Archives - looking back at being an Archivist 1986 / 2026

Contents

Introduction
Politics & legislation
Schellenberg 1954
References

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1. 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 an archivist, ready to take on the task professionally. 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 Piggott - 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, millennia 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 1954 by American archivist Theodore R. Schellenberg, and the subsequent publication two years later of his book Modern Archives which was dedicated 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, often from imminent destruction; 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 mistakes of the past not repeat, and the positive discoveries of the past celebrated and expanded upon for the good of everybody and everything..... Oh, and by the way, the other P that is necessary and does not usually appear in any book or manual on how to manage an archives is the following: PASSION! To face the world at the end of 1986 as a passionate archivist was nothing less than a thing of beauty.

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2. 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 important individual in regards to spreading the gospel of Archives Administration in Australia from the mid' 1970s through to his death in the early 2020s. Peter was the primary influence of the present writer during his participation in the Archives Administration course during 1986, and as mentioned above. What he learnt then stayed with him during a professional career from 1987 through to 2021. At that June 2026 gathering, which comprised approximately 30-40 individuals in person and 60+ online, the life of Peter was seen through an online presentation, the reminisces of his family via his son, and the memories of his students by some of those present in person and online.

One of those present on the night sought the assistance of the present writer in unravelling the complexity of the evolution of archival legislation in New South Wales since the time of Schellenberg, and why, as of June 2026, an online search revealed not information through an Archivist Office of New South Wales (AONSW) portal, but rather something called the Museums of History New South Wales website. It was only therein that a so-called State Archives Collection now existed. The former distinct AONSW site was no more. To the average person this would seem an innocent enough change, and perhaps a useful simplification in the search process; to a professional archivist, it raised alarm bells. For a once independent archival organisation to be demoted to now being merely a sub-collection within a generic portal - no, I am not criticising the wonders of other such portals such as Google! - marked a dramatic fall from grace and prestige, and also practical utility.

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 the subscription service Ancestry.com for ease as access to the archival collections. 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 users have become familiar with in regards to waiting and being run around in circles by so-called artificial intelligence and the wonders of modern technology. Oh for the days of over-the-counter service from an actual, experienced, professional archivist!

In considering the state of the archival profession in 2026, at least in New South Wales at the government level, this was something of a shock. With regards to the AONSW, the Protect and Preserve might or might not be being addressed; however, the Promote was undoubtedly 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, 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 is, as seen in the above instance, a reality.

Of course the Archives Office of New South Wales is not the only publically accessible archival organisation available in Australia. However, its present predicament is indicative of the always parlous state of archives in any country around the world. Where the technology and resources exist and are available, and the social and political will exists to support them, archives flourish. Where they don't, they flounder and disappear either in reality or at least in the mind of the traditional user. A good example of this is the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (NFSA), whose online catalogue has, since the time of its creation in 1984, been difficult to use and therefore its collections hard to find, especially for members of the general public. With no integration with Google or the National Library of Australia's wonderful TROVE database, the NFSA is largely invisible, both as an archival institutional and as a resource for promoting the film and sound cultural heritage of Australia.

The new millennium brought with it the wonders of digitization; the availability of technology to support large, openly accessible databases of digitized content, such as film, sound, images and print or manuscript material. YouTube, for example, is one such public resource used by historians and researchers around the world to access archival material, found both withing archives and in private collections. Organisations such as the Australian National Gallery has created a large open access database of Australian prints from its collections, as have other institutions such as the State Library of New South Wales and universities such as the University of Wollongong. The news is good on many fronts; but it is not consistent, and the NFSA is evidence of the need for much more to be done to act on the digitization agenda and truly Promote archival collections. It is always the hope of the present writer that the enthusiasm and passion American archivist T.R. Schellenberg brought to Australia back in 1954 in regard to the administration of archives can once against be seen, if not felt, by those of the general public who happen to come across an archival organisation or an archival record.

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T.R. Schellenberg and James Stapleton, Queensland State Librarian, 1954.

