This paper shares experiences and strategies undertaken at the University of Newcastle to enable staff and students to search the NBN Television Archive via ‘Whizzard’ - a world first video content discovery and playlist solution to search Television news content. A collaboration between university Library, IT Services and Linius to create a tool to unlock historic audio-visual archive. Unlike other video products with playlist-based experiences, this search tool provides access to News content from 1982 to 1995. Users are in complete control of their viewing experience, enabling them to deep-dive into videos and identify 'moments' relevant to their search, which are then stitched together into compilation videos . This pilot project unlocking a television archive and sharing the cultural and social lives of people in the Hunter region, has given users unbridled opportunity to curate relevant content into playlists that can be shared or saved for future use. Unlocking a unique and previous difficult to search archive.

The history of a school generates heritage materials that form the archives of the school. The school archive not only interprets the past of the school and its community, but it also provides explanation for the present and defines the future memory of the school. Thus, school archives document the school’s growth and preserve its memory. However, while almost every school has functional centers to support teaching and learning, including library and learning centers, information resources centers, Information and C Communication Technology (ICT) centers, etc., most schools do not have effective school archives. In most cases, it is either the school has not identified, collected, and organized their heritage records and materials to form their school archives, or they have some materials collected but have not consciously arranged them in a dedicated place for effective use. Some schools, for instance, have their heritage records strewn in the arctic of an old building without proper care and use. Such school archives can best be described as ‘closed’. With the fast development of digital technologies, schools now generate original digital heritage records that also form part of their school archives. Many schools are also digitizing part of their records, resulting in both born-digital and digitized school archival materials. It is about time schools ‘open’ their archive and make it accessible to staff for teaching and students (both present and past students) for learning. Several factors can hinder or enable the opening of the school archive for access. In this presentation, I discuss the contextual factors that are influencing the opening of school archives in New Zealand. The presentation is based on research that explored a deeper understanding of the issues facing school archivists as they work to ensure the value of school records to support curriculum in New Zealand. Ideas in the research come from extensive discussions with 20 school archivists from 4 regions across New Zealand.

What does it mean to open an archive? Sometimes, even if the archive is willing, lack of metadata or finding aids, application of inappropriate policies, or lack of appropriate identification systems can make it seem an empty box to the potential user.

Lack of description is the first barrier to opening the archive. If archival contents are not well described, an open archive can still be an opaque and impenetrable object. When the archive is analog, creating a finding aid means painstakingly working through papers or recordings, an undertaking seldom carried out by the holding institutions. Even when files are digital, they still require basic metadata and finding aids to give users some idea of the contents. But creating this metadata is not always straightforward. For example, providing potentially sensitive materials online in a secure environment to authorised users can help determine if digital objects can be made more generally available, perhaps to enable distributed crowdsourcing of item descriptions. Neither of these metadata-creating processes are possible unless digital objects are well organised and citable, and unless the right people to provide advice and descriptions have the means to log in and access the relevant systems.

Institutional policies may also make the archival box seem empty of relevant content by blocking the publication of metadata. In Australia, it is becoming increasingly difficult for Indigenous people to access and assess materials in their own language due to what some of us have termed the ‘new protectionism’ by holding institutions that fear that making information available may result in a harm that outweighs the benefit to the community of accessing such records (Thieberger et al 2024).

For too many languages, there are no records available at all, so, for these languages, the archive really is an empty box. In other cases, although relevant historical records had been lodged with a state library or archive, they were not digitised, and institutional staff lacked expertise to determine the source language and culture. Thus, catalog entries rarely included a language identifier, making items difficult or impossible to find.

Since 2003, the Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC) has been engaged in a variety of efforts to enable better access to language and music records, typically created in the course of a research project (Thieberger and Harris 2022). In the past, these records were often lost, or were in the hands of the researcher until their retirement. We work to make our materials findable and accessible to as many potential users as possible. Most material in the PARADISEC collection is openly available to registered users, and we work to make the catalog as widely available as possible, publishing metadata even for much material that cannot be made open access.

