Museums Australia Magazine 22(4) Winter 2014

vol 22 (4) winter 2014 $15.00

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Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(4) – Winter 2014 5

Contents

In this issue President’s Message. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

president

top: middle: bottom:

After the Nimbin Museum fire: How to model cultural recovery?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

left: right:

Ethics and Provenance in Collections Acquisition. 8 A preview from authors of the GLAM sector Innovation Study and Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Connecting the Edge: Within and beyond the Museum MA National Conference, Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery (Launceston, 16–19 May 2014) . . . 10 Multimedia & Publication Design Awards 2014. . . 12 Museums & Galleries National Awards 2014. . . . . . 15 Taking the ‘next step’ with web 2.0: Social media as a research tool for museums . . . . . 16 Practising to be a community of practice – Museums Australia Education a year on. . . . . . . . . 20 Powered by Partnerships: Trove Year 5 and beyond. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 First World War Centenary Commemorations in Australia and New Zealand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 From Balikpapan to Parramatta: The story of a WW2 Matilda named ACE . . . . . . . 30 Victoria’s Shrine of Remembrance: Encouraging young people to engage with the First World War Centenary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Museums and Memory of the World: UNESCO’s capture of the world’s documentary heritage. . . . . 36 Once upon a time… gatherings from Phoenix and Seattle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 COVER IMAGE: Poppies inserted by visitors into the Roll of Honour at the Australian War Memorial. © Australian War Memorial.

Museums Australia Magazine PO Box 266, Civic Square ACT 2608 Editorial: (02) 6230 0346 Advertising: 02) 6230 0346 Subscriptions: (02) 6230 0346 Fax: (02) 6230 0360 editor@museumsaustralia.org.au www.museumsaustralia.org.au Editor: Bernice Murphy Design: Brendan O’Donnell & Selena Kearney Print: Paragon Print, Canberra

Museums Australia National Council 2013—2015

© Museums Australia and individual authors.

Frank Howarth PSM (Former Director, Australian Museum, Sydney) vice-president

Richard Mulvaney (Director, Queen Victoria Museum & Art Gallery, Launceston) treasurer

Suzanne Bravery (Independent museum consultant) secretary

Dr Mat Trinca (Director, National Museum of Australia, Canberra) members

Dr Andrew Simpson (Macquarie University, Sydney) Carol Cartwright (Former Head, Education & Visitor Services, Australian War Memorial, Canberra)

Padraic Fisher (Director, National Wool Museum, Geelong) Peter Abbott (Manager, Tourism Services, Warrnambool City Council, Victoria) Pierre Arpin (Director, Museum & Art Gallery of the Northen Territory, Darwin) Rebekah Butler (Executive Director, Museum & Gallery Services Queensland, Brisbane) ex officio member

Dr Robin Hirst (Chair, ICOM Australia), Museum Victoria public officer

Dr Don McMichael CBE, Canberra state/territory branch presidents/ representatives (subject to change throughout year)

ACT Rebecca Coronel (Assistant Director – Collections, Content and Exhibitions (Acting), National Museum of Australia, Canberra) NSW Dr Andrew Simpson (Macquarie University, Sydney) NT Janie Mason (Charles Darwin University Nursing Museum, Darwin)

No part of this magazine may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

QLD Edith Cuffe OAM (Director, Abbey Museum of Art and Archaeology, Caboolture)

Museums Australia Magazine is published quarterly and on-line on the MA Website, and is a major link with members and the museums sector. Museums Australia Magazine is a forum for news, opinion and debate on museum issues.

SA Mirna Heruc

Contributions from those involved or interested in museums and galleries are welcome. Museums Australia Magazine reserves the right to edit, abridge, alter or reject any material. Views expressed by contributors are not necessarily those of the publisher or editor. Publication of an advertisement does not imply endorsement by Museums Australia, its affiliates or employees.

Museums Australia is proud to acknowledge the following supporters of the national organisation: Australian Government Ministry for the Arts and Department of the Environment; National Museum of Australia; Museum Victoria (Melbourne Museum); Western Australian Museum; and Link Digital (Canberra).

