http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6628-6732
![Sample our Museum and Heritage Studies journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5945/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Museum-Heritage-Studies.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
The Community Heritage Grant Program (CHG) run by the National Library of Australia is an institution in the Australian cultural heritage landscape, providing foundational support to many small organisations who work in community memory-making. In this paper, the author presents the findings of her research into who and what is being funded by the CHG Program, and what the program highlights about community memory-making needs. Drawing from 23 years of public data, this research raises questions about the CHG Program model and its validity and purpose in a changing social and technological environment. Ultimately, the lesson from this study is that more research is required to identify and better understand Australian perspectives of community archives and memory-making.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Supplementary material
Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.
Notes
1. National Library of Australia, ‘Community Heritage Grants Program – 1996 Guidelines’, archived webpage, available at <https://web.archive.org/web/19961019194306/http://www.nla.gov.au/3/npo/natco/chg96guide.html>, accessed 11 November 2018, para. 1.
2. ibid., para. 2.
3. Sigrid McCausland and Kim M Thompson, ‘The Community Heritage Grants Program in Australia’, Annual Review of Cultural Heritage Informatics: 2012–2013, 2014, p. 169.
4. When this paper was presented the 2018 funding round results had not been announced. These were announced but the decision was made not to include the data about successful applications, nor the assessor’s reports from that round. However, the guidelines and application form that were already accessible were used to inform the overview of the project in a later section.
5. Frances Peters-Little, The Community Game: Aboriginal Self-Definition at the Local Level, Native Title Research Unit, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, Canberra, ACT, 2000.
6. Jeannette Bastian, Owning Memory: How a Caribbean Community Lost its Archives and Found its History, vol. 99, Contributions in librarianship and information science, Libraries Unlimited, Westport, CT, 2003; Eric Ketelaar, ‘Sharing, Collected Memories in Communities of Records’, Archives and Manuscripts, vol. 33, no. 1, 2005, pp. 44–61.
7. Leisa Gibbons, ‘Continuum Informatics and the Emergent Archive’, paper presented at CIRN Prato Community Informatics Conference 2015: Privilege, Information, Knowledge & Power: An Endless Dilemma? Monash University, Prato, Italy, November 2015.
8. Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 1992. Terry Cook also uses the term ‘memory-making’ to describe a process in ‘Evidence, Memory, Identity, and Community: Four Shifting Archival Paradigms’, Archival Science, vol. 13, nos. 2–3, June 2013, pp. 95–120, as I have done, but his ideas about memory come from different sources which closely link to the formation of identity. While I also acknowledge the role of memory and identity, I think about memory as a process of remembering, drawing from Halbwachs, who examines and defines ‘cultural memory’ as a process of bringing the past into the present and by doing so, people develop a system to value preservation (or remembrance) of memory, and its reconstruction.
9. <https://archive.org/web/>.
10. As previously mentioned, the data used was from 1994–2017 as the 2018 funding round had not been published at the time of writing this paper. However, guidelines for the 2018 funding round do inform the information presented about what is current for the CHG Program.
11. National Library of Australia, ‘Community Heritage Grants 2018 Guidelines’, available at <https://www.nla.gov.au/awards-and-grants/chg>, accessed 11 November 2018, para. 2.
12. National Library of Australia, ‘Community Heritage Grants Program – 1996 Guidelines’.
13. ibid., para. 2.
14. National Library of Australia, ‘Community Heritage Grants 2018 Guidelines’, pp. 1–2.
15. ibid., p. 2.
16. Access to the guidelines through the NLA site or the Wayback Machine is not continuous, primarily due to the format(s) in which the guidelines were published but also whether or not the web crawler captured it.
17. Roslyn Russell, (Significance): A Guide to Assessing the Significance of Cultural Heritage Objects and Collections, Commonwealth of Australia on behalf of the Heritage Collections Council, Canberra, 2001, available at <https://trove.nla.gov.au/version/44896998>, accessed 13 November 2018. This document was the forerunner of the current Significance 2.0 document.
18. National Library of Australia, ‘Community Heritage Grants 2018 Guidelines’.
19. ibid.
