Mapping the Socio-Technical Complexityof Australian Science:

From Archival Authoritiesto Networks of Contextual Information

Gavan McCarthyJoanne Evans

SUMMARY. This article examines the evolution of a national registerof the archives of science and technology in Australia and the related de-velopment of an archival informatics focused initially on people andtheir relationships to archival materials. The register was created in 1985as an in-house tool for the Australian Science Archives Project of theUniversity of Melbourne. Its potential as a public reference guide forhistorians of science and technology soon became apparent. The story ofthe computerisation and publication of the register provides the back-ground for the examination of the use of archival authority records as ameans of finding better ways of connecting archives with their potential

Gavan McCarthy, MA (Archives and Records), is Director of the Australian Scienceand Technology Heritage Centre, University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia (E-mail:gavanjm@unimelb.edu.au).

Joanne Evans is a PhD candidate at the School of Information Management andSystems, Monash University, Victoria, Australia (E-mail: jeeva2@student.monash.edu.au).

[Haworth co-indexing entry note]: “Mapping the Socio-Technical Complexity of Australian Science:From Archival Authorities to Networks of Contextual Information.” McCarthy, Gavan, and Joanne Evans.Co-published simultaneously in Journal of Archival Organization (The Haworth Information Press, an im-print of The Haworth Press) Vol. 5, No. 1/2, 2007, pp. 149-175; and: Respect for Authority: Authority Con-trol, Context Control, and Archival Description (ed: Jean Dryden) The Haworth Information Press, animprint of The Haworth Press, 2007, pp. 149-175. Single or multiple copies of this article are available for afee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service [1-800-HAWORTH, 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. (EST). E-mailaddress: docdelivery@haworthpress.com].

Available online at http://jao.haworthpress.com© 2007 by The Haworth Press. All rights reserved.

doi:10.1300/J201v05n01_08 149

users. The success of this approach led to demands from the communityfor a generic database tool using a framework based on the authoritativeentities associated with archival materials–an activity that we started tocall contextual information management. The Online Heritage ResourceManager (OHRM) was created in response to these calls, and the storyof its development as a tool for mapping networks of contextual informa-tion is told in the latter part of the article. doi:10.1300/J201v05n01_08[Article copies available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service:1-800-HAWORTH. E-mail address: <docdelivery@haworthpress.com> Website:<http://www.HaworthPress.com> © 2007 by The Haworth Press. All rightsreserved.]

KEYWORDS. Archival authority entities, contextual information man-agement, complex networks, archival outreach, Australian Science Ar-chives Project, (ASAP), Bright Sparcs

INTRODUCTION

This article documents a voyage of discovery associated with the de-velopment of a national register of the archives of science in Australiaand its subsequent transformation into a generic tool for the resource-based mapping of the contexts in which archives and records are createdand to which they relate over time. The article uses as its foundation anunpublished MA thesis by Gavan McCarthy that examined the develop-ment of the register during the period 1985-1993.1 The story is centredon the work of the Australian Science Archives Project (1985-1999)and its successor, the Australian Science and Technology Heritage Centre(1999-).

When operations commenced with the founding of the AustralianScience Archives Project (ASAP) at the University of Melbourne in1985, the use of well-structured information to represent people andcorporate bodies connected with archival records was an accepted prac-tice in Australia. This use of “archival authorities” to provide a frame-work of meaning was well understood, but this understanding in thepre-Web world was, as a rule, limited to the closed archival informationmanagement systems created by archival organisations and reposito-ries. Information about creators of records was attached to descriptionsof records in a framework of access and management based around therecords themselves. The archival authority record was necessary but an-cillary, and this thinking seemed to apply both in environments that had

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authority information embedded in records descriptions as well as inthose where they had been logically separated but linked.

The aim of the ASAP–to provide a range of national information ser-vices for an audience unfamiliar with archival practice and processes–led to an alternative approach to the use of the information collected byarchivists. The question that was asked most often of us and the ques-tion that we seemed to asking most regularly was “where are the recordsof a particular person?” So rather than put a catalogue of records at theheart of the system, our approach was to create a register of people (andother entities) and make this the key to how we documented and man-aged our information. Although not the first to attempt this, ASAP didpersist over a twenty year period in exploring the implications of thisapproach for the design of archival information interfaces and how thisinformation could be structured and stored in archival information man-agement systems. The development of the Web in 1993-1994 resultedin an appreciation of the potential of this approach to map complex con-textual environments and to provide a range of new services in a worldof open-networked information.

REGISTER OF THE ARCHIVESOF SCIENCE IN AUSTRALIA (RASA)

The idea to create the national register was not new.2 National regis-ters (or union catalogues as they were sometimes known) had becomepart of the post-World War II archival environment in many countriesincluding the United Kingdom, the United States, and Australia. How-ever, two factors made this register of the archives of science inAustralia novel:

• it was established by a newly-created, noncustodial archival or-ganisation without secure institutional funding (the AustralianScience Archives Project of the University of Melbourne) which,while locally-based, had a national mission,3 and

• it utilised an informatic framework that made information aboutpeople (or other non-record entities) the focus of the register ratherthan descriptions of records.

The Australian Science Archives Project (ASAP)

ASAP, with the appointment of Gavan McCarthy as its first staffmember, commenced operations in March 1985. It was established by

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Professor R. W. Home of the Department of History and Philosophy ofScience at the University of Melbourne who was committed to explor-ing and enabling work in the history of Australian science. The broadaim of the project at the outset was to assist in the preservation of the ar-chival records of science in Australia, as it was an area that tended to beoverlooked by many archives of the time. It was planned that its role inthe archival world would not duplicate the work of the established ar-chival institutions but complement the work already being undertaken.At the outset there was no mention of ASAP taking on the task of estab-lishing a national register of the archives of science in Australia.4

ASAP had three key characteristics which, when combined, made itdifferent from other archival institutions in Australia. First, it wasnoncustodial. This simply meant that the project did not establish a re-pository for the long-term preservation of archival materials. ASAPwas, therefore, also relieved of the responsibility of providing archival-quality records storage with access facilities for researchers. Further-more, it did not have to develop extensive in-house systems of archival,repository, and research management. The absence of such constraintsgave the project the opportunity to define a new niche in the Australianarchival landscape through the development of cooperative relation-ships with established archival bodies, with the general aim of workingtowards better documentation of, and access to, the records of scienceand technology in Australia.

Secondly, ASAP was endeavouring to be a truly national project de-spite the size of the country and the distributed nature of the practice ofscience in Australia. In essence, this meant that ASAP, because of itssmall size and limited resources, had to find novel ways of assistingother archival organisations to document the activities of science andtechnology within their jurisdiction. As Joan Warnow-Blewett stated,“[the project] had to do those things that others were not doing and notdo the things others should be doing.”5 An important function thatevolved for ASAP was conveying information and through this, ASAPcame to see itself as a nexus linking the three, mostly independent, net-works of scientists, historians and archivists.

