Archives - looking back at being an Archivist 1986 / 2026

Introduction

When, at the end of November 1986, the present writer finished the one-year full-time Postgraduate Diploma in Information Management (Archives Administration) course at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, he walked out feeling like a professional archivist. That feeling has continued to the present day and will be with him to the grave. Such was the influence not only of those presenting the course - Pete Orlovich, Anne Pederson and assistants Sigrid McCausland and Michael Piggot - but the very nature of the profession of archivist which was revealed through the course - in theory and in practice. This profession intrigued the present writer at the time, and was an incredibly easy fit. He had entered the course as a 30 year old local historian and researcher - a user of archives - and over the following 12 months added to that an understanding of the importance of the archivist in preserving history. As simple as that. The profession had been around since the time of clay tablets, millenia before. However, it came to life in the West during the 1920s with the publication of a classic text by the British archivist Hilary Jenkinson. In Australia, it was further spurred by a visit during ... by American archivist .... Schellenberg, and the subsequent publication of his book Modern Archives which was dedication to his fellow Australian archivists.

The present writer was intrigued by the seeming nobility of the profession and the almost sacred duty cast upon the archivist to PROTECT, PRESERVE, & PROMOTE. To protect meant to secure the archival records; to preserve meant to take care of them and ensure their survival into the future; to promote meant to make them available to the world, in order for the world to understand the past and leave it placed within its original context, thereby enable wisdom and information which would hopefully see the mistake of the past not repeat, and the positive discoveries of the past celebrated and expanded upon for the good of everybody and everything.

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Politics, legislation & access

One of the writer's late-in-life encounters with the archivist profession took place at the National Archives of Australia building in Canberra, on the evening of 9 June 2026. The occasion was a memorial to the late Peter Orlovich, an incredibly importing individual in regards to spreading the gospel of Archives Administration in Australia from the mid' 1970s through to his death in the 2020s. Peter was the primary influence of the present writer during 1986, and as mentioned above, which he learnt then stayed with him during his own professional career from 1987 through to 2021. At that meeting, which comprised approximately 30-40 individuals in person and 60+ online, the life of Peter was seen through Powerpoint, the reminisces of his family via his son, and the reminiscences of his student by some of those present in person and online. One of those present on the night sought help in unravelling the complexity of archival legislation in New South Wales during that period, and why, as of June 2026, an online search reveals not the Archivist Office of New South Wales but rather, the Museums of History New South Wales website, and within that the so-called State Archives Collection. To the average person this would seem an innocent enough return; to a professional archivist, it raises alarm bells. For a once independent archival organisation to be demoted to not being merely a sub-collection marked a dramatic fall from grace. To make matters worse, when the writer attempted to contact the State Archives through an Ask an Archivist link, it was noted that there would be a 20-day turnaround in any response! Even when the writer actually spoke to one of the archivists - a real person, and not a bot - he was told that he would need to make use of a subscription to Ancestry.com for easy to materials. The process of actually requesting items from the State Archives remained buried away in the depth of an almost impenetrable online bureaucracy - one which many of use are familiar with in regards to waited and being run around in circles by so-called artificial intelligence. 

This, therefore, is part of the state of the profession, at least in New South Wales at the government level, in 2026. The Protect and Preserve might or might not be being addressed; however, the Promote is less than it used to be back in the 1980s, for example, when you could walking into the State Archives office in the middle of Sydney, talk to an actual, real live archivist, and within a 15-30 minute be seated going through actual archival records, with in manuscript form or on microfilm. The age of digitisation has changed all of that. Whilst the ease of access to archival records through digitization is supposedly enhanced, the actual process of finding the records is not necessarily an improvement on the past. One step forward, two steps back. 

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References

Jenkinson, Hilary, A Manual of Archives Administration, Including the Problems of War Archives and Archive Making, Humphrey Milford and The Clarendon Press at Oxford, London, 1922, 243p. 

Organ, Michael, Class of '86 - UNSW Archives Administration, 2 May 2007. Images and text relating to the class of 1986 of the UNSW Postgraduate Diploma in Information Management (Archives Administration) course. [Webpage / Blog]

Schellenberg .... 

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Last updated: 10 June 2026

Michael Organ, Australia