20. National Library of Australia, ‘Community Heritage Grants Program – 1996 Guidelines’, p. 13.
21. ibid.
22. National Library of Australia, ‘Guidelines and Application Form, 2018’, available at <https://www.nla.gov.au/chg/guidelines>, accessed 11 November 2018.
23. National Library of Australia, ‘Community Heritage Grants Program – 1996 Guidelines’, para. 15.
24. National Library of Australia, ‘1995 Community Heritage Grants Scheme’, para. 11.
25. National Library of Australia, ‘Community Heritage Grants Program – 1996 Guidelines’, para. 16.
26. National Library of Australia, ‘Community Heritage Grants 2018 Guidelines’, p. 2.
27. ibid., p. 8.
28. National Library of Australia, ‘Community Heritage Grants 2007 Guidelines and Instructions for Completing the Application Form’, archived webpage, available at <https://web.archive.org/web/20070621231303/http://www.nla.gov.au/chg/documents/Guidlelines_and_Instructions.pdf>, accessed 11 November 2018.
29. Norfolk Island Museum’s administration centre is in Sydney, so it is classified as a New South Wales (NSW) organisation. There was one instance from 1995 where Norfolk Island was registered as Norfolk Island but as it was registered later as New South Wales, I changed the location. Additionally, it was found in the data that organisations who actually exist in the Northern Territory, for example, may be registered by the CHG Program in the Australian Capital Territory. This is likely to do with administration headquarters, as is the case for Norfolk Island.
30. A method for identifying unique organisations was required:
1. Where there were joint applications, the organisations were split and documented as separate unique entities.
2. If an organisation applied on behalf of another entity, as was the case for several local history groups that had no legal structure and the local council applied on their behalf, the unique organisation was the group, not the local council.
3. Where it was clear there were organisational name or structural changes, and/or movements of collections to different institutions, each of these were considered unique organisations.
4. Where a collection was held by an organisation but as a result of the CHG Program process, they donated their collection to an institution, such as what happened with the Australian Script Centre’s donation of their paper manuscript collection to the NLA after their 2008 SA, the classification is based on the organisational status at the time of receiving funding.
5. Where organisations applied for funding either as the institution, such as a museum, or as the managing entity of the institution, which could be a Foundation or Management Committee, where the names were different, these were also treated as separate unique organisations. This was also the case for local council applications where there may be a library, museum or archives listed (although many times it was unclear). Another example was churches and dioceses. For example: Anglican Diocese of Grafton and the Anglican Diocese of Melbourne were registered as two unique organisations.
However, where the entity who applied for funding was part of a larger formal organisation, such as in the case for university departments and/or libraries, or branches of the National Trust, these were treated as one unique organisation. For example: the National Trust of South Australia submitted 11 applications with many under the name of the building and/or its location where the funding would be spent. In these cases, the National Trust of South Australia was considered a single unique organisation.
31. As documented in a previous section, the general nature of who can be funded has not fundamentally changed from 1994–2018. However, layers of requirements, particularly the need for formal governance and legal structures, have been implemented over time. For example: in the 2001 guidelines any community organisation that collected and provided public access to collections could apply. In 2001 the guidelines stated that organisations must contribute resources including staff, equipment and finances and also have well-developed policies and procedures for collection development and management or at least demonstrate the development of policies and procedures. However, by 2005, the guidelines stated that only legal entities such as incorporated organisations, a trust or association could apply. There were examples of organisations whose trading status was more commercial rather than NFP, but they appeared to be run by a Trust. The year that the Public Record Office Victoria (the State Records entity) was funded (2010, for running training programs), professional organisations were eligible to apply for training projects (p. 5). This rule is still in place in the 2018 Guidelines.
32. See the spreadsheet at the following URL: <http://leisagibbons.info/research-projects/>.
33. ‘The National Film and Sound Archives Turns to Crowdfunding to Digitise and Restore Proof – Starring Russell Crowe and Hugo Weaving’, ABC, 17 May 2016, available at <http://www.abc.net.au/newsradio/content/s4464022.htm>.
34. ‘Boxes’ refers to those physical treatments that are performed to help prevent deterioration. Installation of blinds and rehousing materials in suitable boxes and so on. In some cases, CA referred to transcription services. It also includes conservation treatments.
