UMA Bulletin
memory, gossip, detritus or entertainment? Are they
administration or do they belong with the arts, with libraries or with history?
University of Melbourne Archives has an unusual nature, as the archival institution for the University itself, and also as a distinctive collecting institution, holding the records of a wide range of enterprises and individuals and encouraging research.
The breadth of records matters, as documents are at their best when surrounded by other documents. The solitary document often refuses to account for itself. You can’t trust it to tell the truth or even to say anything useful at all. But bring other documents, other evidence, your particular knowledge and wisdom to it and it might just be a key to understanding. And that is why we have those long aisles of shelving and those endless runs of seemingly anonymous archival boxes whose contents may lie dormant and unscrutinised by researchers for years. They are there to give testimony, one day, when they are needed.
The keeping of archives in large repositories, as in the University of Melbourne Archives, seldom repays strict economic scrutiny if defined by the demonstrated making of profits. This again places archives into the cultural category, along with libraries, galleries and museums, which have to argue that they earn their keep in indirect and ultimately
immeasurable ways. It is possible and sensible to make a defence of the keeping of archives on the basis of the money you save, by good housekeeping if you like. You retain your corporate memory, you are efficient, you avoid expensive lawsuits perhaps.
But that is not the chief justification for keeping archives, and keeping them well.
There are some institutions that keep books, as archives keep documents, simply because they show provenance, scale, perspective, change. Unpredictably some of the documents will turn out to be essential,
maybe at a personal level, maybe to illuminate a hypothesis, maybe at a level that has economic meaning. How can you measure the goodwill that
UMA Bulletin, No. 28, January 2011 1
NEWS FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE ARCHIVES
www.lib.unimelb.edu.au/collections/archives No. 28, January 2011
continued page 2
Excerpts from the address given by Dr Andrew Lemon at the launch of the exhibition Primary Sources: 50 stories from 50 years of the Archives Wednesday 8 December 2010
I
n the week of Wikileaks we are reminded of the power and the politics of documents.1As a one-time archivist and as an historian I find myself inclined to anthropomorphise documents, to give them human characteristics and perhaps super-human too. Mild-mannered for the most part, documents have the power to make and break reputations, to tell truth and lies, to force us to confront our prejudices.In the biography, William Golding: The man who wrote Lord of the Flies, John Carey writes of Golding’s early fascination with all things ancient Egypt. In time the novelist had a moment of illumination in ‘his yearning for direct communication with the people of the past’:
I would give all the Egyptian treasures ever discovered [says Golding] for one cedar box of papyri. Documents are what count: they speak to you, and there are too few of them.2
Sometimes archivists and historical researchers have the opposite reaction: that there are too many of them. But better too many than the eternal silence when memory has been lost.
For the past century archivists have been arguing over, trying to define, where archives belong — both documents and the institutions in which they live. Do you file them, as it were, under H for housekeeping or under C for culture? Are they
1960 - 2010YEARS50ARCHIVESUNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE
1960 - 2010
50
YEARS ARCHIVESUNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE
UMA Bulletin
the University of Melbourne Archives has brought to the University, the scholars that have been attracted to study here and the scholarship that has resulted?
I will give my own testimony of the power of documents in UMA. One of the small collections consists of the business records of the defunct Melbourne goldsmiths James Steeth and Son. These are the people who made the annual Melbourne Cup trophy from just after the First World War until the death of James’s son Maurice in 1970. The contract then went (till 2000) to Maurice’s former apprentice, Fortunato Lucky Rocca, who you will still find in business as a goldsmith in Elgin Street, Carlton. After Maurice’s death the Steeth children deposited the company records in the University of Melbourne Archives chiefly, I think, to ensure that the family contribution to goldsmithing was not forgotten. For it is a fact that many items the Steeths made went into the world with the brand of the retailing jeweller on it, usually William Drummond and Co.
Steeth and Son had a lovely, eclectic trade, relying heavily on the Catholic Church for chalices and crucifixes, but also they made dog collars in silver and gold for greyhound racing trophies and gold wonders for horseracing prizes.