We have also revised our archival infrastructure to increase searchability. Our most recent grant from the Australian Research Council has allowed us to update the catalog, and to maintain a textual version of each catalog entry with the object in the collection, using the Research Object Crate (RO-Crate) standard. This means that each item is self-describing, and can be searched independently of the database catalog, allowing fine-grained searches, and linked media and text that were not possible in the database model we used previously. This separation of the database and the items creates a more sustainable collection, and one that can interoperate with the Language Data Commons of Australia for broader reach.

Another angle on opening the archive is opening it to accept more material, and, to do this, we work with new researchers to create 'archive-ready' collections, using the tool Lameta, a co-creation with the Endangered Language Archive (ELAR) and the University of Hawai’i at Manoa. As we work with researchers (musicologists and linguists) who are actively creating priceless heritage records, we are able to advise them on data management strategies that result in archive-ready primary materials. Lameta is a computer app that takes a directory of primary records and allows the user to describe them using standard terms, exporting the metadata in a format accepted by the archive.

Prior to our work records were typically available in just one location and were undiscoverable (there was no internet catalog announcing their presence). In this presentation we will outline the various methods we have developed to create a full, rich and interactive archive that avoids the pitfalls of the ‘empty box’.


References
Thieberger, Nick and Amanda Harris. 2022. When Your Data is My Grandparents Singing. Digitisation and Access for Cultural Records, the Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC). Data Science Journal, 21: 9, pp. 1–7. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2022-009
Thieberger, Nick, Michael Aird, Clint Bracknell, Jason Gibson, Amanda Harris, Marcia Langton, Gaye Sculthorpe, and Jane Simpson. 2024. The new protectionism: Risk aversion and access to Indigenous heritage records. To appear in Archives and Manuscripts

Indigenous Led on Country Archives are a testament to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander interests in controlling, preserving, collecting, and accessing Indigenous knowledge and history. They are valuable resources that reflect the cultural heritage, identity, and pride of their respective communities; document the efforts of their communities to maintain their data rights and rights to self-determination; and represent a counter narrative to Western archival practices by developing culturally informed and sensitive processes and guidelines. processes and guidelines for managing culturally sensitive content. Using a comparative case study analysis of the Koori Resource and Information Centre Archive in northern Victoria and the Ration Shed Museum in south-east Queensland, this research explores how historical records capturing the lens of First Nations communities can empower and impact Indigenous people’s health and wellbeing and why this is important to First Nations communities to maintain and protect their local archives.

Like many archival institutions, Queensland State Archives (QSA) holds a significant number of records which contain trauma material, and in managing the associated risk of vicarious trauma, has a responsibility for encouraging and promoting staff wellbeing. We know that for individuals who experience vicarious trauma, the outcomes are better when this experience is normalised and when it feels safe to ask for help.

In response to the growing recognition of this exposure to trauma material and vicarious trauma, QSA developed a comprehensive evidence-based strategy to support staff and manage this risk. Key components of this strategy included awareness-raising about vicarious trauma, fostering an organisational culture designed to encourage a safe and supportive workplace, staff training aimed at building skills and capacity, and actively promoting self-care for all staff.

This presentation will focus on the latter of these, driven by an awareness that successful self-care strategies are individual and personal, and more impactful when staff take an active role in their own self-care and wellbeing. It will discuss a range of resources and strategies implemented to support staff at QSA, including staff Wellbeing Toolkits developed with the aim of assisting staff to manage their wellbeing, and addresses vicarious trauma, resources and support options, strategies for managers, and the reporting of psychological harm.

