In the lead up to Sydney World Pride 2023, the City Archives began a monumental task. It began processing a donation of approximately 30,000 images from the stock photograph library of the Sydney Star Observer. This magazine, also known as The Star and the Star Observer, was a prominent gay and lesbian magazine. The images, covering circa 1979-2011, document a key time in the history of LGBTIQA+ liberation, including protests, parties, mardi gras, and responses to the AIDS epidemic. Still a work in progress, this has truly been a mountainous challenge with ownership, privacy, copyright and moral rights considerations not to mention multiple processing dilemmas, the need to engage with communities and crowd-source metadata. This paper will discuss the issues faced and how the City Archives is steering a path to making these iconic images accessible.

The archives on French nuclear testing are deeply intertwined with New Zealand’s history. While pursuing researches about transnational networks of antinuclear activists during my PhD, I was often confronted to the lack of access to State archives. At first, I mainly worked on privates papers from activists in continental France and French Polynesia. Nevertheless, in 2021 Polynesian associations and researchers conducted an advocacy which led to a political decision to open France’s States archives on nuclear testing.
While working with French archivists involved in this opening process, I collected documents from La Courneuve (diplomatic services), the Service Historique de la Défense (military papers) and the Archives Nationales de France (other national ministries). Now I aim to cross these archives with New Zealand State documents and Peace movements funds, such as Peace Media or Greenpeace. The bridging of French and New Zealand archives on nuclear issues will be examined as complementary sources which enlighten the history of the Nuclear Area and the globalization of social movements during the Cold War.

In 2021, the University of Sydney Archives embarked upon a major three-year project to migrate five distinct control and access systems to a single, integrated platform that would function as a control system for us as well as a community engagement platform for users; a project which came to embody this year’s conference themes of Access, Engagement, and Innovation.

The magnitude of the task, for a small team, was undoubtedly enormous, however, the project gave us an invaluable opportunity to reconsider every aspect of how we operate and manage our collections, and thereby, enhance user experience. The user survey conducted in November 2020 made us aware that the fractured nature of our access systems – one platform for photographs, one for a list of graduates, one for metadata only – combined with the lack of adequate online access to digital records, often translated into a frustrating experience for users searching our collections for information and records. The COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting lockdowns further highlighted the crucial need for us to provide online access to records in a way that would be considered accessible, appealing, and intuitive for all types of users. The user survey also revealed that users sought active engagement with us; a demand which, until now, we have not been able to sufficiently fulfil. The platforms previously available to users were passive, with static metadata and limited digital records, and inherently unconducive to dynamic interaction. The results of the survey reinforced our motivation to develop a system that valued collaboration and meaningful engagement with users.

We had to keep our needs in mind too, however, as the system was also intended to serve as the control system for the collections. Although we continue to use traditional archival entities, such as accessions, series, and items, these are presented in a way that does not assume prior knowledge of archival theory by users. A more intuitive interface is offered to users, who may be casual or serious researchers with differing levels of expertise in using archives, while ensuring that the back end of the system meets the exacting needs and legislative obligations of the University of Sydney under the NSW State Records Act 1998. The customisable nature of the new system enabled us to consider novel ways of managing our collections. An impressive level of connections and relationships have been created and established between content and contextual entities, in a manner previously unavailable. The linking is dynamic and real-time updates can be made as necessary, thus allowing us and the users to continually enrich the collections. The standard archival entities such as accession, person, series, and item continue to form the backbone of the system, however, we developed and implemented new entities, such as Building and Position, all of which further build and establish contextual histories and stories.

We know that metadata constitutes the core of any collection, and the new system essentially provided us with a blank slate to create our own metadata framework. We reconceptualised how our metadata is structured and presented, for every existing and new entity, transforming a limited set of metadata fields into a comprehensive template that encompasses every aspect of archival management, including community engagement. The metadata fields within the old control system captured basic contextual information but the new system allowed for additional, more complex, and linkable options. Our survey indicated that a hybrid style of searching and researching was adopted by many users, suggesting we would have to design the system in a way that allows for both structured and unstructured discovery of information and records. The updated entity model with enhanced, linkable metadata fields has significantly streamlined and made processes more efficient for us and users, allowing entities to be reached through multiple access points. The user survey also indicated that users approached our collections in two ways – with precise searching and/or with an attitude of serendipitous discovery. The new system has been designed to facilitate both types of access.