So it was through informal notes in sketchbooks and seemingly inconsequential jottings about weights and
dimensions, that I was able to collect and compare data to build the case ultimately to denounce as a fake a gold Melbourne Cup trophy brought to light by a Port Macquarie car dealer and purporting to be Phar Lap’s missing Melbourne Cup trophy from 1930, inscribed as such by forgery.
By matching this information with what might easily have been discarded as unimportant finance ledger entries at the Victoria Racing Club I was then able to build up a database that proved that some Melbourne Cup trophies, chiefly in the 1950s, were not made new at all but had been repurchased second- hand, had been stripped of their original engraving by repolishing and had been presented to unsuspecting owners as new. Two or more sets of records, with associated enquiry and research, came together to tell much of the story. In the case of Steeth’s notebooks, apparently arbitrary comments and numbers became imbued with immense significance.
Many of you may have heard the story now that one of those trophies turned out to have been recycled not just once, but twice, and has been three times a Melbourne Cup. And the most likely hypothesis is that this trophy, last presented in 1980, had started its career in 1930 and was the Phar Lap cup we had been looking for all along.3
Archives tantalise, and each new fact discovered, each new document, modifies a hypothesis. You must have found this in your own researches, whether at the highest academic levels or in your own efforts to climb your way through your family tree.
Last week I thought I had found a convict ancestor on the Calcutta, the first settlement ship at Sorrento in 1803 that went on to found Hobart. This week I discover instead he was on the other side, one of the oppressing soldiers who arrived to keep them in check in Van Diemen’s Land. What will I find next week?
Andrew Lemon President, Royal Historical Society, Victoria Member, Archives Advisory Board, UMA
Notes
1 In the first week of December 2010 the release of confidential US diplomatic cables through the internet site Wikileaks and the arrest in Britain of
‘Australian-born Wikileaks founder’ Julian Assange were the main items of news interest.
2 John Carey, William Golding: The man who wrote Lord of the Flies, London:
Faber and Faber, 2009 (2010), p. 210.
3 Andrew Lemon, ‘The Mystery of Phar Lap’s Cup’, in Stephen Howell (ed.), The Story of the Melbourne Cup: Australia’s greatest race, Melbourne: Slattery Media Group, 2010.
Primary Sources50 stories from 50 years of the ArchivesA Baillieu Library Exhibition drawing on the collections of the University of Melbourne Archives8 December 2010–25 February 2011Leigh Scott Gallery (first floor) and throughout theBaillieu Library1960 - 2010YEARS50ARCHIVESUNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE
Primary Sources
50 stories from 50 years of the Archives
A Baillieu Library Exhibition drawing on the collections of the University of Melbourne Archives 8 December 2010–25 February 2011 Leigh Scott Gallery (first floor) and throughout the Baillieu Library
1960 - 2010
50
YEARS ARCHIVESUNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE
www.lib.unimelb.edu.au/collections/archives/exhibitions/50th
Pages 1–3: Guests at the launch of the exhibition, Primary Sources: 50 stories from 50 years of the Archives, Wednesday 8 December 2010.
UMA Bulletin, No. 28, January 2011 3
Signed, Sealed, Delivered
C
ontained within the University of Melbourne Archives remit are many fine examples of stamped and sealed documents that are in some cases more then 100 years old.One of these is the travel document issued in 1898 to James William Barrett. Barrett was appointed Vice-Chancellor of the University of Melbourne in 1931 and Chancellor from 1934 to 1939. Active in public affairs, Barrett was particularly interested in the British Empire, Japanese affairs and the role of the University in public life. He travelled extensively, as evidenced by the many travel documents amongst his personal papers at UMA.
Seals and stamps come in a multitude of shapes, sizes, design and purpose. They are affixed to a document to finalise and formalise a transaction or to communicate further action.
Much can be discovered about the inner workings of business, government and organisations from their use. UMA holds a variety of stamps and seals, several of which are shown in an installation to accompany the exhibition Primary Sources.
Seals have been used for centuries and they are still in use today as a means of conferring authority on a record. One of the earliest known devices was the cylinder seal pressed into clay by the Mesopotamians from approximately 4000 BCE. Over the centuries, carved rings have doubled as official royal and personal private seals that were pressed into wax. Larger wax seals appear on degree certificates and other official documents.