Thirdly, while the field of interest of the project was originally con-ceived as being limited to science, this was later expanded to includetechnology. Similarly, the initial focus on personal records of scientistswas expanded to include archival materials from organisations, societ-ies, research institutes and other corporate bodies. This expanded areaof activity had the potential to include personal, academic, government,and business records. The general strategy adopted by ASAP early in its

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life was not to limit its charter unnecessarily. As the path ahead was un-known, it was felt that ASAP needed the freedom to evolve, to find itsniche within the scientific, historical, and archival environments. Withno similar projects in related fields that could constrain its activities, theproject had considerable scope to find its own way. All these factorscombined to allow it to explore new ideas, new ways of working andfind new sources of funding.

The Need for a National Register

It became apparent very early in the life of ASAP that to function ef-fectively it needed a register of where archives of science and technol-ogy were currently held, and which archives, museums or libraries hadmade archival arrangements with scientists and/or their families. Shortlyafter the project began, a list of important senior Australian scientistswas drawn up and approaches were made to some of them directly tofind out what plans they had for their records. This survey revealed thatsome parts of the Australian archival community were already quietlyworking in this area. It further indicated that the project needed to targetits activities within this existing framework of relationships betweenrecords-creators and archival institutions. It was envisioned that the bestway to maintain the information about this network of relationships wasa national register that documented creators (predominantly scientists),record collections, and custodians. Further analysis of the informaticsrequirements revealed that the register would need to contain informa-tion about the individuals, their families, and the organisations to whichthey were connected; descriptions of the records themselves at all sortsof levels and aggregations; and information about the institutions andindividuals holding the records, whether they be established archival re-positories or private individuals.

The idea that such a register was needed did not come entirely fromwithin ASAP. In 1966 Ann Mozley published her pioneering Guide tothe Manuscript Records of Australian Science, which for many yearswas the only source available to direct scholars of the history of Austra-lian science to relevant archival sources.6 It became a key reference forASAP in its early years even though it represented the archival preser-vation activities of previous generations. That it was substantiallyout-of-date had already become apparent in the late 1970s to the grow-ing but diverse group interested in the history of Australian science andtechnology.7 In 1979, the National Committee for the History and Phi-losophy of Science proposed that “the compilation of a union catalogue

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of source material” for the history of science in Australia should betaken up by the history of science community.8 The failure to implementthis suggestion was due partly to the lack of an organisation or institu-tion with the funds and/or interest to undertake such a project. Parochialinterests tended to dominate the thinking of the archival community,and the scientific community was driven by a progressive, forward-looking world view that was reluctant to see hard-earned research fund-ing directed towards archival activities. Perhaps the other two key fac-tors that worked against action at that time were the lack of readilyavailable, affordable data-handling tools, and the shortage of people inthe field with archival informatic skills.

The Manual Register

In those early days, most archival projects taken on by ASAP wereconcerned with the location, documentation, and preservation of thepersonal records of scientists. To assist with the management of theseprojects, a manual alphabetical filing system (by entity or authorityname) was developed. This register was extended to document the activi-ties of both ASAP and other organisations with respect to the records ofindividuals, scientific societies, research organisations, and projects.Biographical or historical notes, descriptions of any known collectionsof archival records and their locations, correspondence, personal notes,and any other documents of relevance were filed into the manual regis-ter. The work done by Mozley in the 1960s at the Australian Academy ofScience provided a useful starting point for the register.

Various attempts were made to improve access to the range of data inthe register through the creation of card indexes covering such things asdistribution of records by state, subject access by discipline, or whetherthe individual was a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science or theAustralian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering. Thesewere of limited success. An effort was even made to colour-code thefiles by state but this proved to be cumbersome, as it became clear thatthe relevant records were often located in a number of places in severalstates. It was obvious that the task would be much better handled by arelational database that could normalize the information and systemati-cally record the attributes of the entities and their associated records.However, at the time (1985-1986), ASAP did not have access to thenecessary technology.

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The View from Australian Studies

In May 1986, at the suggestion of Colin Smith (then the Archivist ofthe Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation andmember of the Advisory Board of ASAP), Ian McShane of the FederalGovernment’s Committee to Review Australian Studies in Tertiary Ed-ucation (CRASTE) contacted ASAP as part of an investigation into theconservation and availability of resources for those engaged in thebroad field of Australian studies.9 The committee wished “to establishthe nature and extent of archival material, the relationship between ar-chives and tertiary institutions, and the use which is made of archives inthe wider community.”10

CRASTE played an important role in extending significantly the ho-rizon of activities that ASAP could undertake by highlighting the lackof activity in other areas of the archives profession. In August 1986,Doreen Goodman published her project report for CRASTE, Databasesand Finding Aids for Australian Studies.11 Section 2 was devoted to Ar-chives and noted the patchwork nature of the archival landscape: thevarying degrees of sophistication of finding aids and other biblio-graphic tools, a scattering of documentation across archival institutionswith limited coordinating mechanisms, much unpublished knowledge,and the various attempts at national guides resulting in resources that werenot up-to-date or not comprehensive. Science and Technology was alsodiscussed in Section 4 noting that:

The science archives material being collected through ASAP aresources for various research fields other than science, and infor-mation on the existence of the finding aids that are being compiledneeds to be widely disseminated.12

The sequel to Goodman’s report was a report published by Ian McShanein April 1987, and simply titled Archives and Museums.13 This carefullyconsidered and well-presented report drew heavily on the experiencesand writings of many archivists working at the time. The influence ofthis report was evident in CRASTE’s final report, Windows onto Worlds.14

The finale to CRASTE’s interactions with the archival world was aseminar to examine the questions: “Archives as part of the national es-tate” and “Strategies for enhancing the liaison between archives and ter-tiary institutions.”15 In his informal report on the meeting McShane noted:

Two themes emerged in the discussions (1) enhancing the physicaland intellectual control of archival material, and enhancing its

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usefulness for teaching and research is directly dependent uponfunding increases (2) the existing profile of archival agencies isnot strong enough to compete for limited resources with other ar-eas of cultural resource management, or to secure substantial fund-ing increases through initiatives of individual agencies.16

Despite its sometimes intense efforts to establish within the archivalcommunity a sense of national mission and shared goals, CRASTE hadto wind up its activities without achieving much success in this area. Itleft the archivists to contemplate their isolation, both from each otherand from the other bodies dealing with cultural resources. Why this wasso was not immediately apparent to the outsider. The reasons were verylikely disguised by the deeply embedded complex historic issues sur-rounding the emergence of the archives profession in Australia and theobscured politics of the continuing discourse.

