An update on the situation will be issued no later than Wednesday 23 May 2012.  

Public Record Office Victoria apologises for any inconvenience experienced.  

If you would like to attend this RMN session, please RSVP by Wednesday 23 May to andrea.rae@prov.vic.gov.au

The poster contains several key messages about disposal, such as ‘use good disposal practice’ and  ‘do not dispose of records without authorisation’. Clicking on the photograph images in the poster will send you to the PROV disposal page or document of relevance to the key message.

Keep an eye on this space throughout Information Awareness Month for more products, including a small podcast, a fact sheet, and a presentation. Topics to be revealed!

Archives and Manuscripts (the Journal of the Australian Society of Archivists) Vol 39 No2 Nov 2011, edited by PROV’s own Sebastian Gurciullo has an interesting article by Julie McLead, Sue Childs and Rachel Hardiman – Accelerating positive change in electronic records management: headline findings from a major research project (pp65-93).   Though it’s UK orientated, it’s none the worse for that.  To quote from the introduction the article “outlines 10 headline findings from a three year multidisciplinary project…on electronic records management (ERM).  It also presents a examples of solutions to try, or to avoid, grounded in experience.”  The ten headline findings:

1. Few organisations or individuals have articulated a vision for ERM
2. The people, process and systems/technology aspects of ERM are inextricably linked
3. People issues are predominant, fundamental and challenging
4. There is a wide range of critical success factors for ERM projects, applicable to all or most organisations
5. Tactics and solutions for ERM are contextualised and complex
6. The success or failure of ERM implementations can be contingent on the presence or absence of small or accidental factors
7. There are few published in-depth critical case studies of success or failure, or post-implementation evaluation
8. Proportionate and risk-based approaches are needed
9. Records management principles appear to be applicable for ERM, but practice needs to be adapted
10. Records professionals may be part of the problem as well as part of the solution.

in reading the article I was pleased and reassured that so much of the work that has been done with VERS, preempts or corresponds to the findings of the report.  VERS is a clear vision ERM, it has acknowledge (though not accounted for fully) the people issues, identifies the componetry and the priority for delivery of these (success factors), recognises the variability (though doesn’t provide depth in its overview), recognises the need for case studies (its on our work program!), is built with risk assessment as key element, accounts for applicable and locally useful standards, specifications and guidelines.   While it is often pointed out that we and the records managers are part of the problem/solution, its hard to disengage and find solutions…

For all of the patting on the back there are some findings, recommendations that are disconcerting and need further thinking about.  In this post I wont go into detail, rather I’ll leave you Figure 2 from the article;

VPRS 8360/p2 Lantern Slide 15 River Yarra. Victoria Dock Nov 1925

With the rapid growth of Melbourne and the poor state of the port, merchants pushed to develop a better port where ships could dock and navigate the river closer to growing communities. This lead to the establishment in 1877 of the Melbourne Harbour Trust which employed 15 commissioners to represent various interests in the Port and to improve access for shipping to Melbourne. The Trust hired a leading engineer from Britain, Sir John Coode, who recommended large scale engineering project to improve the port.

During this time the Yarra River was widened, deepened and straightened to form the Coode Canal for ships to enter which was in use by 1886. The project included improvements to raise embankments on the river to lessen and prevent flooding of Melbourne. A major dock facility was established by cutting into land near the rail yards, known as Victoria Dock, which was opened in 1893. As ships increased in size and tonnage, further developments to the docks happened, the slides show snippets of the works over the years, from the construction of the docks and canals, the workers on the wharves, big ships unloading, warships and lighthouses. The slides show a range of works on the Progress of Port Melbourne and include the following subjects:

• aerial views of the Port of Melbourne
• maps of the Port of Melbourne and surrounding areas
• working docks (loading/unloading of cargo)
• factory sites
• construction
• shipping
• lighthouses

  

• divers
• warships
• engineering drawings of wharves, canals and sheds

Digitised images of these slides can be viewed in the PROV online catalogue. Access these slides in VPRS 8360 and select the p2 consignment located in the ‘Accessing the Records of this Series’ tab.

Creating Agency: Melbourne Harbour Trust Commissioners (VA2799)

To view more images, pop into the Victorian Archives Centre Reading Room in North Melbourne.