Print Post Publication No: 332582/00001 ISSN 1038-1694

(Manager, Art & Heritage Collections, University of Adelaide, Adelaide)

TAS Richard Mulvaney (Director, Queen Victoria Museum & Art Gallery, Launceston) VIC David Demant (Senior Curator, Information & Communication, Museum Victoria, Melbourne) WA Soula Veyradier (Manager, Western Australian Museum, Perth)

6 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(4) – Winter 2014

President’s Message

Frank Howarth

D above: right:

Frank Howarth.

The Nimbin fire.

Photo: Elspeth Jones of the Nimbin Museum.

oes a museum need to worry about the provenance of some taxidermied animals it wants to buy? After all, they are coming from a reputable dealer in the USA. Yes, it does need to be concerned about provenance, as much as an art museum does about a painting it wants to acquire. Provenance in this case concerns whether the animals were legally killed and legally imported into the USA, and there are certainly dealers in the wildlife trade who don’t necessarily follow the rules.

For some months MA has been commenting on drafts of the forthcoming Commonwealth publication, Australian Best Practice Guide to Collecting Cultural Material, in dialogue with our partner peak bodies that make up the Alliance of Museums and Galleries of Australia. These guidelines provide a welcome digest of the various international Conventions and Australian laws around acquiring cultural material, and the definition of cultural material is wide-ranging since it includes biological specimens. It’s also very welcome to see the Government seeking the sector’s views before releasing such guidelines.

The involvement of MA at this national policy level is one of the important things we can do as an industry body to develop our sector, but the key emphasis of MA has to be on services for and to its members, wherever they are.

And speaking of wherever they are, I’m writing this article immediately after a very enjoyable South East Qld Small Museums Conference, organised jointly

by Redland Museum and North Stradbroke Island Historical Museum, with the support of Museum and Gallery Services Queensland. The conference was tailored to the smaller professional and volunteer part of our museums and galleries sector. The calibre of speakers and the vigour of debate testified to the success of the conference, and it was a wonderful example of grass-roots-driven sector development.

The all-pervasive influence of things digital was a key subject of discussion at the Queensland conference.

We’ve recently heard of the devastating fire in the northern NSW town of Nimbin, which destroyed the Nimbin Museum, the home of the story of Nimbin.

The loss of the material in the Museum is a tragedy, but at least some of it lives on as digital images. One of the many reasons for digitising collections is to preserve at least a virtual collection if a disaster does occur, such as a fire. MA is working as part of the Museums and Galleries of Australia Alliance to liaise with the Commonwealth Government in developing a national approach to collection digitisation, suitable for both small and large cultural collections, and building on the success of TROVE, the Atlas of Living Australia, and the Victorian Collections

services. There will be much discussion around this development and we will need your input as those discussions proceed.

Your involvement is what makes MA strong, and one of the key ways to be involved is to come to the annual MA National Conference, which next year will be in Sydney (22—24 May 2015), with the R+R+Community Museums Training Program preceding on 21 May. A call for papers will go out soon, so get your proposals in, and come along and share your ideas as a presentation or over a drink. We all benefit from shared ideas. [] Frank Howarth PSM National President, Museums Australia

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(4) – Winter 2014 7

After the Nimbin Museum fire: How to model cultural recovery?

Andrew Simpson

O

n 13 August, fire destroyed a number of buildings in the main street of the small township of Nimbin. These were old wooden structures from the 1920s.

The buildings housed some iconic counterculture attractions of this unique northern New South Wales community, including the Nimbin Museum.

The museum consisted of eight rooms filled with objects and original artworks. Visitors were invited to ‘follow the Rainbow Serpent’ through the rooms, to discover for themselves local stories of Indigenous origins, European settlement and the Aquarius festival and movement that changed the township forever more than 40 years ago.

The museum projected a sense of the township’s unique identity nation-wide and even beyond. It was important for local tourism. For those with only limited time while passing through, it was a key place to visit.

The loss of the Nimbin Museum is another sad reminder of the tenuous and highly vulnerable nature of so much local heritage in regional Australia. Every time there is a devastating bush fire, cyclone, or flood event in this country, we are confronted by the same issues.