Chris Hurley, the Keeper of Public Records in Victoria at the time,submitted a report to the Australian Council of Archives in 1987 on na-tional standardisation, which, amongst other issues, discussed “the im-plications of standardisation for the development of the proposed NationalRegister of Archives in Australia.”17 By 1987, ASAP had become amember of the Australian Council of Archives, the first noncustodialbody to be admitted. The project staff were therefore aware of and en-gaged in the archival community discussions surrounding the need for anational register. This discussion was further complicated by the factthat maintaining a national register had been stipulated as a function ofthe Australian Archives in the Archives Act 1983.18 However, the Aus-tralian Archives had shown no inclination to act on this obligation.Without a clear mandate or leadership, the response of the AustralianCouncil of Archives to Hurley’s report was predictably apathetic anddisinterested. In his follow-up article in Archives and Manuscripts,Hurley noted the difficulty the archival community was having in comingto terms with the idea of working cooperatively.19 In response, ASAPdecided to develop its own national register of archives of science as itrealised that nobody else would take on the task or provide the broaderframework in which it could be established.

ASAP’s vision, which was influenced by the work of Helen Samuelson documentation strategies,20 was to document all records of sciencein all repositories in Australia. In that way it could become a tool forhistorians, archivists, and scientists and fulfil a number of functions. Itwould help:

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• historians to locate sources for their studies;• archivists to understand a little better how their collections, series

or sets of records of science fitted into the national picture, andtherefore to appraise records and focus collection developmentprogrammes;

• scientists to locate records, particularly experimental and observa-tional data, that may have a bearing on current research; and

• ASAP and other archives to identify gaps in the documentary recordso that it could best apply available funds to areas that were poorlycovered.

By August 1987, ASAP had a much stronger notion of the role a pub-lic national register of the archives of science could play in the local en-vironment, either as a computerised database or in published form. Itwas clear that the Australian Studies community was looking for thesetypes of resources and saw them as necessary tools for the promotion ofAustralian Studies both here and overseas. And furthermore it seemedpossible to undertake such a venture without stepping on archival insti-tutional toes. The need and the motivation had been established; whatremained to be found was the funding that would allow a publicly avail-able national register of the archives of science to become a reality.

Computerisation

In September 1987, CRASTE offered ASAP AU$33,590 for the ex-pansion of the manual register with a view to publishing, in book form,an updated version of Mozley’s Guide. It was understood from the out-set that the grant did not represent sufficient funding to see the registerproject through to completion, but CRASTE was happy to provide theseeding funds to get the project up and running. The primary conditionof the grant was that the monies be spent by the end of June 1988.21

Things had to move quickly.There was not time to thoroughly investigate all possible models and

scenarios, so the register project focused on the immediate tasks andused the best tools at hand to work towards its longer-term goals. Thegeneral principles applied were that the whole process should be able tobe managed internally and not be reliant on external experts, that what-ever digital systems were adopted should be open to change and devel-opment, that the informatic structures be standards-based (as far aspossible), and that the data should be able to migrate easily to new systemsas required.

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The funding limitations meant the scope of the register project had tobe constrained, but the long-term vision of the register as a comprehen-sive database of information about all archives of science and technol-ogy in Australia was always in the background. This ideal still seemed along way off–an almost private vision that was only acknowledged incasual conversation.

The aim of the register project was to produce a book. Initially, littlethought was given to the long-term role the data might play in the archi-val or heritage worlds more generally; the aim was simply to collect asmuch information about the archives of science in Australia as possibleand present it in a form that would be useful to researchers. The inten-tion, due to the influence of CRASTE, was not to produce a generic ar-chival guide but to produce a guide that would be specifically targeted at“users.” As ASAP was based in an academic department, its perspectivehad tended to become that of the researcher, an outsider of the archives,a user rather than a custodian. The project therefore looked beyond thearchival discourse for inspiration and direction on the use of descriptivestandards and standardized communication formats. (However, that isnot to say that the influential archival standards of the time did not playan important role in the development of the informatics of the register.)

During a trip to the United States in 1986, Gavan McCarthy, the projectsenior archivist, had the opportunity to inspect and discuss the workbeing done on the MARC-AMC format by leading archivists in Boston,including Helen Samuels and Clark Elliott, and Joan Warnow-Blewettin New York. They were investigating the broad idea of using theMARC-AMC format to act as a “front-end” to detailed in-house findingaids.22 This idea had some appeal as it provided a potential mechanismwhereby collection-level information could be readily communicatedbetween interested parties and created an environment where it waspossible to conceive of the establishment of national and even interna-tional registers. To our knowledge, the MARC-AMC format was notbeing used in Australia at that time, although it was being considered bythe National Library of Australia as the means of placing informationabout its own manuscript holdings on the Australian Bibliographic Net-work. The Australian archival community was sceptical about its intro-duction and consequently it did not appear as a politically or practicallyfeasible option for the register project.

A number of guides from the “union-catalogue” genre from Australiaand overseas were examined. Important assistance was received fromJoyce Bedi of the IEEE, Center for the History of Electrical Engineering inNew York, who was at that time finishing work on Sources in Electrical

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History: Archives and Manuscript Collections in U.S. Repositories.23

They were using dBASE III plus to manage their database, a factor thatinfluenced the project decision to use the database management software.24

However, the print format that most influenced the way the data wasstructured came from The Manuscript Papers of British Scientists1600-1940.25 The aim of the British guide was to bring together descrip-tions of records relating to specific British scientists that were distrib-uted in archives and libraries throughout the world. The key variablewas that for each scientist it was more than likely that relevant recordswould be found in a number of locations. However, the assumption wasthat the primary and most useful access point to the records for the re-searchers was through the name of the scientist. The aim of the guidewas not to describe the collections of records in any absolute sense butto document them from a particular frame of reference, such as that ofthe scientist as either the creator or as a primary subject of the records.

As a result of these influences, ASAP decided to divide its informa-tion for its register into the following three categories, and to hold thatinformation in three separate but related computer database files:

• Context–Biographical or historical information about people, or-ganisations, projects or any other agency that was involved in thecreation, accumulation, or handling of records relating to somescientific function or activity

• Records–Descriptions of the records relating to the people, or-ganisations, etc. mentioned above, held in specific locations whetherin established repositories or in private hands

• Custody–Location and contact details of the institutions or indi-viduals holding the records.

Initial data or record structures were created for each of these data-base files which were subsequently amended and refined as the infor-mation was gathered and prepared for the database. It was anticipatedthat the output for the publisher would be created by combining the in-formation from these database files in the required format. In this senseit was a standard relational database approach to the informatic issues.

Two decisions, taken consciously at the time (that may have beenoutside the mainstream of accepted practice of relational database man-agement) were that:

• each data file should have enough information in each record tomake it self-explanatory (i.e., it was internally coherent) and, re-lated to that,

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• full text would be used at all times (i.e., the data would communi-cate directly with the user without recourse to explanatory keys orsystem-based scripts that decoded the data).