3. T.R. Schellenberg in Australia 1954

American archivist T.R. Schellenberg received a Fulbright scholarship to visit Australia for six months during 1954 and, whilst based at the National Library of Australia, travel around the country to visit archival institutions, speak with archivists, and present talks on his own experiences in the United States. He also visited New Zealand. Refer specifically to the subsequent research by former University of Melbourne Archivist Michael Piggott regarding aspects of the visit and as listed in the References section below.

The following is a collection of various newspaper reports which record aspects of the visit.

* 20 February 1954, The Canberra Times:

Archives Chief Here From U.S.

Schellenberg, Director of Archival Management, in the National Archives in Washington will arrive in Sydney by air from the United States to-day. He will spend seven months in Australia as a Fulbright lecturer, undertaking an extensive programme of lectures and consultations with leading Australian librarians and Government officials. During his Australian visit, Dr. Schellenberg's headquarters will be the National Library, Canberra.

* 30 March 1954, Examiner, Launceston:

THE Director of Archival Management in Washington, U.S.A., Dr. T. R. Schellenberg (right). inspects the diary of Archdeacon Brown, written between 1830 and 1864, with the City Librarian (Mr. W. Sutherland). Dr. Schellenberg is on a Commonwealth tour of inspecting state archives and record management.

Archives in Tasmania covering the state's development during the last century were more adequate than those in America dealing with a similar period in U.S. history, a leading archivist said in Launceston yesterday. He is Dr. T. R. Schellenberg, director of Archival Management in Washington, D.C. Dr. Schellenberg is on a six months tour of Australia during which he will inspect all state and national archives and libraries. He said yesterday he was most impressed with the wealth of material in Tasmania's archives. This material he said, provided an adequate history of the state's development. During his brief visit to Launceston Dr. Schellenberg inspected the Queen Victoria Museum and the Public Library. He also visited Cataract Gorge where he took a number of colour photographs. Last night, he stayed at a country property near Deloraine and this morning will motor through parts of Northern Tasmania. On his visit to Launceston he was accompanied by Mrs. Schellenberg and a supervisor of state archives (Mr. R. C. Sharman).

* 2 April 1954, The Mercury, Hobart:

U.S. EXPERT LAUDS OUR ARCHIVES

Tasmanian records hold a high research value and the official archives are equal to those anywhere, America included, according to a visiting U.S. expert. The visitor, Dr. Theodore R. Schellenberg, Director of Archival Management in Washington, D.C., said this in an address to the Hobart Rotary Club yesterday. Dr. Schellenberg told of the vast, complex job of collecting, fumigating, cleaning, and storing properly a mass of records in an area of 24,000,000 cubic feet. He said that, although the American Government was slow originally in keeping records, things really began to happen between the two world wars, when 3,000,000 cubic feet of records were filed, while the depression years added a further 10,000,000 cubic feet. Included in the records were millions of feet of moving picture film, still pictures, and sound recordings, on the basis of which could be explored almost every aspect of U.S. development. Studies also could be made of the population movement of various national groups, each of which had contributed to the development and expansion of the nation. Dr. Schellenberg, who described the archives as one of the great research institutions of the country in contributing to human knowledge and the search for truth, said 300,000 requests for records were received each year. Sixty percent, were from the Government and the remainder chiefly from scholars.

* Saturday, 3 April 1954, The West Australian, Perth:

An Archivist Here Today

Dr. T. R. Schellenberg, deputy director of the National Archives and Records Service, at Washington, D.C., will arrive by air from Hobart tonight. During a fortnight's stay in this State he will give a number of addresses and confer with officials of the Archives branch of the Perth Public Library and with heads of State and Commonwealth departments.

* 4 April 1954, Sunday Times, Perth:

Archives Impress

"Archives of Tasmania impressed me tremendously — they contain information on the history of that State comparable with anything I have seen anywhere in the world," said Director of Archival Management at Washington DC, Dr. Theodore R Schellenberg, last night. "All the story is there, right back from the early days," he added. Here on a Fulbright scholarship. Dr. Schellenberg will confer with officials of the Archives Branch of the Perth Public Library, and with the heads of the State and Commonwealth departments. He was met by Professor Cameron on arrival at Perth Airport last night.