In the modern business context the seal apparatus itself may be
Clockwise from top left: Seal ring, date unknown, Dickson Family collection, 1978.0117; Travel document, 1898, James William Barrett collection, 1975.0022 (item 18/1); Winding press, The Mutual Assurance Society of Victoria Ltd, UMA object collection.
constructed in the form of a press that embosses a document.
The Mutual Assurance Society of Victoria Ltd company seal is an example of a winding press style. This kind of embossed seal primarily appears on official documents such as testamurs, legal documents and official charters of state.
In contrast to seals, stamps are generally used in the daily life of government, a business or organisation — stamping a passport for example. Several of Foy and Gibson’s stamps on display convey the status of an activity such as ‘Foy and Gibson Pty Ltd. Paid. Goods to be sent’. Stamps are also used to brand an item or record, one example being a stamp from the Federated Felt Hatting and Allied Trades Employees Union of Australia, featuring their distinctive felt hat logo.
Melinda Barrie
Further reading
Jan Seaman Kelly, Forensic Examination of Rubber Stamps: A practical guide, Springfield, Ill.: C.C. Thomas, 2002.
The Form of Things
T
he University of Melbourne Archives is custodian to an amazing variety of archival forms. Rich historical resources come in all shapes and sizes. The tooled leather covers of volumes conceal meeting minutes while ledgers with locks hold the secrets to organisations and companies of yesteryear. Modest day books, massive wage ledgers, plans, files, photographs and film give insight into the workings of business. Personal diaries, sketches, notes and letters treasured in trunks and painted boxes provide us with a glimpse into the personal lives of those who have gone before us.As an adjunct to the exhibition Primary Sources, over 150 items from UMA’s collections have been installed in a case outside the Cultural Collections Reading Room in the Baillieu Library as a metaphor for the dense storage of over 16 km of records at UMA, and illustrating some of the diversity of forms that can be found in the archives. Selected and installed by student volunteer, Emily Cheah, the items focus on colour, design and detail and are transformed into objects of art.
Emily also created a lampshade featuring nearly 50 images from UMA collections to explore the form of archival material in another way. The lampshade illustrates how archival material that is stored in the dark becomes useful when brought into the light. Each researcher will select and use material in their own way, and so it is with the images used in this light piece which bends and projects images outwards awaiting interpretation by the viewer.
Emily Cheah and Sophie Garrett
Note
1 A.C. Grayling, The Form of Things: Essays on life, ideas and liberty in the twenty-first century, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2006.
And the Winner is ...
A
rchival collections may contain objects which have been accepted with a deposit of records because they are intrinsic to an understanding of the records or to maintain the integrity of a collection. Trophies straddle the border between record and object, and come in many shapes and sizes and materials.A small selection of trophies held by UMA has been displayed as part of the exhibition Primary Sources.
Trophies made of precious materials are intended to infer status or glory on the winner. Another style is made from a component of the contest they celebrate, such as a cricket ball used in a hat-trick, or oars used by a winning rowing crew. While some trophies are purely decorative, many are based on a functional item, the most common being a form of cup. One of the more unusual trophies at UMA is a lidded container for boiled eggs, which can be kept warm by a spirit lamp or tea light in the base. Sporting trophies frequently feature a figure in action, so too does one of the trophies in the AXA/National Mutual collection, this one being awarded to the state team achieving best superannuation sales results (illustrated).
Sophie Garrett
UMA Bulletin, No. 28, January 2011 5
Perpetual Team Trophy 1979–1983 (detail showing salesman), AXA/National Mutual collection, 2008.0046.
A Letter from Gallipoli — Podcast
D
uring both World Wars I and II, a program to support alumni, staff and students on active duty was in place at the State Teacher Training College and its various successors. Letters were sent out and many service personnel responded by writing to the principal, or simply to ‘College’.One response was written by William Hoggart to the principal of the College, Dr John Smyth.
This letter is included in the collection of the Melbourne College of Advanced Education (accession 1990.0001) held at UMA. Parts of Hoggart’s letter were read aloud at ANZAC day commemorations of the College for many years. As part of Primary Sources, the letter has been read in its entirety by Matthew Williams for a podcast that can be downloaded from the UMA website: www.lib.unimelb.edu.au/collections/
archives/exhibitions/50th/stories/gallipoli.html.