35. There was a project in 1999 in Victoria where the purchase of appropriate software for $1500 was funded. However, it is unclear what the software was for, but it can be assumed to be for collections management. The next funded request for software was not until 2007.
36. L Harald Fredheim and Manal Khalaf, ‘The Significance of Values: Heritage Value Typologies Re-examined’, International Journal of Heritage Studies, vol. 22, no. 6, 2016, pp. 466–81.
37. Karen Anderson, ‘The Archives Industry Perspectives on Significance as a Collections Management Tool’, archived webpage, Collections Council of Australia, 2009, available at <http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/56747/20110418-0000/www.collectionscouncil.com.au/articles84dd.html?articleType=ArticleView&articleId=79>, accessed 11 November 2018; Allison Hunter, ‘Assessing the Significance of Significance 2.0’, IQ: The RIM Quarterly, vol. 26, no. 1, 2010, p. 50.
38. Ainslee Meredith, Robyn Sloggett and Jacqueline Healy, ‘Reconstructing the Archive: Access, Documentation, Conservation’, AICCM Bulletin, vol. 37, no. 1, 2016, pp. 14–25.
39. Unfortunately, the Significance Assessment report is not publicly available and remains confidential.
40. Sue McKemmish, ‘Evidence of me…’, Archives & Manuscripts, vol. 24, no. 1, 1996, pp. 174–87.
41. Tom Nesmith, ‘Seeing Archives: Postmodernism and the Changing Intellectual Place of Archives’, American Archivist, vol. 65, no. 1, 2002, pp. 24–41; Tom Nesmith, ‘The Concept of Societal Provenance and Records of Nineteenth-Century Aboriginal–European Relations in Western Canada: Implications for Archival Theory and Practice’, Archival Science, vol. 6, nos. 3–4, 2006, pp. 351–60.
42. Or machines instructed by people for a human purpose. Well, at least for now until the singularity event.
43. McCausland and Thompson.
44. National Library of Australia, ‘Community Heritage Grants 2018 Guidelines’, p. 4.
45. K Winkworth, ‘Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom: Museums in Regional Australia’, in Des Griffin and Leon Paroissien (eds), Understanding Museums – The Development of Museums in Regional Australia, National Museum of Australia, 2011, available at <http://nma.gov.au/research/understanding-museums/KWinkworth_2011.html>, accessed 24 November 2018.
47. <https://www.nsla.org.au>.
49. Lyndon Ormond-Parker and Robyn Sloggett, ‘Local Archives and Community Collecting in the Digital Age’, Archival Science, vol. 12, no. 2, 2012, pp. 191–212.
50. The term ‘distributed national collection’ appears in the NLA’s National Initiatives and Collaboration (NIAC) Branch website in 1997 in reference to it being an office of the NLA. The distributed national collection office and the international relations section joined around this time to create NIAC. National Library of Australia, ‘National Initiatives And Collaboration (NIAC)’, archived webpage, 1997, available at <https://web.archive.org/web/19970502095416/http://www.nla.gov.au:80/niac/niac.html>, accessed 15 November 2018. Under NIAC the CHG Program was part of a strategy to strengthen national cooperative library infrastructure, with a particular outcome of advancing ‘the cultural information infrastructure and given full recognition to the role of libraries’. National Library of Australia, ‘National Initiatives And Collaboration (NIAC) – Operational Plan’, archived webpage, 1997, available at <https://web.archive.org/web/19970502095430/http://www.nla.gov.au:80/niac/plan.html>, accessed 15 November 2018, sec. Activities Outcome 1.2. The concept was created in late 1980s in Australia and discussed by Margaret Henty in a paper published in 1991. The term and concept of a Distributed National Collection (DNC) is built on the framework of the Australian National Bibliographic Database (ANBD). Henty describes the DNC as a concept that articulates four principles. It is important to point out the phrasing of this term and title – it is one collection, distributed. The four principles include aggregation of library collections whether private or public, be comprehensively related to Australia, but may include international content, but must be adequately recorded and accessible. Margaret Henty, ‘The Distributed National Collection’, Australian Academic & Research Libraries, vol. 22, no. 4, 1991, pp. 53–9. There is more work to be done on how this concept has influenced the NLA’s strategies over the years with specific reference to the CHG Program. There has been previous research and discussion into the DNC strategy in Australia. Paul Genoni, ‘Distributed National Collections: Concept and Reality in Two Countries’, Alexandria, vol. 14, no. 2, 2002, pp. 103–15. The term ‘distributed national collection’ fell out of favour as discussed by Genoni, cited above, and the last time it is mentioned in the CHG Program documentation I could find was the 2003 Guidelines. However, the concept is not dead. In 2014, Monika Szunejko, in a presentation advocating the value and use of the ANBD, refers to the DNC: ‘The database is an ever expanding and changing body of data that describes the distributed national collection (DNC) of Australia.’ Monika Szunejko, ‘Building our Australian Cloud’, webpage, National Library of Australia, 2014, available at <https://www.nla.gov.au/our-publications/staff-papers/building-our-australian-cloud>, accessed 15 November 2018.