While people are always more important than buildings, we must ask the same questions that have been asked of many other small communities hit by similar disasters. Will the loss of the Nimbin Museum restrict how the community can tell its stories and project its identity in future? What economic impact might this have locally? And the Nimbin loss reminds us that many local heritage museums care for heritage that is not simply ‘local’, but often commands a regional and even ‘national’ importance when it comes to significance assessment and the multiple values connected with heritage.

Resilient communities recover. There is already an appeal for donations in place in Nimbin, to rebuild the museum. The website records that someone has

already donated a copy of the Woodstock vinyl longplaying triple album, complete with the signatures of many of those performing. It’s encouraging to see those outside the community already providing support. In more general terms, national organisations such as Museums Australia, particularly through the Community Museums National Network, state government agencies such as Museums & Galleries NSW, and international organisations such as Blue Shield, can also provide help.

Over the years a number of commentators and critics have noted the apparent ‘sameness’ of many local community museums in regional Australia: allegedly, similar Eurocentric settlement narratives; same rusty farm machinery; same local crafts.

Nimbin’s unique counter-culture heritage challenges this paradigm. Many would argue this heritage saved the community from economic decline and possible extinction, through providing a concentration of new ways of living and producing culture with economic and tourism benefits.

In perspective, the Nimbin loss prompts the suggestion that perhaps we are not sufficiently championing either the actual diversity or the wider importance of highlighting diversity among our community museums in regional Australia.

Local communities in regional areas everywhere face pressures that drive continuous change and adaptation. In addition to caring for history and local heritage, museums provide vital ways of participating in social adaptation: of capturing the process and outcomes of change, and sharing this on a broader stage. In some circumstances museums can build even more value.

The ‘Museum of English Rural Life at the University of Reading’ in the UK is a strong example of how museums that document the changes in regional communities can become nationally significant centres of research and scholarship.

As Nimbin takes stock and plans how to rebuild, there are opportunities for the museum to capture new ideas and lessons for other communities in the care of cultural heritage, as they set about the challenging task of recapturing and finding new ways to represent their own stories. [] Dr Andrew Simpson is Director of the Museum Studies Program at Macquarie University, Sydney, while also serving as a member of the National Council of Museums Australia.

Citation: Andrew Simpson, ‘After the Nimbin Museum fire: How to model cultural recovery?’, Museums Australia Magazine, Vol.22(4), Museums Australia, Canberra, Winter 2014, p. 7.

above: left:

Andrew Simpson.

The remains of the kombi van out the front of the Nimbin Museum in the Cullen Street, Nimbin in the early hours of Wednesday morning. Photo: Cathy Adams The Northern Star.

8 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(4) – Winter 2014

A joint statement on ethics released by Australia's peak cultural organisations

Ethics and Provenance in Collections Acquisition

Statement by the Council of Australasian Museum Directors (CAMD), Council of Australian Art Museum Directors (CAAMD), ICOM-Australia and Museums Australia

A

ustralia’s major museum and gallery organisations – the Council of Australasian Museum Directors, the Council of Australian Art Museum Directors, the International Council of Museums – Australia and Museums Australia – reconfirm their commitment to the carrying out of rigorous due diligence in respect of provenance in relation to the acquisition of items for Australian collections.

The four peak organisations urge all member museums and galleries to exercise the utmost care possible in researching acquisitions and to ensure that ethical standards, as well as legal compliance with national or international laws and conventions, takes centre-place in their work of creating collections for the nation’s benefit.

We also urge all State/Territory and National museums and galleries in Australia to have acquisition policies, frameworks and ethical standards in place to guide them in building their collections ethically.

Since the 1970 UNESCO Convention prohibiting illicit trafficking of cultural material, attention to the provenance research and required due diligence surrounding proposed acquisitions to collections has been steadily rising here and overseas. The policies and standards developed in response have been

codified by the ICOM Code of Ethics for Museums (most recently revised in 2004) and the Museums Australia Code of Ethics (1994).

