turnbull, ‘The Network and the Nation: The Development of National Biographical Resources’, in P Cochrane (ed.), Remarkable Occurrences The National Library of Australia’s First 100 Years 1901–2001, National Library of Australia, Canberra, 2001, p. 261.
37.	M Wehner and E Maidment, ‘Ancestral Voices: Aspects of Archives Administration in Oceania’, Archives and Manuscripts, vol. 26, no. 1, 1999, p. 27.
38.	M Jacobs, ‘“This Noble Task” The Achievement of Phyllis Mander-Jones. Knowing Our Own history’, Archives & Manuscripts, vol. 14, no. 1, 1986, p. 24.
39.	G Featherstone, Bonwick, James (1817–1906), Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, 1969, available at https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/bonwick-james-3022/text4429, accessed 23 March 2024; G Powell, pers. comm., email, 21 October 2020.
40.	B Berzins, ‘It’s Astounding What You Can Look Back On: An Interview with Phyllis Mander-Jones’, 1983, transcript, 12, State Library of New South Wales, MLMSS 6479.
41.	Ibid.
42.	M Piggott, ‘Alchemist Magpies? Collecting Archivists and their Critics’, Archives and Societal Provenance Australian Essays, 2012, pp. 217–234.
43.	T Eastwood, ‘Jenkinson’s Writings on Some Enduring Archival Themes’, The American Archivist, vol. 67, no. 1, 2004, p. 43; M Procter, ‘Life before Jenkinson- the Development of British Archival Theory and Thought at the Turn of the Twentieth Century’, Archives, vol. 33, 2008, p. 1.
44.	J Lowry, RL Kinsey, A Lusty, E Hyman, P Heitjan, A Rettie, and K Goetz, ‘No Manuals: Archives Administration 100 Years After Jenkinson’s Manual’, Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies, vol. 8, Article 17, 2021, p. 3.
45.	Lowry et al. p. 7; Piggott, p. 83.
46.	P Mander-Jones, ‘Sources of Australian History’, Wellington Times, Sydney, 12 November 1951, para. 4, avaliable at http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article137769454, accessed 11 July 2022.
47.	V Harris, ‘The Archival Sliver: Power, Memory, and Archives in South Africa’, Archival Science, vol. 2, 2002, pp. 63–86.
48.	Mander-Jones, para. 3.
49.	HL White, ‘Letter to C.A. Burmester’, 21 December 1948, National Library of Australia, MS 8983.
50.	CA Burmester, ‘Letter to H. L. White’, 26 November 1948, National Library of Australia, MS 8983, Box 1.
51.	‘Search for Papers of Navigators’, The Mercury, Hobart, (1949), 3, available at http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article26507747, accessed 20 September 2021.
52.	Berzins, p. 14.
53.	P Mander Jones, ‘Letter, C.A. Burmester’, 3 January 1949, National Library of Australia, MS 8983, Box 1.
54.	S Mourot, ‘“This Noble Task” The Achievement of Phyllis Mander-Jones. A Privilege and a Challenge’, Archives & Manuscripts, vol 14, no. 1, 1986, p. 19.
55.	P Mander-Jones, ‘Journal and Proceedings’, Royal Australian Historical Society, vol. 81, 1951, avalible at http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-604548193, accessed 1 April 2021.
56.	M Jacobs, ‘Knowing Our Own History: A Further Dimension’, Archives and Manuscripts, vol. 14, 1986, pp. 24–27.
57.	Mander-Jones, p. 90.
58.	Ibid.
59.	P Mander-Jones, ‘Sources of Australian History’, Wellington Times, Sydney, 5 November 1951, p. 6, available at http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article137765839, para. 1, accessed 1 April 2021.
60.	Ibid, para. 2; para. 7.
61.	P Mander-Jones, ‘Heard Over the Air’, ABC Weekly, 12 March 1955, para. 6, Australian Broadcasting Commission, paragraph six, Trove, available at http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-1623287690, accessed 1 April 2021.
62.	‘Papers of Phyllis Mander-Jones’, National Library of Australia, MS 5652, Box 30, 4/LMS/65 London Missionary Society.
63.	Ibid.
64.	Ibid.
65.	HL White, ‘Memo-Miss Mander Jones’s Responsibility’, 10 November 1960, National Library Australia, MS 8983; original underlined.
66.	‘Papers of Phyllis Mander-Jones’.
67.	White.
68.	S Hodge, S Nantel, and C Trainor, ‘Remnants of Jenkinson: Observations on Settler Archival Theory in Canadian Archival Appraisal Discourse’, Archives and Records, vol. 43, no. 2, 2022, p. 153.
69.	P Mander-Jones, ‘Letter to C.A. Burmester’, 29 June 1949, National Library of Australia, MS 8983, Box 1.
70.	Ibid.
71.	Mander-Jones, 3 January 1949.
72.	G Powell, pers. comm., email, 21 October 2020; Bernie’s first name was not used in the written record.
73.	Wehner and Maidment, pp. 26, 35.
74.	Wehner and Maidment, p. 28; R Firth, ‘The Founding of the Research School of Pacific Studies’, The Journal of Pacific History, vol. 31, no. 1, 1996, pp. 3–7, available at http://www.jstor.org/stable/25169281, accessed 18 June 2021.
