Michaela Hart is Digital Archivist at Department of Health and Human Services in Australia and Councillor for the Australian Society of Archivists.
I’m getting a little twitchy for travel, something I’m sure many of you are also feeling. I thought I’d take you on a little journey around Australia and see what the Australian archives community has been getting up to during these times.
The Australian Society of Archivists start our meetings with the following acknowledgement of country.
The Australian Society of Archivists acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the Lands from across Australia and the surrounding seas and recognise their continuing connection to land, water, culture and community. We pay our respects to the Elders past and present. We honour your local community traditions of caring for archives and culture through Country, through songs and stories.
In Adelaide in October 2019 the International Council on Archives Expert Group on Indigenous Matters and the National Archives of Australia held a summit, at which those attending signed the Tandanya – Adelaide Declaration. The declaration called on archives around the world to acknowledge and adopt the principles of the declaration including decolonising all archives, recognising Indigenous knowledges, and the remodelling of traditional archival principles. The ASA is committed to these principles and seek to identify the intersections between them and all our work especially digital preservation.
We held a panel in September discussing areas of relevance to support and activate the Adelaide Tandanya Declaration in an Australian context. The video, featuring speakers Lauren Booker, Rose Barrowcliffe and Prof. Sue McKemmish and Kirsten Thorpe is well worth a watch.
During Information Awareness Month 2020 the ASA launched some lunchbox sessions as a way of staying connected while we were in lockdown (those of us in Victoria anyway). The recordings are on the YouTube playlist : ASA Lunchbox Session Playlist .
For World Digital Preservation Day 2020 the amazing folks in our Victorian Branch made the world a smaller place during lockdown with this fantastic video featuring experts all around the world. They asked asked digital preservation experts about their experiences and their advice from many years working in the sector, you will see a few familiar faces I’m sure.
Never to be outdone by the Southern States our colleagues at the State Library of Queensland created this parody of Billie Eilish's Bad Guy. It's a tale of digital preservation woe from the perspective of a "bad file".
This has been a quick, and by no means exhaustive look at what we got up to ‘down under’ in 2020. We are thrilled to be a part of the Digital Preservation Coalition world and can’t wait to see what 2021 brings.