At the time, large disk storage on personal computers was not readilyavailable or affordable so data minimisation practices were common.Codes and abbreviations were often used in place of full text and the re-lated data files were structured to minimise data repetition or redun-dancy. However, given the relatively small size projected for the registerin its early years, it was not felt necessary to be constrained by this prac-tice. These decisions were affirmed in later years as the data was able tobe exported with relative ease to other systems and the output proved tobe usable by a wide range of users.

As it happened, the decision to separate information about context,records, and custody linked the database design conceptually with the“series system” that had been the foundation of much Australian archi-val practice since the 1970s. In the series system, as presented by Scottand others,26 the series became a key unit of archival management andthe focus of description, rather than the “item” or the “record group.”More importantly, however, information about the creator(s) of the series,i.e., the archival provenance, was recorded independently of the recordsdescription, and the links (in the form of defined relationships) betweenthe creator(s) (or the archival authorities) and the records were docu-mented as part of the system and represented in finding aids as required.This idea of separating information about records from informationabout context was an accepted part of the archival practice in whichASAP was establishing itself. It was not regarded as unusual although itwas conceptually at odds, though not incommensurable with, most ofthe union catalogue models, in particular the MARC-AMC format.

Provenance in a Broader Context

As ASAP was working on the register, Professor R. W. Home wascollecting information for his publication Physics in Australia to 1945:Bibliography and Biographical Register.27 This project assembled sum-mary biographical information in a Who’s Who style, including a list ofeach person’s physics-related publications in chronological order. Itwas decided to make the most of this opportunity to share data, so allphysicists captured by this project were added to the register of the ar-chives of science in Australia database (RASA), whether or not therewere known archival records. The other discipline well covered in this

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way early in the project was entomology because of the work of A. E.Musgrave of the Australian Museum in the early twentieth century.28

The door was thereby opened for the register to play a wider role thanjust being a catalogue of scientists with known archival records. It hadthe potential to become a tool that could be used to understand the docu-mentation of a whole discipline within Australia. Subsequent experi-ence has shown that users of the register not only found it helpful toknow what records existed and where, but also what other people mayhave been involved in the field, and whether there were records relatedto their work. It may be crucially important in structuring researchprogrammes to know that a person’s or an organisation’s records orparts of their records have been destroyed, are not publicly available, orthat there is no public knowledge of the existence of materials.

This expansion of scope created the potential for the further develop-ment of the register as funds would allow. One possibility, proposedlater by the Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Soci-eties, was to capture information about the matrix of record-creatorsthrough an industry-based approach.29 For the register to be able to dealwith this more complicated but possibly important approach, it wouldneed to develop its ability to handle information about the functions oforganisations and map complex relationships between all the entities inthe database (e.g., archival authorities, other context entities, records,and custodians).

Variability in Records Descriptions

Allied with the growing understanding of how to utilise contextual(or archival authority) information was the need to develop protocolsfor handling the information about records–the records descriptions. Itwas clear early on that existing published descriptions of archival hold-ings could not be used with confidence because the quality, style, andlevel of description was so varied–not just between, but within institu-tions. This has proved to be one of the key challenges facing the creationof unified or even linked archival practice. Therefore, to ensure the con-sistency and quality of the data, it was deemed necessary to rewrite all thedescriptions that would go into the database. It also meant the projectwas clearly responsible for any errors. Furthermore, given the resourcepressure faced by most archival institutions with which we were work-ing, it was not realistic to expect them to write the entries for the registerdatabase. All the register project expected of them was access to pub-licly available finding aids and, if necessary, to the records themselves.

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Another important issue, which interestingly was not directly linkedto the lack of standards for describing collections or series of records,was a desire from the register project to summarise all the major sets ofrecords that had some connection with each person or agency registered inthe database. This directly influenced the way we constructed the recordsdescriptions and the information we decided to include or leave out. Ourfocus on the purpose and audience of our register determined both whatwe said about the scientists and about their records. In the simplest casesthere was a one-to-one relationship between a person and their set ofpersonal records, but to have only presented these instances would havedrastically skewed the picture and significantly understated the depth ofmaterials available for many scientists in the register. There was a needto capture more complex links or mappings between the informationabout context entities and the information about records.

Perhaps the most dramatic example involved the records of Ferdinandvon Mueller, one of Australia’s most important nineteenth-century sci-entists. The complete set of records dealing with his employment asVictorian Government Botanist and director of the Melbourne BotanicGardens was destroyed in the 1930s. This collection included tens ofthousands of letters covering the period from the 1860s through to hisdeath in 1896 and included correspondence with many well known in-ternational scientists of the period. However, despite there not being asubstantial set of personal documents recorded under his own name,thousands of his letters existed in other collections. If the project had notattempted to record the distributed nature of Mueller’s records in ar-chives, libraries, and museums throughout Australia, the register wouldhave been a much poorer tool for researchers and would have failed toreflect the actual resources available. Clearly, it was not realistic to at-tempt to make every possible cross-reference in the first instance, but ifthe information was available and the reference was to a significantbody of records, the appropriate entries were made in the database. Itwas fortunate that another R. W. Home project, the Mueller Correspon-dence Project, had commenced operations in 1987 so not only could theregister help them with information that had been discovered about thelocation of records, but the Mueller Correspondence Project was ablesubsequently to confirm the information already collected.30 Anotheruseful symbiotic relationship was established.

In archival descriptive practice, part of the role of information aboutprovenance (the context entities or archival authorities) is to help ex-plain the existence of records and provide a framework in which theycan be meaningfully interpreted. However, the register was attempting

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to do more than just provide the framework for accessing and under-standing records. As a consequence, the level and depth at which eachdescription of a set of records was made was not as critical as it mighthave been in a more records-centric framework. If it was judged that aset of records was worth putting into the register, it did not matter if it re-ferred to a single letter within a much larger series, the holdings of acomplete repository, or computer tapes holding terabytes of observa-tional data. Appropriate levels of description were found for each caseusing the recursive elements required for the description of any set ofrecords no matter how large or in what format they might be. For projectpurposes, these key elements included: title and content summary, con-tent date range, quantity, custodian, reference control codes, record for-mats, finding aids, and access.

Focusing of Outputs

At some point in this process a subtle change occurred in the name ofthe register, from its CRASTE embodiment (Register of Australian Sci-ence Archives) to the Register of the Archives of Science in Australia,which more closely matched the title of the proposed print guide. Thepurpose of the name change was to indicate that the scope was not re-stricted to the archives of that problematic concept ‘Australian science,’(whether these were held in Australia or elsewhere) but that the focuswas truly on the archives of science that happened to have ended up inthe custody of Australian repositories or private hands.31

The intense work done on the project over the previous nine monthscame to a halt on 30 June 1988 when the funding ended, but by that timethe register, as an internal tool for use within ASAP, had been radicallyenhanced. It was fortuitous that a project being run through the NationalLibrary of Australia, the Australian Historic Records Search, was alsoactive during this period.32 The resultant collaboration enabled a ques-tionnaire to be mailed to a large number of leading Australian scientists,and the subsequent response revealed some notable archival collectionsin private hands.