75.	P Mander-Jones, ‘The Filming of German Foreign Office Records at Potsdam’, Australian National University Archive, ANUA345/86; The only variation to this rule was the Potsdam records from Germany. These records were acquired for Australian research libraries on microfilm by historian Marjorie Jacobs, Sydney University.
76.	D Denoon, ‘Pacific Island History at the Australian National University: The Place and the People’, The Journal of Pacific History, vol. 31, no. 2, 1996, p. 208.
77.	JW Davidson, ‘The Study of Pacific History: An Inaugural Lecture’, p. 9; HE Maude, ‘Pacific History- Past, Present and Future’, The Journal of Pacific History, vol. 6, no. 1, 1971, p. 13.
78.	P Mander-Jones, ‘Report: AJCP Copying of Miscellaneous Records’, 1958, National Library of Australia, Corporate Correspondence, 120/01/000267.
79.	Ibid.
80.	Davidson, p. 23.
81.	Powell, p. 14.
82.	HL White, ‘Letter to Sadka’, 26 May 1960, National Library of Australia, Corporate Correspondence, 120/01/00128, AJCP Copying of Malayan Records.
83.	G Powell, Origins of the Australian Joint Copying Project, Archives & Manuscripts, vol 14, no. 1, 1971, p. 14.
84.	‘Records of the London Missionary Society (as filmed by the AJCP), M1-M116, M608-M670’, 2017, National Library of Australia, avaliable at https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-1126174847/findingaid, accessed 28 October 2020.
85.	FW Torrington, ‘Letter to I. Fletcher’, 4 August 1965, National Library of Australia, MS8983, Box 10, Australian Joint Copying Project, London Missionary Society, no folder number as a corner of the folder is torn off].
86.	LMS Corporate Communications, ‘AJCP Copying of Miscellaneous items of Australia’, 1965, National Library of Australia, 120/01/00026.
87.	Ibid.
88.	P Mander-Jones, ‘Letter to J.R. Betts Esq.’, 16 April 1962, University of Adelaide Library, MSS0003, Part I, Series H, Section 5: Miss Phyllis Mander-Jones. 1962–1972.
89.	WD Thorn, ‘A Truly Professional Dedication’, Archive and Manuscripts, vol. 14, 1986, pp. 40–1.
90.	N Gunson, ‘Harry Maude: Unimane, Statesman and Pacific Historian’, Journal of Pacific History, vol. 42, 2007, p. 110.
91.	Bryan, pp. 409–46.
92.	Ibid.
93.	Wehner and Maidment, p. 26.
94.	R Heussler, ‘Letter H. Maude’, 2 July 1962, University of Adelaide Library, MSS0003, Part I, Series J, Section 27, Part II.
95.	D Shineberg, History Theory Outlines of Courses, Etc., Lecture Cards, Australian National University Archives, ANUA 484, Box 14, Item 151-179, SH185.
96.	P Mander-Jones, ‘Letter to Shineberg’, 9 April 1965, Australian National University Archives, ANUA 484.
97.	H Maude, ‘Letter to D. Shineberg’, 11 May 1964, Australian National University Archives, ANUA 484, Box 22, Shineberg papers.
98.	D Shineberg, ‘Letter to H. Maude’, 6 Feb 1967, Australian National University Archives, ANUA 484, Box 22, Shineberg papers; P Mander-Jones, ‘Letter to Maude’, 8 May 1967, Australian National University Archives, ANUA 484, Box 22, Shineberg papers.
99.	Wehner and Maidment, pp. 22–41.
100.	Pacific Manuscript Bureau, ‘About PMB’, Australian National University, available at https://pambu.anu.edu.au/, accessed 1 April 2024.
101.	HL White, ‘Letter to F.W. Torrington’, 16 October 1964, National Library of Australia, MS8983.
102.	Papers of Phyllis Mander Jones, Folder: 1D Organisation and Policy, National Library of Australia MS 5652, Box 27.
103.	HE Maude, The Documentary Basis for Pacific Studies, Australian National University Archives, ANUA345/86, 1967, pp. 2–3, 8.
104.	Davidson, p. 9; Maude, pp. 3–11.
105.	Powell, p. 7.
106.	‘Papers of Phyllis Mander-Jones’.
107.	P Clarke, ‘Life Lines: Nineteenth Century Women’s Letters and Diaries’, Voices: The Quarterly Journal of the National Library of Australia, vol. 7, 1997, pp. 57–66.
108.	D Munro and B Lal, ‘Introduction’, in D Munro and B Lal (eds.), Texts and Contexts: Reflections in Pacific Islands Historiography, University of Hawai’i Press, Honolulu, 2005, p. 7.
109.	Ibid., p. 2.
110.	Ibid.
111.	H Maude, ‘Letter to Phyllis Mander-Jones’, 14 August 1972, University of Adelaide Library, MSS0003, Part I, Series J, Section 27, Part II.