They are in turn underpinned by individual acquisition policies and standards authorised by each museum and gallery governing body. These policies reflect both internationally agreed ethical standards and the need for legal compliance with national and international laws, conventions and treaties. No substantial museum or gallery today acquires objects without the opportunity to assess their acquisitions within such frameworks, acknowledged standards and stated purposes for developing a collection.

These standards and self-imposed controls by museums and galleries in developing their collections have been strengthened over the last few decades with particular care given to due diligence in determining the origin and ownership trail for items.

Museums and galleries have, for example, voluntarily revisited earlier acquisitions to rule out association with the looting by Nazis of cultural property during the Holocaust and to provide online facilities for provenance checking. Since the 1990s they have also adopted widely-accepted policies for the repatriation of wrongfully acquired Indigenous ancestral remains and secret-sacred material which is carried out under the Australian Government’s Indigenous Repatriation Program. [] (3 April 2014)

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(4) – Winter 2014 9

Innovation Study for the GLAM Sector – Report due for release September 2014

A preview from authors of the GLAM sector Innovation Study and Report

Australian Centre for Broadband Innovation (ACBI) CSIRO and the Smart Services CRC

Innovation Study: Challenges and opportunities for Australia’s Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums

August 2014

The Sydney Morning Herald, Thu 19 June 2014

above:

Draft Innovation Study (August 2014). Final report to be released in September.

right:

Participants in the two-day futures workshop held in May in Sydney. Standing: Michael Parry, Director Public Engagement, Powerhouse Museum.

References: CSIRO and Smart Services CRC, Innovation Study: Challenges and Opportunities for Australia’s Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums and Archives (September 2014). Available Sept. 2014 from website of Museums Australia: <www. museumsaustralia.org.au>

C

SIRO and partners, through the Australian Centre for Broadband Innovation (ACBI) and the Smart Services CRC, are about to release a report, Innovation Study: Challenges and opportunities for Australia’s Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums. The Report will be released electronically in September, and Museums Australia has agreed to upload the report to its website and act as ongoing e-custodian for its availability to the GLAM sector. (An MA e-Bulletin will broadcast the news as soon as the Report is available.)

The objectives of the study are to: • Strengthen innovation and collaboration across the Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums (GLAM) sector, resulting in the identification and resourcing of strategic initiatives.

• Exchange information and consider the opportunities and challenges enabled by new broadband and digital services.

• Create awareness of the capabilities and digital platforms developed by the Australian research sector, including CSIRO, Smart Services CRC and NICTA, and opportunities for future collaboration.

One of the starting points for the study was the Museum Robot project, a collaborative project between the National Museum of Australia and CSIRO supported by the Department of Communications. This project built an innovative mobile telepresence service that allows students from anywhere in Australia to participate in an immersive virtual tour of the Museum and with a real tour guide.

This has allowed the NMA to greatly increase access for schools in states and territories a long way from Canberra, helping it better fulfil its national charter.

While the project was considered a great success, it was not without its challenges – namely the allocation of resources to maintain and develop a new service in an environment of constrained budgets. This issue went to a key dilemma of the GLAM sector; specifically about how to fund and support innovation and new activities while maintaining traditional services and functions. This dilemma is shared with many other industries that are confronting change enabled by broadband and digital services.

The study has explored this and other strategic issues confronting the GLAM sector. It has also identified leading practice and initiatives that are

working well, along with challenges and threats confronting the sector. The study was conducted as an iterative series of consultations with key stakeholders and leading practitioners from across the sector, including representatives from national, state and local institutions, as well as researchers from CSIRO and relevant universities.

Enlisting expert experience around its objectives, the study also gathered together leaders from the GLAM sector in May, for a two-day futures workshop.

During working sessions held in Sydney, the group examined potential future scenarios for the sector (both positive and negative), and identified initiatives that will help the sector realise new opportunities and desirable outcomes. The Smart Services CRC has experience in convening similar futures workshops for other industry sectors, such as media and retailing, which are being forced to transform their goals and practices at a dramatic rate due to these changes.

The last stage of the study took the results of the May workshop to local and international leaders in the sector, to gather further input through their views and advice.