* 20 April 1954, The Advertiser, Adelaide:

System of Archives "Simpler"

Dr. Theodore R. Schellenberg, Director of Archival Management at the US National Archives, Washington, who arrived in Adelaide yesterday, said that the 'registry' system of keeping records used in Australia was much simpler than the US system. There were, however, several instances ot over crowding of files, usually caused by the needless retention of valueless documents.

Dr. Schellenberg, who is making his first visit to Australia, is the guest of the Commonwealth Government and he will stay in Adelaide for a week. Schellenberg said he hoped to bring to Australian archivists a knowledge of basic techniques used in (be handling of valuable records and documents. He would visit all States and would examine records-keeping systems in both Commonwealth and State Government departments.

Asked if he would make any recommendations on archival methods to the Commonwealth or State Governments, Dr. Schellenberg replied:— 'Only if I am requested to do so,' Dr. Schellenberg said that documentary records occupied 800,000 cubic feet in the $12m. National Archives building in Washington. The building also stored 60m. feet pf motion picture film, 909,000 maps, 250.000 photographs and 250.000 sound recordings. Dr, Schellenberg will talk at luncheons of the Rotary Club and the Institute of Public Administration tomorrow and on Thursday. He will give illustrated talks in the Public Library lecture room tomorrow night and on Thursday night.

* 22 April 1954, The Advertiser, Adelaide:

RED HERRING

Many Americans thought archives were an edible fish. Dr. Theodore R. Schellenberg, director of archival management at the US National Archival, Washington, told Rotarians at a luncheon yesterday. Confusion between archives and anchovies was one of the difficulties that had to be overcome before public interest was aroused in the work of the US National Archives, which now occupied a $12m. building and received 400,000 requests a year for records.

* 24 April 1954, The Mail, Adelaide:

Exciting Finds for Archives Sleuths

From an old cedar chest in Washington a few weeks ago came a document most taxpaying Americans would like to forget. It was an order signed by George Washington on March 15. 1701, establishing the Internal Revenue Service. Tall Dr. Theodore R. Schellenberg described the find in Adelaide this week. t)r. Schellenberg is director of archival management at the National Archives in Washington. He is visiting Australia as guest of the Commonwealth Government. Dr. Schellenberg said : 'The document was found in an old cedar chest in the vault of the Bureau of Internal Revenue. For us it was a very valuable find.' Dr. Schellenberg said old attics had yielded some exciting finds for sleuths of the National Archives. Dr. Schellenberg once spent six weeks in an attic of the US Capitol Building at Washington. He found some historic records of early Congressional committees. Dr. Schellenberg said: 'The 21-story National Archives is reckoned the safest building in Washington. 'Most elaborate arrangements are made for the preservation of documents like the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. 'These are kept in helium-filled airtight cases. Each night they're lowered into cement and steel safes in the lower part of the building. They could probably withstand an atom bomb.' Dr. Schellenberg said the archives had many unusual records. There was the pension file of a soldier during the Revolutionary War who turned out to be a woman. There were records of the US Government's at tempt to introduce camels to use in American deserts. There were also records of/ the first US rainmaking attempt. It was planned to make rain over the dry plains of Texas by exploding charges carried into the air by balloons. 'Texas is still mighty dry,' said Dr. Schellenberg. There are also movies from 1900 to the present day and combat films of both world wars.

* 13 July 1954, The Canberra Times:

Seminar on Archives

An Australia-wide seminar on archives and records management convened by the National Library, opened yesterday at the library's new annexe in Parkes, A.C.T. It is being conducted by Dr. T. R Schellenberg, Director of Archival Management, Washington, who is attached to the National Library for six months as a Fulbright scholar.

All Australian states, excluding Queensland, as well as the Government of Fiji, are represented in the group of 25, with representatives also of the Commonwealth Public Service Board, the Australian National University and the Australian War Memorial. The object is to secure accelerated and uniform action in the disposal of useless records of Federal and State Governments and preservation of what is valuable for use by future administrators, for research of all kinds, and to protect the rights of citizens. The archives of the early Commonwealth period are preserved and the National Library has taken over more than 50,000 cubic feet from the, 52 departments which have been created or recreated since 1901. The records are kept in low rental areas. The programme has resulted in a great saving of city office space, especially in Sydney and Melbourne.

