Strategic priority 1

Collection growth and development

Collection growth continued in line with our Collection Development Plan, following its refocus in 2018–2019. Accessioning materials that have been deposited, donated or acquired into the collection and creating the records and finding aids that allow them to be found and searched is essential in opening up the value of the collection to the community and to researchers. Notable examples of this work during the year included:

• arrangement and description of the papers of David Horton, the publisher of The Encyclopaedia of Aboriginal Australia and the AIATSIS languages map.
• arrangement and description of the papers of Marella Mission Farm, containing the administrative records of this ‘home’ in Kellyville (NSW) from the 1950s to the 1980s, including many personal records of children sent as NSW state wards.
• arrangement and description of Dermot Smyth’s papers relating to his transect study of Cape York ecology, part of his significant contribution to the study of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander land and sea management.
• accessioning and description of 4,516 images comprising the Pallottines (Tardun School) photographic collection, the final step in preparations to return material from this collection to former students of the school.
• accessioning the Howard Creamer collection of more than 2,500 photographic negatives taken while Creamer was working on the New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service survey of Aboriginal sacred and significant sites from 1973 to 1983—
  complementing the 33 hours of audio recordings that Creamer deposited with AIATSIS in the late 1970s and 1980s.
• accessioning the Alan Butcher collection, which features 293 colour transparencies (slides) taken during Butcher’s time working as a carpenter for the Uniting Church across Goulburn, Milingimbi and Elcho Islands between 1963 and 1970, documenting community life at various island missions.
• accessioning the Kimberley Aboriginal Law and Culture Centre audiovisual archive, which features 325 videocassettes and 112 audio cassettes documenting the history and cultural practices of the Kimberley region, recorded at Fitzroy Crossing and in the Kimberley region (WA) from 1984 to 2012.

The re-association of collections containing different media through the creation of composite finding aids has also been a priority, for collections such as:

• the manuscript and audio collections of ethnomusicologist Alice Moyle.
• the deposits of material by ethnomusicologists Richard Moyle and Linden Moyle.
• the collection of educationalist Julia Koppe from work in Queensland between the 1960s and 1990s, which included manuscript, photographic and audiovisual media. This collection also became the focus of a preliminary investigation into data visualisation as a potential means to make a collection more accessible for clients who prefer images rather than text, and to visibly reveal the connections and relationships within a mixed-media collection.
• Research to inform the exhibition Ngulla Wellamunagaa: Trees That Have Survived and Revived (National Museum of Australia (NMA)) drew on the AIATSIS collection and enriched it by extending and adding collection items, interpretive material and metadata.

Native title research

The Native Title Research Unit continued to support access to our collection for research by individuals, claimant groups, native title representative bodies, government departments and lawyers to assist in the native title claiming process. During 2019–2020 there were 58 requests for access to the collections to research native title claims. The service has also been opened to registered native title bodies corporate and the registered holders of native title, to support their native title and land management work.

The Native Title Research Unit also added to the collection in 2019–2020. The pilot stage of the Preserve, Strengthen and Renew project in Western Australia with the Karajarri Traditional Lands Association, the Kiwirrkurra community (via Desert Support Services) and the Wangka Maya Pilbara Aboriginal Language Centre contributed metadata for a previously undescribed photographic collection of over 400 images recorded with senior Karajarri traditional owners, and significant corrections to the Kiwirrkurra After 200 Years collection.

Materials from the Taungurung Land and Waters Decision Making Project were also offered to the collection. It is hoped that the Return of Native Title Materials project may offer some solutions in dealing with some of the historical access restrictions of native title and land claim based material already in the collection.

After major investments in digitisation equipment and digital infrastructure and storage over recent years, further investments in 2019–2020 were limited to upgrades to document scanning systems, with higher resolution and larger format capability, plus improvements to photographic studio lighting.

Physical storage was the priority in 2019–2020. Capacity in existing physical storage was nearly exhausted, and environmental emergencies across the year threatened the safety of the collection. Throughout the summer bushfires, the January 2020 Canberra hailstorm and the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, AIATSIS staff assessed the risks and took action to ensure the collection was not affected by threats including smoke and ash deposits, extreme heat, overloading of air-conditioning systems, water damage and mould outbreaks.

When the ACT Government declared a public health emergency due to COVID-19 on 16 March 2020, the Acton building was closed to the public and staff numbers in the building reduced. Controls were introduced to mitigate the risks arising from reduced human presence, such as increased pest activity, potential mould outbreaks and a secondary disaster (such as fire or flood) occurring when fewer staff trained in disaster response are present. Plans were made for safe handling of collection materials when public access is resumed. Such events are expected to become more prevalent over the next 10 years according to CSIRO (State of the Climate 2018), and we can expect an increased risk profile as a result. This is being addressed by expediting existing plans to move items to the new Mitchell repository and to rehouse collection materials.

We secured a six-year lease of a state-of-the-art vault at the National of Archives of Australia’s Mitchell repository. Collection material previously held off site has been relocated to the 580 square metre vault, relieving pressure on our Acton vaults and enabling safe storage and care of the growing collection for the next six years. The lease on this vault cannot be extended, so planning towards a long-term solution will continue.

