Preserving our heritage

Members and friends along with current and former staff of the Library gathered recently to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the University of Melbourne Archives (UMA), a collection that extends over 18 kilometres – or the distance from its repository in Brunswick, across to the city and all the way to Brighton.

The collection, established in June 1960, is traced backed to Frank Strahan’s appointment as the inaugural University Archivist. Mr Strahan, an archivist-scholar-historian, had a collecting zeal and a passionate sense of purpose to preserve the nation’s heritage.

This passion – and Mr Strahan’s talent for communicating it – led to a rapidly growing collection, which was described in a review on the Archives’ 35th anniversary as ‘an asset unrivalled in Australia’.

Fifty years after its founding, the University’s archival holdings represent the largest paper-based non-government archive in Australia. The collections offer researchers at the University and beyond access to a rich array of materials and resources.

The University’s archivists today collect, manage and provide access to the historical records of the University, Victorian business, trade unions, community and cultural organisations, as well as the personal papers of many prominent individuals. Records date from the first years of the colony of Victoria until the present day and cover a vast field of endeavour.

Principal Archivist, Helen McLaughlin says it’s important to celebrate the collection’s contribution to academic and public research.

“We hold an extensive collection for Victorian businesses, trade unions and professional associations as well as community, women’s, peace and political organisations”, she says.

Records comprise a wide range of mostly unpublished material that includes correspondence, diaries, meeting minutes, research notes, sales and production data, financial records, newsletters, ephemera, plans, audio tapes, films, videos, photographs and objects.

One hundred and fifty guests attended the recent anniversary function held at University House and heard entertaining speeches delivered by the current chair of the Archives Advisory Board, Ian Renard, the Provost and acting Vice-Chancellor John Dewar, Professor Emeritus Chris Wallace-Crabbe, and the Library’s Collections Manager Jock Murphy.

A friend of Frank Strahan, Professor Wallace-Crabbe, shared amusing tales of the archivist’s sometimes unorthodox but always committed collecting style. Professor Wallace-Crabbe, a renowned poet and writer based at the University’s Australian Centre, has himself donated his extensive collection of papers to the collection.

Mr Strahan’s successors, Cecily Close and Michael Piggott, both now retired, were also in attendance at the celebration. Frank Strahan died in November 2002.

The University of Melbourne Archives is a part of the University Library and is housed off-site in a purpose-built repository in Dawson Street, Brunswick. Material can be ordered and accessed in the Cultural Collections Reading Room on the third floor of the Baillieu Library.

For more information visit the UMA’s website
www.lib.unimelb.edu.au/collections/archives/index.html.

To access the collection, contact the University of Melbourne Archives Cultural Collections Reading Room
8344 9893
archives@archives.unimelb.edu.au.