51. There is quite a lot of literature in the broader international discourse around community archives but the seminal work that is relevant for this paper comes from Andrew Flinn in the UK, ‘Community Histories, Community Archives: Some Opportunities and Challenges’, Journal of the Society of Archivists, vol. 28, no. 2, 2007, pp. 151–76, and Jeanette Bastian in the US, ‘“Play mas”: Carnival in the Archives and the Archives in Carnival: Records and Community Identity in the US Virgin Islands’, Archival Science, vol. 9, nos. 1–2, 2009, pp. 113–25. Emerging research in this space comes from Canadian scholar Rebecka Sheffield, ‘Community Archives’, in Heather MacNeil and Terry Eastwood (eds), Currents of Archival Thinking, 2nd edn, 2017, Libraries Unlimited, ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara, CA, pp. 351–76, US scholar Michelle Caswell in Michelle Caswell, Alda Alina Migoni, Noah Geraci and Marika Cifor, ‘“To Be Able to Imagine Otherwise”: Community Archives and the Importance of Representation’, Archives and Records, vol. 38, no. 1, 2017, pp. 5–26, and NZ scholar Joanna Newman, ‘Sustaining Community Archives’, APLIS, vol. 25, no. 1, 2012, pp. 37–45. In 2013, US scholar Anne Gilliland delivered a keynote with Andrew Flinn that explored and discussed the origins and complexities of the current community archives movement: Anne Gilliland and Andrew Flinn, ‘Community Archives: What Are We Really Talking About’, paper presented at the CIRN Prato Community Informatics Conference, Monash Centre, Prato, Italy, 28–30 October 2013. At the same conference the previous year, Gilliland presented a framework that identifies ways of understanding the functions and mandates of community-based or -driven archives drawing from the idea that community archives are often developed in parallel to mainstream archives. Anne Gilliland, ‘Voice, Identity, Activism (VIA): A Community-Centric Framework for Approaching Archives and Recordkeeping’, Center for Information as Evidence, University of California Los Angeles, 2012.
52. The discipline list comes primarily from the Australian Research Council (ARC) database of research projects into community archives, rather than from the literature. Between 2001–18 over 100 unique ARC projects were funded where in the project summary text for words ‘community archive’, ‘community archives’, ‘community heritage’, ‘community history’, ‘digital preservation’ were found. It was also noted that several of the projects included the creation of community archives, either via creating an archive for an existing community or community organisation, such as RMIT University design scholars creating an online archive for Circus Oz. Other examples include Charles Darwin University’s A Living Archive of Aboriginal Languages and Victoria University’s Aboriginal History Archive.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Leisa Gibbons
Leisa Gibbons PhD is a lecturer in the Library, Archives, Records and Information Science program at Curtin University in Western Australia. Leisa’s teaching areas include archives, preservation, digital curation and GLAM convergence. Prior to arriving at Curtin in 2017, Leisa worked as an assistant professor at Kent State University in Ohio in the School of Library and Information Science. Leisa’s research areas include records continuum modelling, web and social media archives, and community and personal memory-making and archives.