There was confidence that sufficient funds would be found to con-tinue the register project in 1989 and to restore the scope of the registerto its original intent to “include information about the records of scien-tific societies and research organisations . . . thus allowing for a morecomprehensive picture of the archives of science in Australia to be pro-duced and made available to researchers, archivists, librarians and pol-icy makers.”33 The understanding of the register had come a long way

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from the limited view of a year earlier but it would be fair to say that thedepth of knowledge that came from the mapping of provenance (con-text) was only just starting to be appreciated. Internally, the register wasstarting to be understood as more than a vehicle for describing recordsand noting their locations. It had become a tool with the potential to mapthe operational environment of Australian science, the networks of cre-ators, and the broader socio-technical context in which that science wasconducted.34

Although further funds were not immediately forthcoming, in theearly 1990s the National Library of Australia and the Monash Univer-sity National Centre for Australian Studies were able to contributefunds that allowed parts of the register to be published concurrently inbook form (the Guide)35 and in digital format in free online databases ontwo separate public information networks. These latter two forms weresubsequently superseded in May 1994 when the register was publishedin its entirety on the Web as Bright Sparcs.36 Although representing im-portant milestones, none of the above outputs did much to reach thebroader audience with which we hope to connect. The impact of ourwork was limited, and the limitations of print technology were particu-larly frustrating.

CREATING A GENERIC CONTEXT INFORMATIONMANAGEMENT SYSTEM

Finding the Public

In 1994 Tim Sherratt, in the newly formed ASAP Canberra Office,following growing concerns about the future of dBASE, migrated theregister to Microsoft Access. This move was further stimulated by theemergence of hypertext markup language (HTML) and the World WideWeb as an information communication technology of promise and ex-citement. A series of output protocols and programming scripts was de-vised to take the data from the register and, by passing it through a seriesof templates, create a set or graph of HTML pages that could bemounted on a Web server. Even at this stage this was an ambitious useof the technology, as the resultant set of pages comprised many thou-sands of systematically interlinked individual pages sharing commongraphics, colours, and structure. The master database was separate fromthe output and the Web output was generated and uploaded to the Webserver on a regular basis.

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At the time this was a very exciting achievement for an organisationof just a few people. ASAP was able to share knowledge gathered overmany years about the archives and history of Australian science andtechnology on a worldwide stage. However, two developmental chal-lenges quickly came to the fore. First, while information about context(in particular people, and to a lesser extent, information about records)remained stable over time, information about custody and locationproved to be more problematic. Addresses changed, phone numberschanged, records were transferred to new places, and indeed any num-ber of conceivable changes started to emerge and had to be managed.Shortly after, the Australian Society of Archivists, with influence fromASAP, decided to place its Directory of Archives in Australia on theWeb in a way that ensured that each repository or organisation had aunique Web page (based on a unique identifying code) that could belinked to directly.37 As a result the informatics and output scripts forBright Sparcs were enhanced to enable bypassing the register’s inter-nally held information about custody (or repositories) and a link (orWeb citation) made directly to the online ASA Directory, where appro-priate. This act of systematically linking two independent national reg-isters was an important step towards developing a national informationinfrastructure to support archival practice and historical research.

During the same period, the mid-1990s, it was decided to further en-hance the informatics underpinning Bright Sparcs to incorporate thepublished (traditional and online) literature that dealt with the history ofAustralian science and technology. This development was made possi-ble by the existence of a number of print-based bibliographies that couldbe digitised and merged to create a unified online bibliography of thehistory of Australian science and technology. The most important sourcewas the annual bibliography from the journal Historical Records ofAustralian Science, which was compiled under the direction of Profes-sor R. W. Home.38 The overall vision for Bright Sparcs had now grownto include all the principle sources of knowledge that were producedand managed by the archival, scientific and historical communities.

The popularity of Bright Sparcs exceeded all expectations and indi-cated that there was a significant latent interest in history of Australianscience and technology in the population at large that had not been ad-dressed through print technologies. Its growth in usage was at least par-allel to the growth of Web users, and feedback was received from placesas far away as Iceland. Indeed, as a “brand,” Bright Sparcs becamemuch more widely known than ASAP or the people who maintainedand developed it. By the end of the 1990s there were increasing requests

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from a range of organisations and people asking how they could build a“Bright Sparcs” for their particular area.

The Online Heritage Resource Manager, 1999-2003

It was known that the creation of a generic database management toolbased on Bright Sparcs would be no trivial exercise. Substantial fund-ing would be required to pick the system apart, undertake a review ofboth the system and the informatics, develop use-case scenarios, andbuild a new system. Developments in Web technologies and increasedinterest in the standardisation of archival authority records from a de-scriptive perspective and from a mark-up perspective all added com-plexity, but also justification that this was a task worth undertaking.39

In 1999, two projects came together that made it possible to take thedatabase behind Bright Sparcs and start the evolution of a generic rela-tional database tool. First, the Francis Bourke Textile Resource Centreat the RMIT University in Melbourne, with funding from the FederalGovernment, engaged us to help build a “Bright Sparcs” for the Austra-lian fashion and textile domain.40 And second, funding was receivedfrom the Australian Research Council through the Academy of Techno-logical Sciences and Engineering to convert the print publication Tech-nology in Australia 1788-1988 into a full-text online resource.41 Thisproject included the creation of Australian Science at Work, a registersimilar to Bright Sparcs but covering all entities except people.42 In thiscase it was mainly organisations. In hindsight, it would have seemedsensible to include these entities in Bright Sparcs but for various rea-sons of project funding, deadlines, and the complexity of the next levelof system development involved, it was not feasible to meld the two atthe context level even though they shared access to the same archivaland published resources data tables.

By this time Joanne Evans had become the resident Microsoft Accessexpert and had developed significant systems analysis and program-ming skills through work on the ASAP archival management databasesystem.43 The first task was to analyse the International Council on Ar-chives standard for archival authority records, ISAAR(CPF), and look atwhat the standard was saying about the data that should be recorded inauthority records for persons, corporate bodies and families.44 Ratherthan just altering the structure used in Bright Sparcs, it was decided tocreate a new structure that the existing data could be mapped into.

This analysis of ISAAR(CPF) did not simply mean creating a table thathad fields for each of the descriptive elements; rather it led to devising a

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data structure that would store the data efficiently at the logical level.From this, an ISAAR(CPF)-compliant description could then be ex-tracted as required. And again, it was also about listening to what PeterScott, Chris Hurley and others had to say about records-creating entitymapping and relationship modelling.

