Access to historical records providing necessary evidence of past experiences has been a very important focus of recent work for National Archives of Australia (National Archives). Jessie Webb and Jennifer Walker will discuss how National Archives assists individuals and works with Government agencies to provide access to records in response to the National Redress Scheme and the Territories Stolen Generations Redress Scheme. The National Redress Scheme responds to the recommendations made by Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. The Territories Stolen Generations Redress Scheme seeks to recognise the harm and trauma experienced by Stolen Generation who were removed from their families or communities in the Northern Territory, Australian Capital Territory and Jervis Bay Territory.

The records required to support claims for redress are complex and can be difficult to locate. Reports of multiple government inquiries have discussed the frustrations experienced by individuals attempting to access records of their experiences and noted that refusal of access or restricted access can be retraumatising for survivors, and hinder redress efforts. As Kim Eberhard identified in 2015, the recordkeeping recommendations of these inquiries have often not shown an understanding of the reasons why access to records may be restricted (15).

National Archives of Australia provides access under the provisions of the Archives Act 1983. When a need for records to support redress intersects with the complexity of access and discovery, the reference archivist has a role to play in identifying and providing records. Jessie and Jennifer will also discuss their experiences in this sphere of reference work, including discovery of records, considerations and arrangements around access, use of the Bringing Them Home Name Index, and examples of records from the national archival collection.

Reference:
Kim Eberhard (2015) Unresolved issues: recordkeeping recommendations arising from Australian commissions of inquiry into the welfare of children in out-of-home care, 1997–2012, Archives and Manuscripts, 43:1, 4-17, DOI: 10.1080/01576895.2014.959536

Queer records held in institutional archives are often rendered inaccessible by inadequate descriptive metadata. Descriptions often make no mention of queerness at all, instead prioritising the perspectives of privileged and powerful record creators—police, courts, governments, and the media. This actively reduces the accessibility of queer records, and creates an artificial paradigm in which the histories of queer and trans people are invisible, inaccessible, and for all intents and purposes, do not exist. When archivists think about making collections accessible, we generally focus on the needs of researchers and academics, but it is often only specialised historians who have the requisite knowledge, skills, experience, and resources to sift through archives and find queer records. This means that the general public—and particularly queer and trans people—are unable to find, access, and engage with our own histories.

Archivists are faced with a pressing need to create and enrich descriptions of queer materials to make them visible and accessible to the public. However, this demands negotiating the tensions between archival control, and community needs and perspectives. Such a negotiation can only be done in a participatory way, bringing together archivists with queer communities to build descriptive metadata that is safe, inclusive, accessible, and effective.

Drawing on my doctoral research, this paper presents a holistic overview of the current challenges of making queer records accessible in institutional archives. It then responds to these challenges via a framework for queer reparative (re)description. This framework engages with the following questions and challenges: How can we contextualise historic language for users? How can we also incorporate familiar language to generate more effective metadata? How can we balance safety and accessibility with context, nuance, and historical accuracy? And how exactly does participatory reparative (re)description work?

Gina Watts writes; “Archives represent material history: the idea that a person can find their families, or those whose lives mirrored theirs, in an acid-free box, and in doing so, find themselves, be recognised by the historical record, and claim their right to take up space in the world” (2018, p. 104). How can we work with queer communities to enable them to take up space on the shelves, in the catalogues, and in the archives?

Most National Collecting Institutions in Australia have significant digitisation programs, and it is an integral part of the preservation process that allows archival collections to be maintained and accessed for the years to come. While the digital object is important for preserving the content, the digital object itself raises questions of authenticity; how can tangible cultural heritage be “reduced” into something intangible? Digitisation is often seen as merely a reductive copy, a “surrogate” of the real heritage item. How can we address this discourse whilst retaining our main method of preservation and storage? Can new digitisation methods further contribute to the debate of opening up archival content, and in particular the complex and layered nature of audiovisual formats?

Lacquer disc (commonly known as acetate disc) remains one of the most fragile formats in the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia’s (NFSA) collection – itis susceptible to a plethora of problems, like crazing, missing and/or loose pieces, and mould. As it stands, the NFSA has around 9518 accessioned lacquer discs in the collection, consisting of 8538 unique titles, of which around 3834 are yet to be digitised. However, 2767 discs are currently identified as being in poor condition, with issues of cracking, peeling, crazing and more. It should also be noted these figures all include accessioned material, the number of unaccessioned discs through legacy collections held at the NFSA is unknown.

Using the lacquer disc as a case study, as such an at-risk format, NFSA Curatorial Officer Alexis Mallard will explore how ideas of cultural heritage significance, and content vs physical form, create a unique context for digitisation, redefining ‘digital surrogacy’ and allowing for the optimal preservation and storage of audiovisual content.

Audio Preservation Specialist Andrew Ryan will then delve into the more technical aspects of lacquer disc digitisation, exploring the current benchmark of digitisation of discs at the NFSA and how alternate practices and new technologies, such as laser image scanning and AI, can minimise damage to both physical and digital objects.

Combining both scholarly and technical perspectives, we aim to uncover how alternate methods of digitisation can open up more doors for the safest and most accessible way of opening up a collection to a wider audience; by bringing the significance of our collection to the forefront, it allows us and our audiences a deeper understanding of our culture through our collections.