This co-presented paper will highlight significant preservation, description and community engagement work undertaken on over 1200 historical images of Papua New Guinea held at the National Archives. The paper connects with two key components of the Evolving National Archives strategy highlighting our archival management skills and expertise, as well as our leadership and support for archives in the Pacific region.

Evolve: Working better together – focuses on improving our capabilities as an organisation and enhancing value and stakeholder outcomes.

Connect: Fostering access and engagement – aims to improve our access practices through insight and understanding to deliver appropriate and meaningful access and engagement experiences for audiences.

Melissa Thomas, National Archives of Australia
Steven Gagau, PARADISEC

As the University of South Australia (UniSA) transitions towards its merger with the University of Adelaide to form Adelaide University in 2026, UniSA implemented the Time Capsule project to honour and preserve the rich, diverse history of our institution and its antecedents. The UniSA Time Capsule is more than just a historical record; it is a people’s narrative that aims to celebrate the activities, achievements, and culture of UniSA by seeking contributions from staff, students, alumni, and the broader community. Within the Time Capsule, Proppa Stories seeks to record the unique history of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples at UniSA, acknowledging and celebrating their contributions. Proppa Stories has been developed in consultation with Senior Elders from Purkarninthi, the University's governing Aboriginal Elders group, and reflects a respectful, collaborative approach to storytelling and historical preservation. This presentation will explore the conception and implementation of the Time Capsule - how we used Recollect to gather and curate contributions and share our workflows and processes for moderation and managing content; the challenges we faced including inflexible time frames, respecting copyright and Indigenous Cultural Intellectual Property rights, and managing resourcing with university staff stretched by being engaged in merger-related tasks alongside business as usual; and, the opportunities presented by a project led by Chancellery using expertise and knowledge from across the organisation. The project successfully fostered strong community engagement with people embracing the project's fun, celebratory, and nostalgic nature. By capturing these diverse stories and artifacts, the Time Capsule is more than just a collection; it is a platform for healing and celebration as we embark on our transformative journey. We aim to inspire similar initiatives in other institutions wanting to celebrate and record their histories.

In 2024, First Nations archivist Steven Gagau, a Tolai Gunantuna man working at PARADISEC, initiated the "ENB Digitisation and Preservation Project", to collect old analogue tape recordings from his homeland community in East New Britain, Papua New Guinea and archiving them in PARADISEC (the Pacific And Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures). PARADISEC is a digital archive of records of some of the many small cultures and languages of the world, holding 17,300 hours of audio and 3,300 hours of video, mainly from, but not limited to, the Pacific region, that might otherwise be lost. Gagau, a PARADISEC staff member contributes to the collective efforts of archives across the region in the race against time to digitise audio and video materials before they are no longer playable, given the advice from audio experts and the international archives network. The challenge to act fast before it is too late is critical to digitise analogue records of materials in languages and cultures from all over the world. This talk will outline how Gagau was able to use his skills and knowledge in archiving to initiate community outreach in his home community, demonstrating the value of the "Insider Archivist" in connecting and communicating with individuals and community networks that may not otherwise have opportunities to archive these kind of recordings. The project involved training local workers, getting information to the community and setting up collection points in the region for people to bring in analogue cassette tapes containing gospel songs, choral music, string bands, cultural performances and ceremonies, storytelling about customs, kinship and clan and more of the past. Gagau will then discuss how the tapes were organised and digitised back in Sydney and the value of the resulting SG2 collection accessible in the online PARADISEC repository.