William Ross Hoggart of Middle Brighton enlisted in the AIF in September 1914 at the age of 38. As a teacher at Melbourne Grammar School he had been an officer in the Victorian Cadet Corps, and so was assigned the rank of Captain in the 14th Battalion, commanded by Colonel John Monash.
The 14th Battalion embarked for duty overseas in December 1914 and after a brief stop in Western Australia arrived in Egypt at the end of January. The Battalion became part of the New Zealand and Australian Division that landed at ANZAC Cove on the afternoon of 25 April 1915.
Observant, amusing, thoughtful, this letter is a fascinating insight into the mind of a soldier on the eve of battle.
Hoggart was killed in action just a few days after writing the letter. According to his service record, he was buried on Quinn’s Hill at Gallipoli, but the exact location of his grave is unknown. His personal effects were sent to his wife Rebecca and two daughters, Jean and Margery. The bodies of Australian soldiers were not repatriated.
Sophie Garrett
Finding Aids for the Victorian Women’s Liberation and Lesbian Feminist Archive
W
ho would have known that after studying the subject offered by an active feminist historian, ‘Herstory: A history of women’, in the South of France at the University of Avignon and training at Monash University, I would have been offered the opportunity of looking after a fraction of Victorian women’s history at UMA? My work as the project archivist for the Victorian Women’s Liberation and Lesbian Feminist Archive (VWLLFA) enhanced my abilities to manage, investigate and celebrate little victories: the tasks were challenging, the challenges exciting!At this point I would like to acknowledge the hard work which was done prior to my joining UMA’s staff. The main purpose of our work, under the supervision of the senior archivist, Sue Fairbanks, is to allow researchers to access this diverse range of material preserved within UMA. The VWLLFA is an umbrella collection that contains the records of 148 separate individuals and organisations associated with women’s liberation, feminist-based activism and the lesbian movement spanning the years 1950–2000. UMA is pleased to have recently received further donations, which proved to be more personal and include diaries of prominent figures of the movement. For each of the VWLLFA collections, lists and finding-aids were edited and attached to our collection management database and thus made available to the public on the UMA website. UMA staff are looking forward to raising interest in these unique collections within the community. It has been a privilege to be sharing the joy of such achievements with colleagues, stakeholders and volunteers.
Shirin Heinrich
UMA Bulletin, No. 28, January 2011 7
U
MA’s large collection is rich in stories, but with only exhibition space for 50 it was clear that some aspects of collections would need to be highlighted in other ways. The individual transactions of business, recorded in correspondence, invoices and receipts for goods purchased captured our imagination but did not fit the discrete story format.In the late 19th to mid-20th century elaborate, decorative letterheads were used by large and small businesses alike. To enhance the exhibition a frieze made from a selection of these letterheads was installed in the circular stairwell of the Baillieu Library in a way that recalls schema for wall decoration in Victorian and Edwardian times. The selection features plumbing, printing, undergarments, machinery, factories and a union, grocers, a fishmonger and biscuit makers, purveyors of household goods, musical instruments and bicycles from Melbourne and regional Victoria. Most of the businesses and their products are long gone, along with this style of letterhead.
To highlight the letterhead form, we first had to find them! Inspired by a few examples located by Jane Ellen, UMA staff began a search of organisation, business and personal collections. None of our databases record any hints that a collection might contain decorative letterheads, so the search was a manual one — opening hundreds of boxes one by one. This exercise not only brought letterheads to light, it had the significant advantage of increasing our knowledge of what is within many of UMA’s older collections.
Selected for their visual appeal and reproduced in an unexpected format, the frieze demonstrates that archival collections are rich resources for a wide range of purposes.
Denise Driver and Sophie Garrett
Creation of a Victorian Frieze
Farewell to Jane
In July 2010 we farewelled long-term staff member Jane Ellen.
Jane worked for many years in Special
Collections and in 2003
she became an official member of the UMA team when the Meanjin Archive was transferred into UMA custody. In 2006 she took on the role of Senior Archivist, Access and Outreach. Jane’s witty and wise contributions to the workplace have been sorely missed, however we wish her well in her future endeavours.