* 26 July 1954, The Daily Telegraph, Sydney:

Aust 'ripe' for archives.

Australia needed bigger collections of archives, Dr. R. T. Schellenberg said last night. Dr. Schellenberg is an archivist employed by the United States Government. He was speaking on the A.B.C. "Guest of Honor" programme. Dr. Schellenberg said American archives contained evidence of the truth of the country's origin and development. He said Australia was "ripe for archival development."

"Valuable records exist in Government offices that should be brought under archival control," he said. Dr. Schellenberg said he was impressed with the richness of material in archive sections of Australian libraries.

* 8 July 1954, South Coast Times and Wollongong Argus:

Archivist's wife wields duster

While her husband delves into archives, Mrs. Alma Schellenberg, of Double Bay, believes that her job is to keep the dust out of the home. She is the wife of American Fulbright scholar, Dr. Theodore Schellenberg, who is here for seven months, lecturing on the care and preservation of historical documents. 'Of course, I am interested in my husband's work, but my main occupation is in household management,' she said today. Like CWA. Last week Mrs. Schellenberg spoke to the National Council of Women on home demonstration clubs in the USA. 'The clubs are just like your CWA,' Mrs. Schellenberg said this morning. 'They teach the women home crafts, food preservation and, home making. They are nation-wide in the United States, and the national body of the clubs is affiliated with your Country Women's Association. Showing films-: Mrs. Schellenberg speaks a soft southern accent, hails from Virginia. She and her husband are showing films of their home state to friends in Sydney. They took the films themselves and brought them here so that they could familiarise Australians with at least one part of America. With the exception of woollens, Clothes are more expensive' in Australia; than in the US, Mrs. Schellenberg said. 'I think the girls here are most attractive and dress in high fashion, although they wear more makeup than American girls,' she said.

* 26 July 1954, Sydney Morning Herald:

U.S. Archives' Gift to Commonwealth

The director of the National Archives in Washington, Dr. T. R. Schellenberg, said yesterday that he would present microfilm copies of American diplomatic dispatches from Sydney during 1836-1906 to the Commonwealth National Library. In a broadcast as the A.B.C.'s Guest of Honour, Dr. Schellenberg said that the National Archives in Washington is a bureau where important files and government documents are preserved. "We now have in our custody the permanent records of our government's operations of its military and diplomatic activities and of its domestic administration," he said. "These range in date from about 1770 to 1953." Dr. Schellenberg said he had been impressed by the richness of the material in archives sections of Australian State libraries. "Much valuable record material exists in State Government offices that should be brought under archival control," he said. "House cleanings of Government offices may be undertaken, and if these are not carefully done the valuable records along with the accumulated debris of past generations are likely to be swept out."

* 12 August 1954, The Daily News, Perth:

Archives Officer For US

Chief Commonwealth archives" officer Ian McLean is to spend a year at Washington University studying American methods of filing records. Miss Molly Lukis, archivist at the Perth Public Library, said this on her return from a three-week seminar of Australian archivists at Canberra. "Mr. McLean will leave Australia next month," Miss Lukis said. "When he returns he will be able to give valuable information to Commonwealth and State archivists throughout Australia." He would be assisted in his studies by director Dr. T. R. Schellenberg of the National Archives in Washington, now in Australia on a Fulbright research scholarship. Dr. Schellenberg acted as leader of the archivists' seminar which was arranged by the Commonwealth Archives Division. "We worked out an ambitious programme for the development of archives in Australia," Miss Lukis said. "But the extent to which we will be able to carry it out will depend largely on the support given to us by the Government." Miss Lukis said that a particularly important decision was to compile a guide to all Australian records before 1900. Archives officers in each State would make an inventory of their own records, and these would be collated and edited at the National University, Canberra. Though the work would not be completed in two years it was intended to publish the available material then.

