Published Resources Details

Conference Paper

Author
Sydenham, Diane
Title
Despair and Delight: the Historians' Search for Evidence
In
Recovering Science: Strategies and Models for the Past, Present and Future: Proceedings of a Conference Held at the University of Melbourne, October 1992
Editors
Tim Sherratt, Lisa Jooste and Rosanne Clayton
Imprint
Australian Science Archives Project, Canberra, 1995, pp. 109-114
Url
https://www.asap.unimelb.edu.au/confs/recovering/sydenham.htm
Subject
History of Australian Science - General
Format
Print
Description

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Abstract

Australian archival responsibilities and achievements lag far behind those of comparable economies. In some institutions in the United States, for example, researchers may enjoy the luxury of the archives remaining open six days each week, with the added advantage of extended evening hours in the summer. While State and Commonwealth records management authorities here are professionally staffed and take their responsibilities seriously (and I believe the situation with respect to staffing has improved dramatically over the past 10 years) they are invariably undermined by too few resources and too few senior bureaucrats who understand or appreciate the role of archives and good records management techniques. Government archives have frequently been either ignored, deliberately starved of funds, used as a repository for unsackable staff, or seen merely as window-dressing for politicians or public servants who set out to circumvent, consciously or unconsciously, the records management process. As has been found elsewhere, Freedom of Information legislation has had the effect of encouraging public servants to put very little on paper, to treat everything as a working document, or to conduct daily search-and-shred missions. Sometimes these strategies are quite innocent in that they are designed not to hide information, but simply to avoid the problem of having to archive it.

Source
Carlson 1996

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  • Recovering Science: Strategies and Models for the Past, Present and Future: Proceedings of a Conference Held at the University of Melbourne, October 1992 edited by Sherratt, Tim; Jooste, Lisa; Clayton, Rosanne (Canberra: Australian Science Archives Project, 1995), 124 pp, https://www.asap.unimelb.edu.au/confs/recovering/contents.htm. Details

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