The result was the context entity (that could also act in the more lim-ited sense as an archival authority record) in the first version of the On-line Heritage Resource Manager (OHRM).45 Information about theseentities was recorded in the following three data sets:

1. Entity–which stored attributes of an entity including: a uniqueidentifier, name, dates, place, descriptive text, and occupations

2. Related Entity–which stored information about relationships be-tween entities including: type of relationship, dates, place, and de-scription

3. Entity Events–which stored information about events in an en-tity’s life including: type, date, place, and description. Althoughthis table was created in the first version of the OHRM, it was anumber of years before this was utilised, for example, through theBright Sparcs project, Where are the Women in Australian Sci-ence?46

The core authority record was linked via a relationship table to a data ta-ble that captured information about relevant archival resources in an In-ternational Council on Archives ISAD(G)-compliant structure.47 Thecore authority record was also linked via a relationship table to a data ta-ble that captured information about relevant published resources in astructure influenced by the International Federation of Library Associa-tions’ work on functional requirements for bibliographic records.48 Thislatter table was designed for managing the citation of published re-sources as distinct from the cataloguing of these items as would be donein a library system. This was a subtle but important distinction as it re-flected the intended purpose of the OHRM as a knowledge mappingtool in an open network environment rather than a cataloguing tool reg-istering materials in a closed information world.

From the experience of developing and maintaining Bright Sparcs,users of the OHRM were encouraged to adopt a workflow practicebased on maintaining three forms of information or data relating to theirfield of interest. The first form was physical and electronic files in whichinformation about entities and resources could be collated as discovered,

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and from which descriptive information about entities, resources, andtheir interrelationships was extracted into the computer database. Thesecond was a relational database that would hold all the information thatwas deemed suitable for publication. The third form consisted of twoprogrammed outputs from the database as a set of HTML pages suitablefor direct mounting on the Web and a marked-up version of the datasuitable for import into a Web-accessible database.

One key aspect of the OHRM development project was the decisionto separate the systems files containing the scripts and programmingcode from the data files. This meant that as the system continued to evolve,bugs eliminated, and new functionality added, it was relatively easy toreplace the system file without affecting the data files. However, contin-uous evolution and development using actual data from real clients withspecific needs meant that structural changes to the data tables were in-evitable. The version numbers allocated to the OHRM were used to re-flect the developments that resulted in significant changes to the underlyinginformatics. A special migration tool was developed to streamline theprocess of structural updating.

By 2003, we had come to view the OHRM as a context-based re-source discovery and access system that, from an archival perspective,linked within one system the creators of records with their archival andheritage resources, and their published materials. Perhaps one of themost significant advances was the ability to define and map relation-ships between entities as required, and to not be restricted to a prede-fined limited set of relationships. The greatest disappointment for theAustralian Science and Technology Heritage Centre (Austehc)* was that,due to lack of funding, it was not able to systematically work throughBright Sparcs and create those relationships. It was only possible to cre-ate a few examples to demonstrate how it could work.

The Online Heritage Resource Manager Version IV and Beyond

In recent years, three collaborative projects have provided fundingthat have enabled the developments of OHRM version IV (released2004) and version V (released 2006). What was initially surprising wasthat none of these projects directly involved archivists but were basedaround the needs of academic humanities researchers. It is interesting tonote that these investigators found an archival context entity modelmost useful for mapping complex knowledge spaces that had hithertobeen all but impossible to comprehend.

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The first of these is Agreements, Treaties and Negotiated Settlementswith Indigenous Peoples in Settler States, an Australian Research Coun-cil funded project managed by Indigenous Studies at the University ofMelbourne.49 This project illustrates how a complex knowledge spacecan be broken up into a navigable network of entities and relationships.It involves extending the entity model beyond corporate bodies, persons,and families. This is not to add other types of record-creating entitiesbut to add entities that represent concepts or other actual or conceptualconstructs that can add meaning to a particular domain.

For this project, the key focus was to document and describe legalagreements that had been made with indigenous people. What has beenexciting is to see how the related entity structure has worked to revealthe network of relationships associated with a particular agreement. Itenables the researchers to document an inordinately complex reality bybreaking it down into a set of binary relationships. This creates a navi-gable knowledge space that has multiple indexing and discovery pointsthat users can explore just by following links. Initially launched June 2003,eighteen months ahead of schedule and with some very positive feed-back on its usability, it has been the project that best represents the ex-tensible foundations of the informatics and the impact they can have inpublic arena. Using the OHRM has meant that the research staff wereable to focus on content rather than systems development, so they canmake their database available early in the life of their project. The OHRMis thus allowing researchers to be researchers rather than struggling assystems developers.

The second collaboration which had a big impact on the developmentof OHRM Version V was the Chinese-Australian Historical Images inAustralia project.50 This is another Australian Research Council fundedproject which enabled the development of digital object managementand functionality. From the beginnings of Bright Sparcs, a “gallery”function was included to allow the addition of images and other multi-media objects to the Web pages. However, it was simplistic and hadlimitations. This project provided the opportunity to create a system thatcould capture complex relationships between objects, archival collec-tions, publications, and context entities. Again, at the outset of this worka search was undertaken to locate appropriate standards; the museumliterature was useful in this regard. As there seemed to be a plethora ofstandards initiatives, working out which one(s) to follow, or whetherthere was one which covered the citation of digital objects, proved chal-lenging. What was revealed clearly was that digital objects that come outof archival collections need to be linked into their associated contextual

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framework. That a digital object (or indeed any information object) mayhave multiple relationships with other manifestations of itself as well aswith archival collections, published resources, and associated contex-tual entities; and that these things may already be related and there mayalso be second and higher order relationships, all create a complex net-work that challenges interface design and usability. A guiding principlethat emerged from this work was the importance of articulating the pur-pose and the intended audience of the project to constrain the range ofentities and relationships and make sure they remain within manageablebounds.

A third project that focuses on developing an archival resource dis-covery service has been undertaken with the Australian Women’s Ar-chive Project. This project, which was modeled on the AustralianScience Archives Project, was established as a collaborative venture be-tween the National Foundation for Australian Women, the Departmentof History at the University of Melbourne, and Austehc.51 This projecthas been important from a developmental sense as it has enabled thetesting of content management protocols in a significantly different areaand with staff who are new to this way of managing information.

Furthermore, Joanne Evans has been using the OHRM to explore therecord-keeping metadata literature for her doctoral dissertation. Thisprocess has created significant interest amongst her supervisors and col-leagues at Monash University as it has revealed an alternative means tomap a complex intellectual and professional body of knowledge. Thetraditional narrative of a PhD thesis, while still a useful approach, hasbeen shown to be limited and there are other tools and methods of or-ganising information that reveal perspectives and insights that were oth-erwise hidden.52

With respect to the OHRM, perhaps one of the most significant col-laborative partnerships was that forged between Austehc and the Aus-tralian Dictionary of Biography (ADB) unit at the Australian NationalUniversity. In 2003, pilot tests were undertaken to see if the OHRM wascapable of providing the technical framework to enable the online pub-lication of the ADB. Following successful testing, plans were made fora three-year development and implementation project, and funding wassuccessfully won from the Australian Research Council. The Austra-lian Dictionary of Biography Online was launched by the GovernorGeneral of Australia in July 2006 and immediately started to build alarge user base.53 Anecdotally, historians have commented on the ex-traordinary productivity gains it brings to their work, in many cases en-abling them to undertake projects that previously were not feasible.