The final GLAM Innovation Study and report is due for public release in early September 2014, and will be circulated to all participants. It is intended that the study will help identify a series of strategic opportunities for the sector, together with practical actions that can be implemented to grow support for innovation, as well as take advantage of the multiple capabilities of the wider research sector.

The GLAM Innovation Study’s authors: Colin Griffith was the Director of the Australian Centre for Broadband Innovation (ACBI), a collaborative research centre established by CSIRO and is now advising on innovation and digital strategy with business, government and research organisations through Tonic Media Consulting.

Tim Mansfield is a Partner at Action Foresight and has been working as a futurist at the intersection of research and commercial practice since 2008, running futures visioning workshops for KPMG, AIMIA, Woolworths, AMP and Fairfax Digital.

Chris Winter has had a long background in the media and with the ABC, and is currently absorbed by the collections sector, the human potential of ICT and fast networks, and intelligent cities.

Annette Dockerty is Market Development Manager for Smart Services/CRC. Annette and has spent the last 11 years connecting SME's, large enterprise and governments with students and researchers for the purpose of R&D collaboration leading to commercial use of outcomes.

Troy Brown is a Business Development Manager with CSIRO’s Digital Productivity & Services Flagship and specialises in commercialisation and financial strategy. [] Citation: Colin Griffith, Tim Mansfield, Chris Winter, Annette Dockerty, Troy Brown, ‘A preview from authors of the GLAM sector Innovation Study and Report’, Museums Australia Magazine, Vol.22(4), Museums Australia, Canberra, Winter 2014, p. 9.

10 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(4) – Winter 2014

2014 MA Conference round-up

Connecting the Edge: Within and beyond the Museum MA National Conference, Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery (16–19 May 2014, Launceston) Welcome to Country

Training Program (Friday, 16 May)

Saturday morning in Launceston, 17 May, saw the first complete plenary gathering at the QVMAG Tramsheds Auditorium, Inveresk campus. It was the first time the Museums Australia Conference was returning to Tasmania in 21 years. The last occasion was December 1993, on the eve of Museums Australia’s creation as a national association.

Appropriately the morning began with a Welcome to Country by Patsy Cameron, Aboriginal Elder, author, historian, and self-described ‘cultural artisan’. Her Welcome, on behalf of the Elders and descendants of the Palawa tribe from the Tamar area, known as the Leterremairrener, Panniher and Tyerrernole people, was eloquent and deeply moving. Patsy Cameron shaped an understanding of local Aboriginal history, setting out the background of the first peoples interconnected in the area that later became known as the Tamar Valley. All participants in the Conference were brought to the right place and understanding of the lands on which they met, and the important relationships set in place through Patsy Cameron’s Welcome to Country, for a successful meeting to occur over subsequent days.

Prior to many delegates’ arrival in Launceston, there were various events and meetings that have become important features of the sector’s interaction opportunities around the National Conference each year. A key feature of the last decade has become a day’s event bringing together many new colleagues at regional and community-based levels around the country, for a series of training workshops.

Conference Launch

above:

Standing room only for delegates of the MA2015 Regional, Remote and Community Museums Day on Friday 16 May at Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston.

His Excellency, The Honourable Peter Underwood AC, Governor of Tasmania, performed the Conference Launch. The state’s Governor was also impressive in his thoughtfulness about museums and their important services and roles for public benefit.

His address highlighted museums’ collections and programs, and their contribution to the ways our culture and history are understood and enjoyed by the wider community.

Regional+Remote+Community Museums

Other gatherings in Launceston There were pre-Conference meetings of MA’s National Council, the Council of Australasian Museum Directors (CAMD), together with representatives of ICOM-Australia and the Council of Australian Art Museum Directors (CAAMD). These now more regular gatherings have forged new collaborative energies around common-purpose issues. The jointbodies meetings have advanced common agendas, including ‘united voice’ interface with Government around key topics — following strong outcomes of the Museum Summit prior to the 2013 Canberra Conference. Although these meetings were less visible than events in the main Program, and didn’t snatch a hashtag or make it to the Conference Twitterfeed, this steadily growing collaboration is strengthening the sector, which builds wider benefits for all members and colleagues in partner organisations.

