Of sentimental value: collecting personal diaries from the First World War

ABSTRACT

Weeks after the Armistice was declared, Principal Librarian William Ifould of the Public Library of New South Wales recommended to Library Trustees that the institution begin to collect ‘private and official documents’ produced during the war. By early December 1918, advertisements began to appear in Australian and New Zealand newspapers, encouraging returning soldiers to sell their personal diaries to the Library. Known as the European War Collecting Project, this acquisition program was the first of its kind in Australia. This paper explores the Library’s acquisition of personal diaries written by those who served and analyses the appraisal methodologies carried out by State Library staff. This case study underscores the recent archival debate which has re-assessed the role of archivists in assessment, appraisal, preservation (and privileging) of some collections over others and argues that archivists mediate and consequently shape the collections in their institutions.

KEYWORDS:

• Mitchell Library
• First World War
• personal diaries
• archival collections

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. T Nesmith, ‘Seeing Archives: Postmodernism and the changing intellectual place of archives’, The American Archivist, vol. 65, no. 1, 2002, pp. 24–41.

2. This paper considers the original collections of personal papers and organisational records held within the Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales as archival collections, sharing many of the same functions of collecting, arrangement, preservation and access that archives encompass.

3. J Sassoon, ‘Phantoms of remembrance: libraries and archives as “the collective memory”’, Public History Review, vol. 10, 2003, pp. 55–6.

4. ibid., pp. 40–60.

5. JM Schwartz and T Cook, ‘Archives, records, and power: the making of modern memory’, Archival Science, vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 1–19.

6. ibid., p. 13.

7. R McIntosh, ‘The Great War, archives, and modern memory’, Archivaria, vol. 46, 1998, pp. 1–31.

8. Public Library of New South Wales Trustees, Minutes from 624th meeting, 18 November 1918, State Library of New South Wales records, File number 39630.

9. M Piggott, ‘Towards a history of Australian diary keeping’, Archivaria, vol. 60, 2005, pp. 145–66.

10. ibid., p. 146.

11. ibid., p. 147.

12. ibid., p. 162.

13. ibid.

14. B Fletcher, Magnificent obsession: the story of the Mitchell Library, Allen and Unwin, Crows Nest, 2007, pp. 55.

15. ibid., 54.

16. WH Ifould, ‘Australasian soldiers’ private diaries’, British Australasian, 7 August 1919, p. 5.

17. A Condé, ‘Capturing the records of war: collecting at the Mitchell Library and the Australian War Memorial’, Australian Historical Studies, vol. 125, 2005, pp. 134–52.

18. J Lack, S Kafkarisos and W Struve, ‘“A universal collection of literature on the European war?” State Library Victoria’s Great War pamphlets’, La Trobe Journal, vol. 98, 2016, p. 85.

19. Public Library of New South Wales, Report of the Trustees of the Public Library of NSW for the year 1917, Government Printer, Sydney, 1917.

20. S Dewar, ‘From the bottom of a wardrobe: collecting World War I personal papers at State Library Victoria’, La Trobe journal, vol. 98, 2016, p. 153.

21. ibid., p. 154.

22. In addition to acquiring original papers and diaries from returned soldiers, Adam-Smith also completed some 300 oral history interviews of WWI veterans, J Murphy, ‘Library profile: Patsy Adam-Smith’, La Trobe Journal, vol. 69, 2002, pp. 70–1.

23. Mitchell Librarian, Letter to Mr S.J. Stutley, 7 February 1919, State Library of New South Wales, Out-letters, ML1919/71.

24. Mitchell Librarian, Letter to J.C.S. King, 6 March 1919, State Library of New South Wales, Out-letters, ML1919/168.

25. Mitchell Librarian, Letter to Mr C.J. Fitzpatrick, 16 December 1919, State Library of New South Wales, Out-letters, ML1919/287.

26. Diaries and letters from the Library’s European war collecting project have been accessed and extracts published in a large number of histories on World War I, including landmark works published in the 1970s, for example: Bill Gammage, The broken years: Australian soldiers in the Great War in 1974; and Patsy Adam-Smith, The ANZACS in 1978. These two publications were amongst the first to focus on the narrative of the private soldier, a move which began in the 1960s and 1970s as traditional military history approaches gave way to social histories of the war.