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4. References

Bastian, Jeanette, Michael Piggott - Archives and Societal Provenance [Review], The American Archivist, 76(2), 2013, 585-7.

Bradsher, James Gregory (editor), Managing Archives and Archival Institutions, University of Chicago Press, 1991, 320p.

Brosius, Maria (editor), Ancient Archives and Archival Traditions: Concepts of Record-Keeping in the Ancient World, Oxford Studies in Ancient Documents, Oxford University Press, 2003, 384p.

Cox, Richard J. and David A. Wallace, Archives and the Public Good: Accountability and Records in Modern Society, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2002, 344p.

Duranti, Luciana and Patricia C. Franks, Encyclopedia of Archival Writers, 1515 - 2015, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019, 596p.

Edmondson, Ray, The Troublemaking Professional: A Festschrift, Indiana University Press & John Libbey Publishing, June 2026, 168p.

Ellis, Judith (editor), Keeping Archives, Australian Society of Archivists, 2nd edition, 1993.

Hetland, Per, Palmyre Pierroux, and Line Esborg, A History of Participation in Museums and Archives : Traversing Citizen Science and Citizen Humanities, Routledge, 2020, 302p.

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.

Jimerson, Randall C., Archives Power: Memory, Accountability, and Social Justice, American Library Association, 2010, 463p.

Johnson, Maisie H., Archives Administration in Australia, The American Archivist, 28(2), April 1965, 231-238.

Landis, William E. and Chandler, Robin L., Archives and the Digital Library, Taylor & Francis, 2007, 204p.

Norton, Margaret Cross, Norton on Archives: The Writings of Margaret Cross Norton on Archival & Records Management, edited by Thornton W. Mitchell, forwarded by Ernst Posner, Southern Illinois University Press, 1975, 312p.

Olesen, Christian Gosvig, Visualizing Film History: Film Archives and Digital Scholarship, Indiana University Press, 2025, 302p.

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]

-----, Archives - looking back at being an Archivist 1986 / 2026, blogger.com, 9 June 2026.

Pederson, Anne E. (editor-in-chief), Keeping Archives, Australian Society of Archivists, 1st edition, 1987.

Piggott, Michael, The visit of Dr. T.R. Schellenberg to Australia 1954: a study of its origins and some repercussions on archival development in Australia, MA thesis, University of New South Wales, February 1989, 369p.

-----, Schellenberg and the study of Australian archival history, 7th Biennial Conference of the Australian Society of Archivists, Hobart, 1989.

-----, Schellenberg in New Zealand, Archifacts, New Zealand, October 1990, 1-5.

-----, Schellenberg, Theodore R. 1903-1970, in ALIAS; Australia’s Library Information and Archives Services – An encyclopedia of Practice and Practitioners, Canberra, ALIA Press, Canberra, 1991, 26-7.

-----, Schellenberg in Australia: Meaning and Precedent, in Archives and Societal Provenance: Australian Essays, Chandos Publishing, Oxford, 2012, 358p.

Posner, Ernst, Archives and the Public Interest: Selected Essay by Ernst Posner, edited by Ken Munden, with an Introduction by Angelina Menne-Haritz, Scarecrow Press, 2006, 229p.

Purcell, Aaron D., Academic Archives: Managing the next generation of college and university archives, records, and special collections, American Library Association, 2012, 336p.

Schellenberg, Theodore R., Modern Archives: Principles & Techniques, University of Chicago Press, 1956, 263p; do., 1986, 246p [Midway Reprints]; Society of American Archivists, 1996, 247p [Archival Classics Reprints].

-----, The Management of Archives, Columbia University Press, 1965; do., 2nd printing, 1966; National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, 1988, 420p [Reprint].

Sickinger, James P., Public Records and Archives in Classical Athens, University of North Carolina Press, 2007, 288p.

Taher, Mohamad, The role of Libraries, Archives and Museums in achieving civic engagement and social justice in smart cities, IGI Global Scientific Publishing, 2021, 530p.

Wilsted, Thomas, Kiwis, Kangaroos and Bald Eagles, Archives development in three countries, The Midwestern Archivist, 4(1), 1979, 34-51.

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