Sandra Hopper, Team Leader, Access Services

Children learning to read for the first time became familiar with the main characters in the Dick and Jane readers: children Dick and Jane, Baby Sally, Spot the dog, Puff the cat and Tim the Teddy Bear. Interestingly, Spot was originally a cat in the 1930s, but the character was changed to a dog in later editions.

The Dick and Jane readers were used to teach reading from Grade Prep. Young children practised their readers, becoming proficient and then progressed to the next book. Children proudly took them home for practise – nestled within a cardboard protector held in place with a piece of string. The method used in these books was to learn by repetition, taking in the whole word, and allowed the new reader to become comfortable with simple phrases such as ‘“Look look,” said Sally’.

William S. Gray and Zerna Sharp were the authors of the popular books and artists Eleanor Campbell and Keith Ward created the illustrations. Robert Childress took over as illustrator in the 1950s and Richard Wiley was the creator of the 1960s images.

Public Record Office Victoria has in their custody a number of the readers in the VPRS 13554 Ministerial Textbook Collection. Within this series you can find teacher curriculum books for use in State Schools. From consignments P1-P27, the units contain text books covering such subjects as: Science, History, Mathematics, Geography, English, Language, Religious, Social Studies, Readers, Spelling and Writing, Story books, Domestic Arts, Nursery Collections and Music.

This series was a former special collection of the Ministerial Library transferred to Public Record Office Victoria upon the closure by the Education History Unit in 1992. The series has a nominal start date of 1980 however it is uncertain when the Ministerial Library Textbook Collection was established. It may have started when the Department of Education was located in Nauru House, 80 Collins Street in the late 1970s. The collection was an initiative of Mr Albert Housden and employee of the Department. The Education History Unit added items to the Collection from various donors including closed schools and individual donors.

Kerry Harding, Access Services Officer

Do you remember the Dick and Jane tales? If so, tell us all about it here by making a comment.

Given that we share the Victorian Archives Centre Reading Room with the Victorian arm of NAA the temptation is very great for researchers wanting information about our wartime experiences to go straight to their inquiry desk.  However, depending on your interests, time spent with our collection can be quite rewarding, especially if you are prepared to dig. 

In this respect, the Records of Local Government can be valuable, especially if a piece of war time infrastructure existed within its boundaries.  Minutes of Council meetings and committees of the council can document any number of resolutions, local defence measures and commemorations during war time and afterwards. 

It is Council file-based series such as correspondence systems that can hold many treasures.  Contents will vary from series to series but some of the finds have been spectacular.  VPRS 2500 General Correspondence Files for Ballarat is a case in point.  Whilst checking the detailed, unfortunately still largely paper, list for records pertaining its famous Avenue of Honour, I came across a reference to a “calvary list” (VPRS 2500/P0, unit 114).  My curiosity spiked, I consulted the record at the Ballarat Archives Centre and found the listing to be a typo.  It should have read, “Casualty list” and the record itself is quite poignant.  It contains a number of pages that had been bound together, all lined in mourning black. Each page is effectively a statement that the flag, presumably at the Town Hall, was being flown at half mast for the named locals whose deaths were reported during the week. This occurred on Sundays during the war whenever deaths were reported.   Occasionally mistakes appeared to have been made and individuals who were only wounded were included.  One of the pages shown here records individuals whose deaths occurred at Gallipolli in 1915, including one non-local, Major General Bridges, the Commander in Chief of the Australian Expeditionary Force.

Another great find was made by my colleague Lauren Bourke in the records of the South Melbourne council.  VPRS 7836 is titled Patriotic Fund Correspondence Unit: Nominal Files (Army Servicemen) and was created during World War II. It documented work undertaken by a Correspondence Unit of the Fund which carried out the work of preparing and mailing quarterly newsletters to servicemen and women, known as “Giggle Sheets”.  It also kept military personnel addresses up to date for the mailing of Christmas packages, “Comforts” and individual correspondence.  Files document a range of information about individuals who enlisted from the South Melbourne area and can include letters written by the servicemen themselves.  Servicemen killed in the line of duty are identified and can contain photographs and newspaper accounts. 