The Conference as a nerve-centre for three days Sessions in and around the main Conference — including the Conference Dinner & ICOM Awards; and MA’s MAPDA and MAGNA programs that now make up a strong Awards Night social event — already have some coverage in this issue of MA Magazine.

The Conference has further highlighted good people and topics targeted for MAM issues to follow. MA’s Conference Mentorship program is also making sure that the skills and knowledge of younger colleagues can be captured early, and take some of our debates to new places.

It seemed more like a week’s output of energies when all proceedings finally wound up on Monday afternoon in Launceston. To all organisers and hosts in Launceston, and to QVMAG Director, Richard Mulvaney and staff: a huge thank-you from MA and colleagues! MA delegates and friends were exuberantly farewelled by Richard Mulvaney and ‘handed forward’ to the <MA2015> Conference organisers and colleagues who will gather in Eora country, on Gadigal lands, in May 2015 in Sydney. (Ed) []

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(4) – Winter 2014 11

clockwise from top left:

Bruce Brown (Mental Media) on right demonstrating products at the trade exhibition, Tramsheds, Launceston; Richard Mulvaney at the microphone again at the Regional, Remote and Community Museum Welcome Reception at Design Centre Tasmania on Thursday 15 May; Michael Parry (Powerhouse Museum) presenting Getting Digital Done: effectively connecting museums and communities on Sunday 18 May; Regional, Remote and Community Museum Welcome Reception at Design Centre Tasmania on Thursday 15 May; Daniel Thomas AM, special guest speaker at the Conference Gala Dinner, Sunday 18 May.

12 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(4) – Winter 2014

MAPDAs showcasing excellence in design and communication in print and online across Australia and New Zealand

Multimedia & Publication Design Awards 2014

left: MAPDA 2014 Special Judges' Award for print publications and Winner of Exhibition Catalogue (Major), Level B. National Portrait Gallery of Australia, Paris to Monaro: Pleasures from the studio of Hilda Rix Nicholas. Designer: Brett Wiencke. Comments: Stunning. Beautiful high quality photography used well to enhance the legibility of the subject. Every element has been perfectly and sensitively considered. Nice choice of paper, format and variety of techniques.

Stephanie Hamilton

T

he Museums Australia Multimedia & Publication Design Awards (MAPDA) are the only awards of their kind in the world.

Originally based on the American Alliance of Museums (AAM) publication awards in the early 1990s, the MAPDAs have since evolved into a trans-Tasman program that seeks to recognise design excellence and innovation in publications and multimedia produced by museums and galleries.

The MAPDAs underwent a review of the categories and judging criteria before the launch in 2014.

The changes were well-received, and a record number of entries were submitted by Australian and New Zealand collecting organisations.

Most notable of the category changes was the removal of Educational Material and the introduction of a Children's Book category. The Multimedia categories were also updated and redefined to reflect the current digital landscape.

Print publications were judged in Canberra in March. The publication judging takes place over an entire day and involves much debate, some brawls, a lot of jelly beans, and overall a great deal of fun and inspiration for all. Multimedia entries were judged by

teleconference in April. The revolving judging panel (five for print, three for multimedia) is made up of experts from the design and printing industries and the museums sector. A list of the 2014 judges, for both print and multimedia, and the judging criteria, are available on the MAPDA website <mapda.org.au>.

Award winners were celebrated at the Museums Australia National Conference Awards Night on Saturday 17 May in Launceston. Certificates were handed out by MAPDA sponsors Paul Murphy (Australian Book Connection) and Mike Petty and Rod Davies (Splitting Image).

The traditional Best In Show was replaced this year by the Judges' Special Award (one each for print and multimedia). These awards went to the National Portait Gallery of Australia and the National Museum of Australia respectively (winning entries and comments are included above and over the page).

