Recordings of war-time speeches given by John Curtin, tapes of the Stolen Generation royal commission and even the records of the Bounty mutineers could disappear forever without an injection of cash into the National Archives.
Nicola Laurent, president of the Australian Society of Archivists, of which the National Archives is an institutional member, says it’s highly concerning it has come to the point where such important records are at risk. Other holdings are on magnetic tape or in a digital form which has become obsolete, some are on nitrate film while more are on paper that has also started to deteriorate.Credit:Recordings of speeches made by John Curtin during WWII are on magnetic audio tape, as is the Stolen Generation and the Aboriginal Deaths in Custody royal commissions.
Constitutional law expert Anne Twomey says the Archives is at risk of not fulfilling its fundamental role as “the memory of the nation”. She has previously had requests take more than seven years to process – withThese days, she advises would-be researchers against taking on projects that lean heavily on archival work, especially if they involve foreign affairs or Defence papers.
“Two weeks later, I get an email from the National Archives saying, ‘Oh dear, sorry, we pressed the wrong button, actually they’re secret and you can’t have them’,” she says. “To the extent there are any ongoing sensitivities, they’re all in volume one, which is already open, and they’re not in volumes two and three, which are the ones they are keeping secret. So we end up in this sort of bizarro world.
He said the Archives was different to other collection institutions as almost all of its records were unique.
katinacurtis swrighteconomy The price of neo-liberalism, which knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing. LNPfail auspol
katinacurtis swrighteconomy Add it to our shameful 'Endangered' list. 🙄
katinacurtis swrighteconomy This is terrible! Parliament MUST approve a very generous appropriation for the Nat’l Archives & thus save Australia’s past. For there can be no meaningful nor constructive future w/o knowledge of what came before.
katinacurtis swrighteconomy Is there any ScottMorrisonMP has not screwed up?
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