27. WH Ifould, ‘Soldiers’ diaries’, 6 December 1918, State Library of New South Wales records File number 34224-1, Original file: NPL 242.

28. WH Ifould, Material which the Trustees of the Mitchell Library desire Mr Southwell to purchase for the Collection, [Memorandum to H.H. Southwell], 26 March 1919, File number 34224-1, original file no. NPL 242.

29. Fletcher, p. 59.

30. Ifould, W.H. Memorandum to H.H. Southwell.

31. In the years before and after the war, the Library was continuing to acquire significant collections of archives created by some of the great names in European discovery and settlement of Australia, such as Governor Lachlan Macquarie’s papers in 1914, navigator Matthew Flinders papers and logbook in 1922, and original watercolours by John Webber, artist of Captain Cook’s third voyage to the Pacific, also acquired in the same decade.

32. WH Ifould, ‘The Mitchell Library, Sydney’, Observer, 28 June 1919, p. 30.

33. Piggott, p. 162.

34. Ifould, ‘Soldiers’ diaries’.

35. Mitchell Librarian, Letter to A. Douglas, 25 June 1920, State Library of NSW Out-letters ML1920/169.

36. 236 diary collections were purchased as a result of the European War Collecting project, the bulk of purchases being made in 1919 and 1920. By 1921, offers of material had slowed, with only small numbers (single digits) of collections being purchased. By the mid-1920s, collecting had ceased.

37. Mitchell Librarian, Letter to B.H. Bryer, 2 September 1919, State Library of New South Wales, Out-letters ML1919/595.

38. Mitchell Librarian, Letter to A.J. Dobson, 30 June 1919, State Library of New South Wales, Out-letters ML1919/373.

39. Mitchell Librarian, Letter to Miss A.A. Brewster, 22 April 1920, State Library of New South Wales, Out-letters ML1920/39.

40. Mitchell Librarian, Letter to L.D. Richardson], 2 September 1919, State Library of New South Wales, Out-letters ML1919/602.

41. Mitchell Librarian, Letter to A.R. Wiltshire, 17 December 1919, State Library of New South Wales, Out-letters, ML1919/290).

42. Mitchell Librarian, Letter to Captain Whitehead, 6 February 1920, State Library of New South Wales, Out-letters, ML1920/418.

43. The second collection received was from Mrs Britomarte James of Melbourne, mother of two sons in the Australian army who travelled to England in September 1916 when her eldest son was wounded. There she joined the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps on its formation, and was a Unit Administrator in Nottingham, then in Boulogne in France. In May 1918 she returned to England, arranged her discharge and went back to Australia, arriving in Melbourne in August 1918. Despite it being a typed reminiscence, which Ifould stated was not required, Mrs James received £3.4.0 for her account.

44. [Wright, H.?], Library staff assessment notes relating to Sister Anne Donnell’s collection, ca. 1919, State Library of New South Wales records.

45. Mitchell Librarian, Letter to Anne Donnell, 14 January 1920, State Library of New South Wales, Out-letters, ML1920/348.

46. [Wright, H.?], Library staff assessment notes relating to J.E Bell collection, State Library of New South Wales records, ca. 1919.

47. Collection such as Richardson war narrative, 1916–1918, MLDOC 2447, and Balme letter and diary, 29 April 1918, MLDOC 1286.

48. Mitchell Librarian, Letter to Miss A.H.P. Bell, 5 March 1920, State Library of New South Wales, Out-letters ML1920/503.

49. Nesmith, p. 27.

50. ibid., p. 30.

51. Public Library of New South Wales, Report of the Trustees for the year 1918, Government Printer, Sydney, 1918.

52. Nesmith, p. 33.

53. AA Barwick, Archie Barwick diary, 1914–1915, European war collecting project, State Library of New South Wales, MLMSS 1493/Box 1/Item 1.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Elise Edmonds

Elise Edmonds is a senior curator at the State Library of New South Wales. With a background in Australian history and Museum Studies, Elise received a staff fellowship in 2009 to research and scope the Library’s First World War collections which included analysing the large collection of personal diaries written by servicemen and women during the war, and planning the Library’s approach to digitisation and online access to this nationally significant collection. As a result of this research, she has curated a suite of First World War exhibitions at the State Library including Life Interrupted: personal diaries from World War I in 2014, Colour in Darkness: images from the First World War in 2016 and Quick March! The Children of World War One in 2019.