Kim Burrell
Kim came to UMA late in 2010 to work on several listing and processing projects.
With her background and previous
experience with National Archives Australia (NAA), Public Record Office Victoria (PROV) and previous work as a history teacher and working with architectural collections, she is
contributing enormously to UMA. Thus far she has worked on the Lucy Kerley
Principal Archivist’s Report
I
n December 2010, midway through our 50th anniversary year, we celebrated with the launch of the exhibition Primary Sources: 50 stories from 50 years of the Archives. Approximately 160 guests were present to see Ian Renard, Archives Advisory Board Chair, launch the exhibition, with Dr Andrew Lemon as guest speaker (see his speech on page 1).The evening was the culmination of many months of hard work by staff members;
all those who contributed are listed right.
We also launched the accompanying publication which contains the narratives of the 50 stories and brief histories of UMA by Michael Piggott and Cecily Close. The launch was held in the Leigh Scott Gallery in the Baillieu Library on the 8th of December. The exhibition will run until the end of February 2011, and for those who are unable to make it we have a virtual exhibition available on the UMA website.
Primary Sources
50 stories from 50 years of the Archives
Editors: Helen McLaughlin & Stephanie Jaehrling Design & Layout: Jacqui Barnett
Produced by: Publications, University of Melbourne Library
ISSN 1320 5838
The University of Melbourne Archives University of Melbourne, Victoria 3010, Australia
Opening Hours:
Mon, Tue, Thu, Fri: 9.30 am–5.30 pm Wed: 9.30 am–7.30 pm
Sat: 1.00 pm–5.00 pm by appointment
Phone: +61 (03) 8344 6848 Fax: +61 (03) 9347 8627
Email: [email protected] Website: www.lib.unimelb.edu.au/collections/archives
UMA Bulletin
Thank you to all whose contributions and support helped create the exhibition Primary Stories: 50 stories from 50 years of the Archivesand events that celebrated UMA’s anniversary in 2010:
Archives Advisory Board, Ian Renard, Chair Jacqui Barnett
Melinda Barrie Stacie Bobele Oliver Brown Kim Burrell Emily Cheah Denise Driver Erik Eklund Jane Ellen Sue Fairbanks Sophie Garrett Shirin Heinrich Bob Hocking Ella Holcombe Alan Holgate Lindsay Howe Stephanie Jaehrling Richard Knight Christian Kuhlmann Helen Laffin Rolf Linnestad Lee McCrae and team Susan Millard Minna Muhlen
Jock Murphy and staff of Cultural Collections Kylie Nickels
Luigi Pacione and team Property and Campus Services Fiona Ross
Andrew Stephenson Kerrianne Stone Jean Taylor Katie Wood
Helen McLaughlin, Principal Archivist
In October we were delighted to receive a grant from the R.E. Ross Trust to enable us to digitise and place on the web finding aids which are not digitally- born. This project is being managed by Susan Millard. We view this as the single most important step that can be taken to vastly improve access to collections.
Detailed lists and finding-aids to many of our most important and rarest collections are currently only available in hard copy.
Digitisation of these will support increased exposure and use of our rich and valuable collections, at a local and an international level.
Helen McLaughlin
National Gallery School Collection and is working on consolidating and completing the listing for the North Broken Hill Collection and is
contributing to the work on digitising hard-copy only lists to place online.
New University Archivist
The new University Archivist,
Dr Katrina Dean joined UMA on Tuesday 1 February. Katrina comes to us from the position of Curator of the History of Science Collection in the Department of Western Manuscripts at the British Library. Katrina has previously worked with the National Archives of Australia and briefly with the University’s Australian Science Archives Project (the fore-runner of the current eScholarship Research Centre). Katrina is the author of a number of scholarly articles in her areas of expertise. At the British Library she has been involved with a variety of projects such as the British Library Treasures Gallery, the Digital Lives Research Project, and digitising projects such as the Antarctic diaries of Robert Scott. She holds a PhD in the history and philosophy of science from the University of
Cambridge along with qualifications from the ANU and the University of Tasmania.