All entries submitted to MAPDA 2014 highlight the depth and ingenuity of design across our sector. The judges particularly noted the greater, and cheaper, availability and application of special treatments such as foils, boxes, sleeves and ribbons, due to the boom in printing in China. The increasing volume of beautifully-designed and presented books and exhibition catalogues suggests the future

Museums Australia thanks our generous MAPDA 2014 sponsors:

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(4) – Winter 2014 13

top left:

National Gallery of Victoria, Robin Rhode: The Call of Walls. Winner: Exhibition Catalogue (Small), Level B. top right:

National Library of Australia, Mapping Our World. Winner: Exhibition Branding, Level B. bottom left:

The Kerry Stokes Collection, Pierre Bernard Milius: Last Commander of the Baudin Expedition - The Journal 18001804. Winner: Book, Level B. bottom right:

Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, The New Zealand Art Activity Book.

Winner: Children's Book, Level A.

14 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(4) – Winter 2014

MAPDAs showcasing excellence in design and communication in print and online across Australia and New Zealand

of publications in the sector appears to be very secure, despite the growth in equally innovative and impressive multimedia applications.

The winning and highly commended entries from MAPDA 2014 are available on the MAPDA website <mapda.org.au>. Judges' comments and a photo gallery of winning publications and the Awards Night are also online.

MAPDA will call for entries again in 2015 for presentation at the MA2015 National Conference in

Sydney, 22-24 May. Keep up to date by joining the mailing list from the MAPDA website or liking MA's Facebook page <facebook.com/MuseumsAustralia>. [] Stephanie Hamilton is Assistant Manager - Communications at Museums Australia National Office, Canberra. Stephanie has administered the MAPDA awards for the past 4 years.

top left:

Lilydale & District Historical Society, Gun Alley: The Forgotten Story of Lilydale’s Back Streets 1880 to Today <www.lilydale.com.au/gunalley> top right: National Museum of Australia, Convict Love Tokens <love-tokens.nma.gov.au> bottom left: MAPDA exhibition at MA2014 National Conference, Launceston. bottom right:

Mat Trinca (Director, National Museum of Australia, left) receiving the Judges' Special Award for Convict Love Tokens from Sponsor Mike Petty (Splitting Image, right).

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(4) – Winter 2014 15

Recognising outstanding achievement in our museums and galleries

Museums & Galleries National Awards 2014

Stephanie Hamilton

T

he Museums and Galleries National Awards (MAGNAs), now in their fourth year, underwent one radical change in the National Awards Review: they became free to enter for MA members. The result? Triple the number of entries ever received for the MAGNAs! The aim was to make the awards as representative of Australia's museums and galleries as possible — a goal colleagues think we achieved based on the record number of entries that flooded into the National Office in March and April this year.

Not only was the number of entries outstanding, but the calibre and diversity of the submissions as well. From the smallest historical society in remotest Western Australia, to the largest institutions in the National Capital: covering exhibitions, Indigenous projects, and community and audience engagement programs of all sizes and sorts, the MAGNAs showcase the innovation and dynamism of our sector.

The excitement about responses was soon eclipsed by the logistical nightmare of judging so many entries.

MAGNA judges — senior staff from the national institutions who kindly volunteer their time each year — met over several days to deliberate, discuss and debate before deciding on the 2014 MAGNA winners.

Winners were announced at the Museums Australia National Conference Awards Night. Held in conjunction with the National Conference and the MAPDAs, the event, hosted by MA Vice-President, Richard Mulvaney, was hugely popular. The full list of winning and commended entries, as well as photos from the event, are available on the MA website <www.museumsaustralia.org.au>.

The MAGNAs will run again in 2015 as a free benefit to MA members. 2015 will also be the year we launch our digital awards platform, making entering, judging

and administering the awards a much simpler and enjoyable task for all.

National Winner From a shortlist comprising the winning entries from all categories of the awards, the National Winner was determined based on outstanding innovation, effective community engagement, highest production values, sustainable practices and enterprising use of resources.

Joining past National Winners including the Australian Institute for the Conservation of Cultural Materials, Gwoonwardu Mia and the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Museums Victoria's First Peoples permanent exhibition redevelopment project was awarded the overall prize.

Museum Victoria CEO, Patrick Greene, and Director, Collections, Research and Exhibitions, Robin Hirst, accepted the award at the Museums Australia National Conference. Robin had this to say: First Peoples saw Museum Victoria break new ground in its exhibition development: we co-curated the exhibition with the Aboriginal communities, we invested in new multimedia control and lighting systems, and our in-house design team worked with local creative companies to produce a remarkable outcome.