The various features of the new system, especially its level of customisability, will enable us to be adaptable and flexible, ensuring the usability of the archival collections over time, thereby meeting the needs of all members of our community. An enhanced online presence with more digital content should attract more University staff and students to collaborate with and use our collections, thus increasing our profile within and beyond the University, and enhancing the University’s reputation for excellence in teaching and research.

The new system, which was launched in November 2023, gave us the unprecedented opportunity to venture into the world of social media. We began testing the waters with engagement with University staff via Viva Engage, with a regular rotation of Favourite Four, Flashback Friday, Mystery Monday, and Then and Now posts. The response was overwhelmingly positive and thus, with a social media strategy and schedule drafted, we set up an Instagram account. The steady rise in followers on Instagram and Viva Engage gave us the confidence to implement a long-standing idea for a campus walk. The ‘History Hike with the Archives’ was developed and executed in February 2024, featuring fifty locations across the Camperdown and Darlington campuses. The QR code on the ground decal near each site takes a user to a related item and provides them with not only contextual information about the item but a unique story about the location. The walk was installed in time for the University’s Welcome Week, where we had a presence for the first time. There are currently plans to prepare an associated ‘Herstory Hike with the Archives’, which will highlight the women associated with the University.

The new, dual-purpose system functions as a ‘one-stop shop’ for us and users, both serious researchers as well as casual users, and demonstrates our commitment to accessibility, our creativity, and our ingenuity. It has been carefully designed to serve multiple, sometimes competing, needs of all stakeholders – a system that controls, manages, displays, and engages, thereby encompassing all three of this year’s conference themes of Access, Engagement, and Innovation.

Personal archives have always been of interest to many people, not just those who created them. These archives contain information and objects that an individual, or close group such as family, has created, managed and preserved over time. Information in such archives documents history and events and reflects social practices. Although their main purpose and value lies in meeting the information needs, practices, and preferences of their creators, the significance of such information goes beyond the personal level. Some of this information eventually finds its way, intentionally or unintentionally, into broader organisational, community and national heritage collections. However, this personal information is also of interest to for-profit information services and faces several risks to privacy, cultural sensitivity, and representation. In this presentation, I will use current knowledge from areas of information behaviour, information experience, and personal information management to discuss the factors that shape personal collections and personal archives today. I will also discuss the challenges that are likely to shape the future of personal digital archives and, consequently, other types of archives that include personal collections in their fonds. These challenges, to name a few, include scattered information collections, unintentional collections, issues of digital legacy, unclear boundaries of ownership and inheritance, and the increasing difficulty of managing posthumous data. Changing technological landscapes and changing patterns of information creation and use, make these challenges difficult to address through traditional information management principles. These challenges require collective and multidisciplinary efforts even to begin addressing them. Although this presentation will focus on individual archives, it will also consider how these issues affect the broader context of collective archives, such as community and national archives.

The Ripple Effect Band from Western Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory sing in five Aboriginal languages from the region, Ndjébbana, Kune, Na-kara, Burarra and Kuninjku. Through their songwriting and performances, band members create new music that contributes to maintenance of endangered languages. PhD candidate Jodie Kell and Kune band member Tara Rostron have recently been working to archive, describe and annotate the band’s collection of songs in PARADISEC (Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures). Through this work they are making this multilingual collection accessible and available to future generations of speakers and singers.
This presentation will demonstrate how PARADISEC safeguards contemporary music records like those created by Ripple Effect, making them available for community use through an online archive which allows for transcripts and media to be viewed together. We will discuss how a collaborative approach has supported community members to engage with the archive to both document and access song records and create further resources in diverse Indigenous languages.

The story of Archives Central begins in 2008 with local authorities seeking to combine functions and lower service costs for ratepayers. Archives Central opened its doors at 40 Bowen Street, Feilding as a shared facility in October 2012. Initially, the facility stored and provided access to council staff and the public the physical archives of 5 district, city and regional councils. Since then, other councils have joined, with the amount of material in storage in excess of 4,700 linear metres of records and a full database redevelopment based on open-source digital technology and implementation of modern archival practice taken place.

This presentation outlines the success stories Archives Central is built upon – from the shared services framework and relationships with local authority information management professionals, to increasing user access and preparing an institution founded on analog material for a born-digital future. "Combining Pasts, Creating The Future – The Archives Central Success Story" aims to provoke thought about how we access and engage with archival material in unique ways. An in-depth look at individual projects, and the trials and tribulations of the institution, this presentation will provide attendees with real-world examples of how the power of shared resources and knowledge can achieve amazing outcomes.