We have placed some samples of records from VPRS 7836 in a cabinet at the Victorian Archives Centre for the next few weeks together with other war-related records.  Also on display is a sample from a new accession VPRS 16930 The Empire’s Patriotic Fund Applications, which documents sick and wounded soldiers; widows and orphans; disabled soldiers and sailors; and wives and children of soldiers and sailors who participated in the Boer War.

In the lead up to the 100th anniversary of World War I, a number of staff here at PROV are keeping their eyes open for similar discoveries such as those above that we hope to use in some way.  We would love to hear from anyone who has found something of which you think we might not be aware.  If so, post your comment here or even better, contribute your findings to the PROV wiki. 

Lest We Forget.

Charlie Farrugia, Senior Collections Advisor

Image credit: “Wheat stacks at Brooklyn Victoria.”  During WWI the effect of German U-boats led to the establishment of giant wheat stacks alongside train lines.  The full description of this image indicates that it shows 7 million bags in storage.  (VPRS 12800/P1, unit 192)

Or, in the words of Wikipedia; “Cloud computing is the delivery of computing as a service rather than a product, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices as a utility (like the electricity grid) over a network (typically the Internet).^“  The many dimensions of cloud computing, and issues that public sector organisations have in managing their records in cloud environments, are defined and examined in PROV’s latest policy issues paper Cloud Computing: Implications for Records Management.

Whether they’re embracing or considering a cloud solution, it’s on the agenda for government agencies around the world. The Australian Federal Government has developed a Strategic Direction paper documenting the envisioned approach to cloud computing. This follows approaches in countries such as the United Kingdom (G-Cloud), the United States of America (National Institute of Standards and Technology papers), and Canada (GovCloud).

Your Feedback
Please contact us with your feedback on the Issues Paper if you’d like to contribute to the development of PROV’s forthcoming policy on the records management implications of cloud computing. You can leave your comments below or email them to  standards@prov.vic.gov.au by 31 May 2012.

 Cheers!

Abigail Belfrage             &   Christopher Wallace
VERS Project Officer          Manager, Standards and Policy

Have you seen the Queen? Most likely you’ve seen the Queen on the TV from the comfort of your lounge-room or on the cover of the Women’s Weekly. But maybe you’re one of the many thousands of Victorians who has really seen the Queen, who braved the crowds at the MCG (she’s been there 4 times!) or lined up on the footpaths to catch a glimpse as she toured towns across Victoria.

If you’ve seen the Queen we want to you to come along to our ‘Story Day’ and tell us about it. Bring your memories and, if you have them, your best and quirkiest souvenirs or snapshots.

We’ll be recording interviews at the Story Day for the exhibition ‘We Saw the Queen’. We may even want to include your souvenir or snapshot in our display!

We Saw the Queen Story Day
Victorian Archives Centre
99 Shiel Street, North Melbourne
Thursday 26th April – all day
Let us know you’re coming:
Bookings online

Contact Lisa Fletcher on 9348 5786 for futher details

In this project we’re working to create resources and guidance for Victoria’s public agencies to manage their electronic records. We’ve just released an issues paper “Recordkeeping Implications of Social Media” as part of the development of a social media and recordkeeping policy.

It’s a fascinating and occasionally mind-boggling area; social media sites and their functionalities and communities are emerging at breathtaking speed, and changing how government does its business and engages with citizens. Yet there are enduring recordkeeping principles that apply to transactions made in these online environments. Like other recordkeeping authorities in Australia and overseas we’re keen to tease out the issues that matter and provide guidance for records managers and public servants.

To help us make our forthcoming social media and recordkeeping policy as comprehensive, reliable and useable as possible we want your comments and perspectives on our issues paper, especially if you are a records manager or use social media as part of your work.  For instance we’d like to know:

Are there any social media that are useful to your agency that are not adequately include in this definition?

Are there any other social media formats that may also require specific policies?

There are plenty more questions included in the issues paper – hopefully these have whet your appetite to read it and to respond in the way you prefer, by 31 May 2012. You can leave your comments below or contact Emily Swann with your feedback on emily.swann@prov.vic.gov.au or via Twitter.

Cheers!

Abigail Belfrage      &      Emily Swann
@abigailbelfrage            @EmilySwannPROV
VERS Projects Officer   VERS Policy Officer