Book Section

Author

Smith, Colin

Title

Saving the archives of scientific and industrial research

In

Some sources for the history of Australian science: six papers presented at a workshop on the history of Australian science organized by the Australian academy of Science. 24-25 August 1982

Editor

Borchardt, D.H.

Imprint

History Project Incorporated, Kensington (N.S.W.), 1984, pp. 15-22

ISBN/ISSN

0949776181

Abstract

A good deal of attention is now being paid to the history of technology, of the environment, of scientific research and of invention. Studies in these areas will enrich and deepen our understanding of history in its more traditional aspects .

The archives of scientific and industrial research comprise many unpublished records such as the correspondence, diaries and notebooks of researchers; minutes of research committees; reports on problems to be solved and work in progress; and the records of deliberations about research policies and priorities. It is to such sources that we must go, and also to oral history, if we are to get behind the published record, which too often presents a bland facade of success stories, leaving out the failures, the doubts, the ulterior motives and other details that are often vital to penetrating historical interpretation . Yet these unique and irreplaceable records often exist (if they survive at all) under conditions of gross neglect and effective irretrievability, because our society either cannot or will not direct resources to the urgent task of seeking them out and rendering them safe, retrievable and available.

I take as my evidence of the extent of the task, the 1981 edition of a directory to Scientific and t echnical research centres in Australia, edited by I.A. Crump and published by CSIRO. I exclude, following Crump, the social sciences, but include centres of health and medical research, mathematics and architecture . I also exclude the archiving of numerical and other symbolic data gathered in the course of research, and the preservation of artefacts of research, and of specimens collected to assist research.

Related entries

Corporate Bodies

• Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Commonwealth of Australia (1949 - )

Related Published resources

isPartOf

• Borchardt, D. H. ed., Some sources for the history of Australian science: six papers presented at a workshop on the history of Australian science organized by the Australian academy of Science. 24-25 August 1982 (Kensington, N.S.W.: History Project Incorporated, 1984), 81 pp. Details