As part of its Community Archives, the Ian Matheson City Archives, Palmerston North, holds the records of Manawatū Enterprises Incorporated. This not-for-profit organisation, which commenced operations in 1980, provided supported employment opportunities for members of the local disabled community. "Sheltered workshops" such as this represent an interesting transitional phase in social attitudes regarding disability. On the one hand, they sought to provide greater social inclusion, while nonetheless reinforcing inequalities by paying their workers below minimum wage.
Deciding how to most appropriately manage these records involved considering the challenges, sensitivities and opportunities presented by their content. Making this archival material more openly available offered a chance to focus attention on the often-neglected experiences of the disabled community. At the same time, these records needed to be managed in a manner that respected the privacy and dignity of named individuals, many of whom were still alive and living locally. This presentation will introduce some of the challenges encountered and how these were navigated.

Archives can play a vital role in Return of Cultural Heritage (RoCH) projects, providing a demonstrable link between objects in overseas collections and their original custodians.

This paper considers the unanticipated effects of RoCH on archives: what if, in opening dialogue around the repatriation of objects, it becomes clear that certain archives must be closed?

It focuses on records held at the University of Glasgow Archives & Special Collections, which are being used to support an RoCH project between the Hunterian Museum at the University (the oldest public museum in Scotland, founded in 1807) and the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies.

In scope are more than 100 items acquired from Emile Clement, a prominent collector of artefacts from Western Australia, who sold or donated hundreds of such items to museums in the UK and continental Europe.

Clement’s correspondence with The Hunterian, held at the University, reveals much about the provenance of these objects. However, it also contains material that is culturally sensitive, offensive or requires additional measures around access and description.

This paper looks at how the University’s Archives & Special Collections has approached these issues and is intended to stimulate discussion among colleagues with experience of similar projects.

Huakina te pātaka mahara - Opening the storehouse of memory
How do we support access to the varied material we kaitiaki? We will discuss how we have increased access to our diverse collections using technology, exhibition and collaboration.
Hollie will discuss how we have opened our Mātangireia collections online and within our library to ensure that not only are they visible and accessible, but that access is sustainable.
The Mātangireia collection in the University of Waikato library includes published books, manuscripts, archives, deeds, maps and taonga. It has been through many iterations and resource to care for it has waxed and waned over the years, leaving a patchwork of understanding about the collection and how to manage it. Further, as a treasure trove of Māori cultural artifacts, historical documents, and oral traditions it is understandable that access to this invaluable repository has been restricted. These restrictions permeated into our library staff, who became insulated from the collection and overly cautious to engage with it for fear of cultural faux pas.
Since 2022 we have been reestablishing access pathways to the various collections both physically and digitally. Prioritising Māori and Indigenous knowledge and data sovereignty we have opened our collections up further to our users, external researchers and communities.
Cerys will share on the use of exhibition to increase accessibility and engagement with our collections.
The Gallagher Academy of Performing Arts on campus features exhibition spaces throughout its foyers. Since the buildings opening in 2001, these spaces have predominantly hosted art-based exhibitions, overseen by the Art Collection Curator. In 2022 this role evolved into that of Poutiaki Taonga, encompassing also curation of the Collected Archives and Manuscripts housed within the University’s special collections by the library. This presented an opportunity to expand accessibility and engagement by opening the exhibition space to showcase all collections held by the University of Waikato, thereby unveiling treasures tucked away in storerooms. This section will briefly outline the inaugural exhibition projects under this new approach which plans to host an annual exhibition from the collections within the full programme.
The first opportunity for this was to showcase the newly gifted personal papers of national and internationally regarded opera soprano and renowned teacher of voice, Dame Malvina Major. This exhibition provided a glimpse into the rich content of such an archive, offering insights into the life and work of the archive creator while visually presenting its contents to the potential users.
Subsequently, the University of Waikato’s 60th-anniversary was commemorated through the collaborative exhibition ‘Huakina te pātaka mahara’, involving four Library staff associated with the special collections. This exhibition traced the institution’s milestones over six decades, spotlighting its journey through the lens of the various special collections, encompassing art, archives, taonga, and cartography.