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However, perhaps the most important lessons this project brought to thedevelopment and use of the OHRM were not in terms of informatics andsystem design, but in the challenges associated with the reworking oflegacy data from the print world for use in the digital world.

DISCUSSION

On reflection, it is now clear that the regular organisational transfor-mations of ASAP (and later Austehc) in its endeavour to find a usefuland fundable position in the scientific, archival and historical communi-ties had driven it to become one of the new types of archival organisa-tion of the post-custodial era. This had been a necessary rather thanself-conscious evolution. ASAP, because of its small size, had beenable to change and adapt to meet the contingencies of the environmentin which it found itself. Most decisions and policy changes were madeto solve particular problems at particular times. It was against this back-drop that the work on utilising archival authority information was un-dertaken. It was fortunate that ASAP was established at a time when thecomputing and information management tools were reaching the mar-ket at affordable prices. Without them, the initial development of theregister and all the subsequent work would not have been possible.

At the time of Web publication, the register (Bright Sparcs) con-tained information about a reasonable, but unmeasurable percentage ofthe records of science and technology in Australian custodial institu-tions and in private hands. As this information about archives wasstrongly associated with the scholarly publications that emanated fromthe use of the records, it seemed a natural and desirable extension to in-corporate this bibliographic information–much of which had alreadybeen collected–into the register. It was conceived that it be linked bothto the descriptions of the record collections and the descriptions of thecreators of the records. Until this point, the register’s internal structureshad remained simple, which meant that migration and development ofthe system, when required, had not been an overwhelming task. Thosewho worked on BrightSparcs came to realise at this point that the issuesassociated with data migration and system conversion may becomeproblematic as the system developed. However, it was also clear thatnew technologies provided an opportunity to address these issues dur-ing the process of creation. The problems of legacy systems and datafrom previous generations were being discussed by the archival andrecords communities at that time. An important goal was not merely the

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migration of information from the past to meet present generationneeds, but to evolve a process that would incorporate change and allowfuture generations to build directly on the knowledge accumulated.

The post-custodial era of archives had been envisioned as a period ofdiversity, of new structures, of new functions, and new organisations.Although it was not possible to anticipate the breadth of opportunitiesoffered by the Web and truly global information networks, the linkingof creators, custodians, and users through electronic networking wasidentified as an option with substantial potential for the archival profession.

CONCLUSION

In terms of mapping the socio-technical complexity of Australianscience, the development of the Online Heritage Resource Manager hasactually made that a possibility. Whether it is possible to convince thosewith funds that this is a worthwhile exercise that adds value to society isyet to be fully tested. Bright Sparcs and Australian Science at Work willbe united in single system in the near future, at which time the extensionof the mapping of relationships between people, organisations, researchprojects, concepts, ideas, disciplines, places, events, and their associatedarchival resources and publications can be realised. The systematic in-terconnection of knowledge spaces using mappings of contextual enti-ties is now also a realistic possibility. It is actively being considered as afundamental strategy for the preservation and transfer of informationabout radioactive waste to future generations.54 The creation of an opennetwork of semantically linked knowledge is being tested in Australiausing OHRMs that have been implemented for the projects mentionedabove. Interestingly, people seem to get excited when they start to real-ise what might actually be possible through this approach to contextualinformation management–perhaps because it is, at its simplest, aboutpeople.

NOTES

1. Gavan McCarthy, “The Engine of Change: The development of RASA, a NewArchival Tool for Improving Access to the Archives of Science and Technology inAustralia” (master’s thesis, Monash University, 1994).

2. Michael Piggott, “The Visit of Dr T .R. Schellenberg to Australia, 1954: A studyof Its Origins and Some Repercussions on Archival Development in Australia”(mas-ter’s thesis, University of New South Wales, 1989).

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3. ASAP file (1985-1989). Records of the Australian Science Archives Project,Progress Reports, nos. 1-9, University of Melbourne, 1985-89.

4. ASAP file (1985). Records of the Australian Science Archives Project, 1985; R.W. Home, Attachment A, to the Agenda of the Australian Scientific Archives ProjectAdvisory Board, Meeting No. 1, 17 December 1984.

5. Joan Warnow-Blewett personal communication from Joan Warnow-Blewettwho was Associate-Director of the Center for History of Physics of the American Insti-tute of Physics, 1986.

6. Ann Mozley, A Guide to the Manuscript Records of Australian Science, (Can-berra: Australian Academy of Science in association with the Australian National Uni-versity Press, 1966).

7. R. W. Home, personal communication from Rod Home, who also noted that therewere very few historians working on the history of Australian science at that time, 1985.

8. Frank Fenner and A. L. G. Rees, editors. The First Twenty-Five Years. (Canberra:Australian Academy of Science, 1980): 116-117.

9. CRASTE,. “Committee to Review Australian Studies in Tertiary EducationBulletin,” no. 1, April 1985, 1.

10. ASAP file (1986-1987). Records of the Australian Science Archives Project:Committee to Review Australian Studies in Tertiary Education 1986-87.

11. Doreen Goodman, “Databases and Finding Aids for Australian Studies,” (Proj-ect Report, CRASTE Paper no. 5), Committee to Review Australian Studies in TertiaryEducation, Canberra, ACT, August 1986.

12. Ibid., 129.13. Ian McShane, “Archives and Museums” (CRASTE Paper no. 19), Committee to

Review Australian Studies in Tertiary Education, Canberra, April 1987.14. CRASTE. Windows onto Worlds: Studying Australia at Tertiary Level. The Re-

port of the Committee to Review Australian Studies in Tertiary Education, (Canberra:Australian Government Publishing Service, June 1987).

15. ASAP file 1986-1987.16. Ibid.17. Chris Hurley, “Standardisation 1987: A Recapitulation,” Archives and Manu-

scripts 18, no. 1 (1990): 63.18. Archives Act 1983, consolidated edition February 1991, s. 65.19. Hurley, “Standardisation 1987”: 63.20. J. K. Haas, H. W. Samuels, and B.T. Simmons, Appraising the Records of Mod-

ern Science and Technology: A Guide (Cambridge, MA: MIT,1985).21. ASAP file, 1985-1989.22. Helen Samuels, personal communication while visiting Helen Samuels in

Boston, July 1986.23. Joyce E. Bedi, Ronald R. Kline, and Craig Semsel, compilers. Sources in Electri-

cal History (New York: Centre for the History of Electrical Engineering, 1989).24. Joyce E. Bedi, personal communication during a visit to the IEEE Center for the

History of Electrical Engineering, New York, 1987.25. The Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts. The Manuscript Papers of

British Scientists 1600-1940 (Guides to Sources for British History, vol. 2), London,1982.

