Archives & Manuscripts

Editorial

Angela Schilling — 2024-10-07

This issue concludes the 2023 publishing year, albeit published in 2024 due to the unpredictability of many elements that come together to make a society journal, including managing the time demands of authors and peer reviewers, Editor and production team changes and availability, and at times, the general pace of life in these current times which means over-commitments, juggling multiple hats and roles, and the nature of human life. Thanks to the move to a Society-based publishing model, however, we have been able to publish all the articles in this issue ‘online first’ as they are finalised, allowing authors to disseminate their findings and experiences as soon as possible. As always, online first articles are available from the Archives and Manuscripts website at publications.archivists.org.au

Temporalities and Values in an Epistemic Culture: Citizen Humanities, Local Knowledge, and AI-supported Transcription of Archives

Dick Kasperowski — 2024-02-08

An enormous amount of handwritten documents in archives can only be accessed by experts trained in reading older handwriting. Through artificial intelligence (AI)-supported technology, they can now be transcribed and made available for wider audiences. To produce transcriptions an AI needs training and a feasible way is to invite citizens to fulfil such tasks. To understand how an epistemic culture develops in such work, this study conducted interviews with participants on how they associate value, meaning and recognise themselves as active epistemic subjects in relation to the project. Despite that the formation of an epistemic culture are beyond the influence and control of project owners, findings show a strong relation between participants’ knowledge of local history, and personal and emotional ties to archival content, for achieving high quality in AI-transcriptions.

The New Protectionism: Risk Aversion and Access to Indigenous Heritage Records

Nick Thieberger — 2024-04-02

This article discusses the problems encountered in accessing archival Indigenous language records, both by Indigenous people looking for information on their own languages and by non-Indigenous researchers supporting language work. It is motivated by Indigenous people not being able to access materials in archives, libraries, and museums that they need for heritage reasons, for personal reasons, or for revitalisation of language or cultural performance. For some of the authors, the experience of using Nyingarn, which aims to make manuscript language material available for re-use today, has been dispiriting, with what we term the ‘new protectionism’ preventing use of these materials.

Anti-Racist Archival Description

Angela Schilling — 2024-10-07

For those whose stories are in the archives, accessing them can prompt many emotions and reactions. People accessing these records, and those processing and providing access to them, may be affected by their contents.

There are many things we can do as archivists and archival institutions to make this process easier, more accessible, and safer for those who experience direct or intergenerational trauma. The profession has access to a growing selection of tools to guide our protocols and practices, such as the Tandanya Declaration, the ATSILIRN protocols and UNDRIP, as well as case studies for high-level institutional changes and cultural shifts, though this process is arguably only at the beginning of its collective journey. However, there are often immediate and practical ways in which we can implement anti-racist archival practice, including the way we describe archival materials.

This paper will discuss practical ways in which archivists can actively undertake anti-racist description work, and why it is imperative that this work becomes a priority in our collection management work. It will draw on the comprehensive document Anti-Racist Description Resources, authored by the Archives for Black Lives in Philadelphia’s (A4BLiP) Anti-Racist Description Working Group, as well as other standards and sources.

Harnessing Social Media to Advocate for the University Archive

Laura Sizer — 2023-08-31

In 2022 the Monash University Archives began using social media to advocate for and promote ourselves and our collections. This paper reflects on the first twelve months of using social media, our experiences of setting up and maintaining our social media presence, the results we have seen and the lessons we have learnt. The key message conveyed in this paper is that if our small team can harness social media to advocate for and promote our university archive, then any archive of any size can do the same.

The Influence of Feminist Archival Theory on State Archival Exhibitions

Catherine Banks — 2024-02-14

It has been widely noted in academic scholarship that over the last few years there has been a significant shift within the heritage and cultural sector towards more inclusive and community focused practices. In particular, the transition towards community accountability and institutional participation in social justice has meant that state archives are currently more open to adopting feminist archival approaches than ever before. Through the examination of two case studies within an Australian context, this reflection will explore the ways in which feminist thought has begun to influence the curation of archival data in exhibitions by state-run archives.

School Archives and the Visibility of Heritage via #throwbackthursday

Julie Daly — 2024-10-02

The purpose of this reflection piece is to discuss the visibility of heritage and the use of #throwbackthursday for school archivists and their collections. Social media is a valuable space for school archivists to share the wonders found in their archival collections. It is a way to connect with and provide positive engagement for the wider school community, providing connectivity, creating a collective memory and sharing intergenerational stories. In addition, this reflection piece provides first-person insight into how school archivists engage in #throwbackthursday and why it is important to provide visibility for school archivists and their archival collections.

Correction

Nick Thieberger — 2024-10-07

N Thieberger, M Aird, C Bracknell, J Gibson, A Harris, M Langton, G Sculthorpe and J Simpson, ‘The New Protectionism: Risk Aversion and Access to Indigenous Heritage Records’, Archives & Manuscripts, vol. 51, no. 2, 2023, pp. 23–42. doi: 10.37683/asa.v51.10971.

The authors wish to correct a mistake in this article. The opening statement ‘[T]he task for linguists is to act as a channel to ensure that stolen knowledge and authority flow back to communities’ is incorrectly attributed to Lesley Woods, but she actually cites it from Eira’s¹ work. Later in the article a cross reference to that quote should similarly be attributed to Eira.