Archives & Manuscripts

Editorial

Jessie Lymn — 2024-11-29

This issue is the culmination of work across the profession and academia, under the leadership of our Special Issue Guest Editors Dr Mike Jones and Rachel Tropea. Mike and Rachel have worked with authors to produce this special issue over the past 18 months, and the outcome is a collection of papers, reflections and a significant conversation that document the current state of the ‘two sides of the same coin’ in archival research and practice, and looks to the future.

Special issues of Archives and Manuscripts play an important role in creating spaces for focussed discussion on contemporary topics, and for documenting the key issues for the society and profession at a moment in time. Past special issues reflect this temporality – in 2019 the special issue ‘After the Digital Revolution’ considered the challenges of the digital in literary archives, whereas 25 years earlier the journal published a special issue that considered the broader challenge of ‘Electronic recordkeeping: Issues and perspectives’ (1994). The nuanced focus in 2019 on digital literary archives was enabled by the previous decades worth of research and publishing in the field.

We are excited to have more special issues on the horizon, including a 2025 issue planned to document the outcomes of the Tandanya-Adelaide Declaration Symposium, held in Christchurch, Aotearoa in October 2024. We encourage academics and professionals to consider Archives and Manuscripts as a potential home for collaborative ideas and engagement through special issue proposals.

Angela Schilling
Dr Jessie Lymn
General Editors

Two Sides of the Same Coin? Exploring the Relationship Between Archival Research and Practice

Mike Jones — 2024-11-05

Research and Practice – A Conversation

Mike Jones — 2024-11-29

Since the mid-twentieth century, Australia has been widely recognised for innovative approaches to the practice and theory of archives and records, from the Australian Series System to the Records Continuum Model and beyond. But the relationship between archival work, records management, and contemporary theory and research is not always clear, nor is it unproblematic. Mike Jones and Rachel Tropea invited a group of colleagues to explore these ideas as part of a recorded conversation.

Designing Indigenous-Led Archival Futures: The Application of Indigenous Research Methodologies Within Archival Research and Practice

Kirsten Thorpe — 2024-11-29

This paper discusses the role and importance of Indigenous research methodologies in building spaces for Indigenous-led archival futures in Australia. It considers the development of professional statements of support for advancing First Nations engagement and Indigenous self-determination in the archives as an example of where Indigenous research methodologies and methods can increase Indigenous agency and decision-making in the archives. The research design, methodologies and methods, including Yarning, Indigenous Standpoint and Indigenous Storywork, utilised in the research project Unclasping the White Hand: Reclaiming and Refiguring the Archives to Support Indigenous Wellbeing and Sovereignty are discussed to highlight the importance of bridging gaps between research and practice. In doing this, it describes pathways for building respectful and ethical research in partnership with First Nations people in Australia. It contributes to dialogue on how these approaches can support the decolonisation of archival research, which in turn has the power to build transformations of practice to support First Nations archival priorities.

The Challenge of Actualising Research in Practice: Implementing the Charter of Lifelong Rights in Childhood Recordkeeping in Out of Home Care

Frank Golding — 2024-11-29

This paper addresses the challenges encountered when actualising research in practice, using the implementation of the Charter of Lifelong Rights in Childhood Recordkeeping in Out of Home Care as an illustrative example. We begin with overviews of the recordkeeping failures of the past and present, and the development of the Charter to address them. We imagine transformed recordkeeping and archiving systems engaging children, young people and Care leavers as creators and decision-makers about their records. We identify challenges and barriers to implementation and discuss the strategies designed to engage major stakeholders in implementing the Charter. The paper concludes by challenging recordkeeping regulators, recordkeeping and archival institutions, current records creators and holders, and the recordkeeping and archival profession to play their essential role in enabling the realisation of this goal and identify the broader relevance of reconceptualising person-centric recordkeeping.

Finding My Sparkle: When Recordkeeping Practitioner and Research Life Intertwine to Become One

Catherine Victoria Nicholls — 2024-11-05

This article discusses the interplay between recordkeeping research and practice through the author’s experiences as both a part time researcher and full-time practitioner. By drawing on narrative inquiry in the form of autoethnography, the author uses their current research project as a catalyst for exploring the relationship between practitioner life and research work. Their research project investigates how family recordkeeping can be utilised to provide an entry point into understanding recordkeeping concepts and practices in the workplace. The paper explores how the author’s research activities were initially considered secondary and separate from their practitioner life. As the project progressed, their practices helped to shape elements of the research design; and later, the research data played a key role in helping the author to frame the role of recordkeeping literacy in their work program. The author developed a new confidence as they used different analysis tools including scrapbooking and podcasting which in turn brought real enjoyment to the project, a joy that later spilled over and invigorated their practitioner life. Overall, it has become apparent to the author that a recordkeeping career does not need to be a binary proposition between academia or practitioner life.

Post-Custodialism, Distributed Custody, and Big Data

James Doig — 2024-11-29

This reflection piece describes the outcomes of a research project undertaken by the National Archives of Australia that aimed to gather information from other government archives and selected Australian government agencies about their approach to archiving and preserving large-big datasets in the government sector. Big data collections pose a challenge for government archives around the world. Many of these archives have a role in information management in their government domains and provide guidance and advice to their government agency clients on ensuring the integrity and trustworthiness of data over time. The article examines the nexus between theory and practice, exploring issues related to the post-custodial ideas developed by Terry Cook and others in the 1990s and their practical implementation.

Paper Elephants: Reflections on Changing Archival Practice at the Australian Museum

Vanessa Finney — 2024-11-29

The archives of Australia’s first museum, the Australian Museum (AM) in Sydney, are an artefact of colonialism, still intertwined with the complexities of science, public museums, and imperialism. It’s the elephant in the archival room. However, change has come to Australia’s colonial-era museums, affecting their missions, historical framing, and collections and archives. This article provides a brief history of knowledge at the AM in order to showcase some current initiatives aimed at opening its archival holdings to new perspectives, encounters, shared knowledge, and a protocols-based approach to access. Understanding the history of the museum and its archival structures and methods is vital for rethinking a more open, generous, and responsible future for this important collection.

Research, Access, and Digitisation: Reflections on Responsible Stewardship in the Online Era

Jessica Moran — 2024-11-29

This article reflects on the impact of digitisation programs for researcher access to archival materials. Using the author’s experience as both a researcher using digitised material and as a manager of archival programs, the article considers the opportunities and challenges of researcher demand for digital access and suggests the archival value of responsible stewardship is a useful concept when navigating access in the online era.

A Student’s Reflection on the Digital Heritage Lab

Bryony Cavallaro — 2024-12-02

This is a reflection on my professional placement at Swinburne University’s Digital Heritage Lab, exploring the role the lab plays in the preservation of Australian digital artefacts like computer software, video games and media artworks. As technology advances, the lab confronts the challenges posed by obsolete infrastructure, machine dependency, and the fleeting window of opportunity for preservation. The absence of standardised guidelines is addressed through collaborative efforts within the EaaSI (Emulation as a Service Infrastructure) network. My placement provided firsthand experience of the variety of challenges associated with digital preservation, emphasising the need for ongoing experimentation and perseverance in the face of failure. The experience gained from the placement underscores the importance of developing ideas and approaches through practical application in the field of digital archiving.