Archives Outside

For people who love, use and manage archives

Archives Outside - For people who love, use and manage archives

Community Heritage Grants 2013

Our Boys at the Front

Community Heritage Grant Applications are open for 2013.

The Community Heritage Grants (CHG) program provides grants of up to $15,000 to community organisations such as libraries, archives, museums, genealogical and historical societies, multicultural and Indigenous groups. The grants are provided to assist with the preservation of locally owned, but nationally significant collections of materials that are publicly accessible including artefacts, letters, diaries, maps, photographs, and audio visual material.

Since 1994, $4.5 million has been awarded to community organisations throughout Australia.

The types of projects supported include Significance Assessments of collections; Preservation Needs Assessments of collections; conservation activities and collection management; and training workshops.

CHG is funded by the Australian Government through the National Library of Australia; the Department of Regional Australia, Local Government, Arts and Sport; the National Archives of Australia; the National Film and Sound Archive and the National Museum of Australia.

The Closing date for Applications is 1 May 2013

Crowdsourcing Christmas! #Christmasinaalborg (#Juleniaalborg ) – Aalborg City Archives on Instagram

Bente Jensen, archivist Aalborg City Archives

Christmas 2012 will soon be History. This was the slogan of Aalborg City Archives’* Christmas project last year using social media as: Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. The City Archives have celebrated Christmas through calendars with historical films and photos on Facebook, website and Flickr the last couple of years. This year, we added an accession of Christmas photos through social media: Why?

The Christmas Market in Aalborg (photo Anders_Hammer)

The Christmas Market in Aalborg (photo Anders_Hammer)

First because the City Archives lack modern Christmas photographs in the holding. We hold many photographs from the 1900s but lack contemporary documentation of Christmas. At the same time Christmas is a good opportunity because everybody in Denmark connects something with the season.

Secondly because the archives wanted to test a new accession method and user involvement to use in future projects in 2013, # juleniaalborg is a preliminary project.

3rd because we wanted to test whether people wanted to join and if they did, who would?

4th because from a historical point of view it is interesting, which motives people associate with #Christmasinaalborg 2012

Read the full blog post

 

The Crossing Bicentenary – History Council NSW call for registrations

Kanangra Walls

The year 2013 marks the bicentenary of the first acknowledged crossing of the Blue Mountains by European settlers. The crossing was made by Gregory Blaxland; William Lawson; William Charles Wentworth; a local guide; three convict servants; four pack horses and five dogs in May 1813. After three weeks of trekking through the scrub the party reached Mount Blaxland seeing an expanse of potential farming land below. The crossing is considered significant as it led to the opening up of the western plains of NSW to settlement.

Marketing and Publicity

The HCNSW will be running a year long marketing and publicity campaign to encourage and promote community engagement in the bicentenary through locally arranged events. The following benefits will be offered to participants:
• an easy to use registration system;
• each event has a dedicated page with space for an image;
• events are published on our home page;
• the HCNSW stamp of approval;
• inclusion in an overarching professional publicity campaign.
Promote your work to new audiences. The ongoing vitality of the history sector depends on an engaged and appreciative community.
The HCNSW will also host a one day seminar to be held in May 2013.

To list your event or for more information visit the History Council NSW website.

@Wingecarribee Shire Council opens Archives to Local Community

On Wednesday 6 February State Records A/Director Jenni Stapleton and I attended the Local Studies room of Bowral Library for opening of the Archival Collection of Wingecarribee Shire Council by Mayor, Juliet Arkwright. Under a Distributed Management Agreement with State Records NSW, Council has  transferred over 750 archives from its predecessor councils to the Local Studies collection. This includes Rate books dating back to 1886 as well as Infectious Disease Registers and burial documents.

Councils’ Manager of Customer and Information Services, Andy Carnahan, noted that “There’s a growing movement to return historical documents to the community…….our records staff took the initiative and worked with State Archives (State Records NSW) to enable the community to access a glimpse into the past through the documents of the day.”

In opening the collection Mayor Juliet Arwkwright stated that “In a year in which we celebrate the dual sesquicententary anniversaries – or 150th birthday celebrations for both Moss Vale and Bowral – I can’t think of a more fitting birthday gift for all of our Shire’s residents.”