In preparation for the move of collection material to the Mitchell storage facility, an audit of the Rare Book collection was undertaken. This was the first full audit of the Rare Book collection, which includes 3,752 books and 498 folios. The audit was intended to:

• physically account for items in the collection
• assess their condition and determine any action required for protection and preservation
• clarify the definition of a rare item in the context of our functions
• evaluate the reliability of catalogue and other records
• assess the security and risk profile
• improve practices and planning for access and handling, care and cultural safety
• establish a baseline of information that can be used for future surveys and work programs.

Alongside implementation of recommendations from the audit for managing and handling the Rare Book collection, random selections are being tested periodically to assess any changes in condition.

Digital Transformation Plan - Collections Transformation Program

In January 2020 we began the first phase of a Collections Transformation Program designed to:

• harness digital tools to better serve the collection and its users, with innovative systems that improve the speed and quality of access to the collection
• broaden and deepen audience reach by making the collection appropriately available by digital means, for both onsite and remote users
• improve intellectual control over the collections through the consistent application of established, specialised collection management and information standards, and systems designed for multi-format archives management.

The first research phase, from January to July, included desktop research; workshops to identify and prioritise requirements; engagement with peer organisations who have undertaken similar transformative programs; and consultation with archival, data science and digital preservation experts. The first Collections Transformation Strategy will be presented to the AIATSIS Council in December 2020, with initial scoping and a proposal to progressively enhance the accessibility of our collection through improvements in the digital collection control, preservation, and discoverability environments.

Digitisation program

Our engineering and digitisation teams continued to maintain, repair and operate equipment ranging from some of the very oldest recording and playback machinery, now considered antique, to the latest state-of-the art technology. This enables the oldest audiovisual and motion picture recordings to be played, and for these media, as well as images, documents and art objects, to be digitised for preservation and access.

The device developed by our engineers in 2018–2019 to automatically lubricate old and degraded cassette tapes is creating interest among other collecting bodies and was used by a visiting archive technician from PARADISEC (the Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures), a digital archive of records of some of the many small cultures and languages of the world. The device allowed them to replay some severely degraded tapes from their collections for digitisation and preservation.

We also completed the digitisation of all material currently in the collection on early reel-to-reel Sony ‘J’ format video tapes. We are one of the few organisations in Australia that still have a functioning Sony EIAJ format reel-to-reel video player. Our engineers rebuilt and modified it with modern components to enable the digitisation of this videotape format at very high quality. ‘J’ format was first released to the market 51 years ago, so this format was high risk and high priority. The several hundred items of ‘J’ format tapes have now been digitally preserved, such as 14 30-minute black-and-white recordings shot in 1981–1982 from Megan Morais’ collection of Yawulyu (women’s songs) recorded at Yuendumu (NT).

Film sound is also a vulnerable medium. Historically, commercial motion picture film cameras did not record audio directly onto the film stock, but onto a separate magnetic tape which would later be synchronised and combined by the film lab into a motion picture film with a corresponding soundtrack. This separate magnetic soundtrack was low cost and prone to deterioration. After a dedicated campaign over recent years, we have now preserved 94 per cent of the current holdings.

Discoverability and accessibility

Preparation of finding aids for all media continued to increase the searchability and discoverability of the collection. Progress in digitisation also contributed to greater accessibility, and saw some significant returns of material to community, such as the return of Tardun School records to former students in Geraldton.

All issues of the Aboriginal Publications Foundation magazine Identity were digitised in preparation for 15 July 2021, the 50th anniversary of its launch. In February 2020, a display featuring Identity was mounted in the Stanner Reading Room to coincide with the launch of the book Does the media fail Aboriginal political aspirations?: 45 years of news media reporting of key political moments. An online exhibition will be developed to promote and provide access to this collection in time for the anniversary.

Performance criterion: Collection growth

Performance measure: Percentage increase in collection growth from 2018–19 baseline

Target: Growth from 2018–2019 baseline

Outcome: Growth was seen across the collection in all media.

*Large donations of film received in 2019–2020 are still in process and will be included in subsequent years’ reporting.

Performance criterion: Collection accessibility

Performance measure: Number of requests met and items provided by source and location

Target: 1.5% increase in online collection discoverability and accessibility

2019-2020 results by media

Outcome: The target was greatly exceeded for catalogue records and photographic descriptions, but the number of new finding aids and audition sheets declined.

Performance criterion: Collection accessibility

Performance measure: Number of requests met and items provided by source and location

Target: 1.5% increase in online collection discoverability and accessibility

Outcome: Searches, enquiries and requests declined in all forms during 2019–2020 relative to 2018-2019.

Table 3a: Collection accessibility - number of collection items supplied by source of request

Number of collection items supplied by source of request

Table 3b: Collection accessibility - number of collection items supplied by location of requestor

Number of collection items supplied by location of requestor

Performance criterion: Collection accessibility

Performance measure: Proportion of requests actioned within 60 days (service standard)

Target: 100%

Performance criterion: Collection growth and accessibility

Performance measure: Proportion of collection digitised by format

Target: Increase from 2018–2019 baseline

Outcome: The proportion of collection digitised by format increased by 4.6%.