The Bob Hawke Collection was poised to triple in size when the office of the late Prime Minister Bob Hawke transferred 280 boxes of material to the Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Library (BHPML) in 2018 and 2019. The BHPML is based at the University of South Australia (UniSA) and its operations managed by staff within the Library, which had few resources available for processing this transfer. Having received such a large quantity of socially and culturally significant material, how did the Library go about ensuring the new Bob Hawke material was suitably housed, arranged and described? The presentation by Kate Sergeant (Special Collections Coordinator) and Adam Kauschke (Project Archivist) will outline the strategy taken by the Library to address the resourcing challenges through the development and implementation of its Special Collections Development and Maintenance Plan (SCDMP), and before outlining the work undertaken in providing searchability and ongoing preservation for the Collection. Some of the challenges to be explored are: - shortfalls in resourcing and the advocacy for archives and special collections; - handling work continuity, notably at a time impacted by COVID-19; - the integration of newly acquired material with the existing collection, especially in instances where the Collection documentation practices were inadequate (or non-existent), and where earlier work had been completed by librarians rather than archivists; - operating as the only archivist in an academic library context; and - the appropriate allocation of preservation and cataloguing tasks to library staff, including providing training and maintaining oversight. Despite having made substantial progress in developing the Bob Hawke Collection and its special collections generally, maintenance remains a challenge for the Library. This will be reflected on further as part of the presentation.

The National Archives of Australia has many facets, moving parts and influences on its function and practice. Alongside the internal mechanisms for managing government records, factors such as the Archives Act 1983; the Australian government Cyber Securities Essential Eight; as well as the sheer size of the collection; all impact on how the different components of the organisation can respond and take up new technologies and processes. The conference session will look at the process of taking up these challenges and innovating in the contemporary GLAM and technological landscape. Through the lens of embedding digital capabilities and practice into the National Archives we will be able to highlight many of the elements of the organisation not always visible. The session will also be able to showcase the sometimes unforeseen benefits and surprises of new processes.

The Digitisation Centre of Western Australia is a world class archival quality digitisation service that functions as an important piece of national research infrastructure and has been established with a defined goal of digitising all significant Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences (HASS) research collections held by the participating institutions with a decade of the establishment of the Centre. This presentation will take the form of a case study detailing the establishment of the Digitisation Centre of Western Australia, and topics covered will include: • the issues faced by institutions in WA holding analogue cultural heritage collections that the DCWA was established to address • the challenges associated with establishing an archival quality digitisation service (facilities, equipment, staff, process workflows) from nothing (during a global pandemic) • the development of a sustainable governance and business model to support the ongoing operation of the Centre • the development and ongoing continuous improvement of DCWA services to meet the archival digitisation needs of the partner institutions and the wider WA cultural heritage community • a timeline of the establishment of the Centre highlighting key milestones and achievements • planning for future development of the DCWA https://www.uwa.edu.au/schools/research/the-digitisation-centre-of-western-australia