26. P. J. Scott et al. “Archives and Administrative Change–Some Methods and Ap-proaches,” Archives and Manuscripts 7, no. 1 (August 1978): 115-27; vol. 7 no. 2

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(April 1979): 151-65; vol. 8 no. 1 (June 1980): 41-54; vol. 8 no. 2 (December 1980):51-69; and vol. 9 no. 1 (September 1981): 3-17.

27. R. W. Home, Physics in Australia to 1945: Bibliography and Biographical Reg-ister, D.W. Thorpe, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University ofMelbourne, and National Centre for Australian Studies, Monash University, 1990.

28. A. Musgrave, Bibliography of Australian Entomology 1775 to 1930: with Bio-graphical Notes on Authors and Collectors (Sydney: Royal Zoological Society of NewSouth Wales, 1932).

29. Ditta Bartels, personal communication, President of the Federation of Austra-lian Scientific and Technological Societies, 1993.

30. R. W. Home, A. M. Lucas, S. Maroske, D. M. Sinkora, , and J. H. Voigt, editors.Regardfully Yours: Selected Correspondence of Ferdinand von Mueller Volume 1:1840-1859, Bern, Berlin, Frankfurt/M. New York, Paris, Wien: Peter Lang, 1998).

31. ASAP file (1987-1988). Records of the Australian Science Archives Project:Historic Records Search, 1987-88. The file includes the AHRS Thesaurus and FieldOfficers Handbook which contains details of the data elements used by the AHRS.

32. R. Freestone, “The Australian Historic Records Register as a Source for Plan-ning History,” Australian Historical Association Bulletin, no. 71 (August 1992): 35;and AHRR The Australian Historic Records Register, National Library of Australia,Canberra, 2000 available at: http://www.nla.gov.au/ahrr/.

33. ASAP file, 1985-1989.34. ASAP file (1994). Records of the Australian Science Archives Project: Register

of the Archives of Science in Australia 1994.35. Gavan McCarthy, editor. Guide to the Archives of Science in Australia: Records

of Individuals, D.W. Thorpe, Melbourne in association with the Australian Science Ar-chives Project, University of Melbourne and the National Centre for Australian Stud-ies, Monash University, 1990.

36. Bright Sparcs. Australian Science Archives Project, University of Melbourne,1994-1999, and Australian Science and Technology Heritage Centre, University ofMelbourne (1999-), available at: http://www.asap.unimelb.edu.au/bsparcs/.

37. Australian Society of Archivists, Directory of Archives in Australia, (Canberra:Australian Society of Archivists Incorporated, 1996-), available at http://www.archi-vists.org.au/directory/asa_dir.htm.

38. Laurie Carlson, “Bibliography of the History of Australian Science,” in Histori-cal Records of Australian Science, vols. 5-14, (Canberra: Australian Academy of Sci-ence, covering 1980-2001).

39. ICA. ISAAR(CPF): International Standard Archival Authority Record for Cor-porate Bodies, Persons, and Families, Second edition, International Council on Ar-chives, Paris, 2004, available at http://www.ica.org/biblio/ISAAR2EN.pdf; DanielPitti, “Creator Description: Encoded Archival Context,”, International Conference,Authority Control: Definition and Experiences, Florence Italy February, 10-12 2003,available at http://www.sba.unifi.it/ac/relazioni/pitti_eng.pdf; and ‘Encoded ArchivalContext Initiative’ Technology Reports, Cover Pages: Online resource for markup lan-guage technologies, OASIS, USA, last modified 2 January 2006, available at http://xml.coverpages.org/eac.html.

40. Austehc FATD file (1994-). “Fashion and Textile Design Resource Collection,RMIT,” Australian Science and Technology Heritage Centre project file: FATD-1994-78, University of Melbourne.

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41. Austehc BXTA file (1998-). “Web Exhibition–Technology in Australia 1788-1988,” Australian Science and Technology Heritage Centre project file: BXTA-1998-328, University of Melbourne.

42. Austehc ASAW file (1998-). “Australian Science at Work–General,” Austra-lian Science and Technology Heritage Centre project file: BXTA-1998-391, Univer-sity of Melbourne.

43. Austehc HDMS (2001). Heritage Documentation Management System, Austra-lian Science and Technology Heritage Centre, University of Melbourne, available athttp://www.austehc.unimelb.edu.au/HDMS/.

44. ICA. ISAAR(CPF): International Standard Archival Authority Record for Cor-porate Bodies, Persons, and Families, (Ottawa: International Council on Archives,1996), available at http://www.ica.org/biblio/isaar_eng.pdf.

45. Austehc OHRM (2006). Online Heritage Resource Manager, Australian Sci-ence and Technology Heritage Centre, University of Melbourne, available at http://www.austehc.unimelb.edu.au/ohrm/.

46. Austehc WISA (2003), Where Are the Women in Australian Science? BrightSparcs exhibition, Australian Science and Technology Heritage Centre, University ofMelbourne, available at http://www.austehc.unimelb.edu.au/wisa/.

47. ICA. ISAD(G): General International Standard Archival Description, Secondedition, International Council on Archives, Paris, 1999, available at http://www.ica.org/biblio/isad_g_2e.pdf.

48. IFLA. Functional Requirements for Bibliographic records: final report / IFLAStudy Group on the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records/[InternationalFederation of Library Associations and Institutions. IFLA Universal BibliographicControl and International MARC Programme, Deutsche Bibliothek, Frankfurt amMain]. München: Saur, 1998 (UBCIM publications ; N.S., Vol. 19), online at http://www.ifla.org/VII/s13/frbr/frbr.pdf.

* The Australian Science Archives Project (1985-1999) was succeeded by theAustralian Science and Technology Heritage Centre (Austehc) in 1999.

49. Agreements, Treaties and Negotiated Settlements, Indigenous Studies Program,University of Melbourne, October 2004, available at http://www.atns.net.au/.

50. Chinese-Australian Historical Images in Australia, Latrobe University and theChinese Museum, Melbourne 2005, available at http://www.chia.chinesemuseum.com.au/about.html.

51. Australian Women’s Archives Project, National Foundation for AustralianWomen, 2000- avalable at http://www.womenaustralia.info/.

52. Austehc REJP file (2003-). “Joanne Evans–PhD: Repositioning Archival Func-tions: the Capture and Use of Recordkeeping Mmetadata,” Australian Science andTechnology Heritage Centre project file: REJP-2003-648, University of Melbourne.

53. Australian Dictionary of Biography Online, Australian National University,Canberra, July 2006, available at http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/.

54. Gavan McCarthy and Ian Upshall, Radioactive Waste Information: Meeting ourObligations to Future Generations with Regard to the Safety of Waste Disposal Facili-ties (ICA Study 18), International Council on Archives, Paris, May 2006, available athttp://www.ica.org/biblio.php?pdocid=454.

doi:10.1300/J201v05n01_08

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