The Mayor also acknowledged the contribution of Marie Wielgosz, Team Leader of Information Management who proactively led the Archive project. Marie together with the Information Services Librarian Roxanne Seaward and Librarian Sandra Croker have collaborated to create a wonderful resource for the Wingecarribee community.

A catalogue of the collection that is being made available and can be viewed on the Library website.

 

The Convict and the Premier – Australia Day 2013 roundup

This past Australia Day was a great day for State Records as we had original First Fleet Convict Indents on display at NSW Parliament House in the Sentenced beyond the Seas exhibition which was held in conjunction with Parliaments’ own exhibition, Twenty Five Stories from Australia’s First Parliament. It is estimated that there were 2,000 people through the door on Australia Day which is a fantastic result.

The Convict and The Premier

There are so many stories and families attached to the First Fleet Convict Indents. One unintentional connection within the exhibition was picked up by the eagle eyes of Janice Eastment and Kevin Shaw, the Secretary and Treasurer of the John & Mary Small Descendants Association ,who contacted us after the event.

After looking at Mary Parker’s indent papers, we noticed James Squire was listed as well and there are Small descendants that are also Squire descendants.  Did you notice that James Squire was immediately across the corridor from a picture of James Squire Farnell, his grandson and a Premier of NSW about ninety years after the grandfather was sent to the colony in disgrace.  Very well placed if it was deliberate, very ironic if it wasn’t.

What Price Freedom?

Cassie Mercer from insidehistory magazine has an ancestor with a fascinating connection to these archives as well.

What price did a convict put on their freedom? In 1800 Governor Phillip Gidley King discovered the amount was £12. Sydney’s early government clerks in charge of the record books had been engaged in a lucrative trade with the Irish convicts — changing life sentences to appear as seven years. Cassie Mercer, editor of Inside History and one of the researchers who discovered the story, believes it is the first documented fraud against the colonial authorities. And it was Cassie’s ancestor who instigated the scheme to have convict sentences altered in the record books………..

Janette Pelosi, from State Records NSW, is one of the archivists who’s been working on the collection. Janette, too, discovered the fraudulent entries. “It was so easy to alter the sentences,’ says Janette, “that even Governor Hunter had been fooled into allowed a serving convict to return to London with him.”

Online coverage of the exhibition

A sample of some of the online posts about the Sentenced beyond the Seas exhibition.

Earliest convict arrivals recorded online

 RECORDS OF THE EARLIEST convict arrivals to Australia have been made available online, to mark the 225th anniversary of the arrival of the First Fleet at Sydney Cove on 26 January 1788.

Sentenced Beyond the Seas is a digital project run by State Records NSW. The archive, now available online, contains scans of the original arrival records of convicts between the years 1788 and 1801.

There are more than 12,000 names among the records for this period.

Sentenced beyond the Seas exhibition

NSW Parliament House presents ‘Sentenced Beyond the Seas’

Tomorrow, as part of the Australia Day celebrations in Sydney, NSW Parliament House will be open between 10am and 4pm. Despite being in and out of that building nearly every week (my day job is in government relations), I was going to be heading in to the city tomorrow morning to see something very special – instead I had an even better treat – I was given a sneak peek this afternoon!

In addition to the current exhibit, Twenty Five Stories from Australia’s First Parliament, they are displaying, for one day only, the original indents of the convicts sentenced to transportation on the First Fleet. These indents are rarely seen by the public, and it is a great opportunity to do so – especially if you have an ancestor named in those lists!

Australia Day Present from The National Archives UK

The National Archives of the United Kingdom publicly released Australian images from its collection to mark Australia Day 2013.

UK archives seeks help identifying historic Australian photos posted online

 

THE UK’s National Archives is calling on Australians to help identify thousands of photographs and drawings dating back to the mid-1800s.

The archives has posted 2000 images of Australian towns, buildings and people online for the first time to help celebrate Australia Day.

The images include a rarely-seen panorama of Sydney harbour taken in 1870 and a 1927 photo of the prime minister’s Lodge in Canberra.

They can be viewed on the photo-sharing site Flickr.