It is wonderful to have our peers acknowledge us with this award.

For more information and images of the exhibition, visit <museumvictoria.com.au/bunjilaka>. Museums Australia Magazine featured the redevelopment of the First Peoples exhibition and a review in the Summer 2013 issue Volume 22(2) pp. 12-15. []

16 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(4) – Winter 2014

Collaborative curating facilitated through Facebook

Taking the ‘next step’ with web 2.0: Social media as a research tool for museums

above:

Emma Williams

right:

Screen grab from the Canberra Punk & Beyond Facebook page.

next page:

Head Full of Flames branding.[2]

1. https://www.facebook.com/ CanberraPunkandBeyond 2. The exhibition was extended until 9 February 2014, due to its popularity.

3. Canberra Museum & Gallery Exhibition Policy 4. It must be remembered that CMAG’s other gallery spaces are curated via more traditional methods.

5. Canberra Punk and Beyond, About, https://www.facebook. com/CanberraPunkandBeyond, accessed 5/12/13.

Emma Williams

F

rom September 2013 to February 2014, Canberra Museum & Gallery (CMAG) hosted an exhibition entitled Head Full of Flames: Punk in the Nation’s Capital 1977–1992. This exhibition was a partnership between CMAG curatorial staff and the authors of a book of the same name. The collection of material for this book (and consequently, the exhibition) was facilitated through a Facebook page called Canberra Punk & Beyond.[1] This partnership between cultural institution and community group provides an excellent case study of the use of social media as a research tool in the museum context.

What happens when cultural institutions ‘take the next step’ with social media, moving it from outreach and communication tool to research platform? Is social media compatible with traditional social history research? What are some of the benefits and disadvantages of its use? While not seeking

(or able) to provide all the answers, it is hoped that the experiences gained through the Head Full of Flames project will be of interest to other institutions embarking on social media projects. Without doubt, this is an area that requires further experience and discussion within the GLAM sector.

CMAG presents a changing exhibitions program across the visual arts and social history, and as the Australian Capital Territory’s collecting and exhibiting institution, focuses on Canberra stories and the work of Canberra-based artists. CMAG has a strong presence on social media platforms, including Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and Twitter.

One of CMAG’s six main gallery spaces is the Open Collection Gallery, which aims to ‘provide opportunities to showcase the collections of individuals and groups within the community of the Canberra region’.[3] Exhibitions are presented in partnership with collectors, with CMAG providing overall project management and the collector contributing the objects and associated stories.[4] Collections are allowed to ‘speak for themselves’ in this space, and the collector is the subject matter expert. Previous open collections exhibitions included Telephones Forever, the telecommunications collection of a former telephone technician at Old Parliament House; and Miss Piggy, one woman’s lifetime collection of pig memorabilia. Head Full of Flames was presented in this gallery.

The Head Full of Flames project dates back to May 2011. Chris Shakallis, lead singer of a Canberra punk band called The Young Docteurs, was interviewed on the ACT’s local radio station ABC 666 for a program on alternative music in Canberra. Several days later, Chris started a Facebook page called Canberra Punk & Beyond, for ‘anyone who was there [to] share photos, music, [and] stories from the period 1977–1992’.[5] The page quickly gained momentum, with people who had been part of Canberra’s lively punk scene reconnecting via the site, using it to share photographs, gig posters, and recollections from the period. By June, Chris and some of his fellow punks had decided to compile the material that was being collected via the Facebook page into a book. Based on the original idea of Canberra curator, producer and blogger, Yolande Norris, CMAG agreed to host the aligned exhibition as part of the Centenary of Canberra program in 2013.

When presented, the exhibition included photographs, gig posters, tickets, publications, costumes, stage decorations, and a guitar. It also included a touch screen on which visitors could view the Canberra Punk & Beyond Facebook page (but not

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(4) – Winter 2014 17

Using Facebook to ‘crowd source’ the primary research gave access to more research subjects

contribute to it). In line with the philosophy of the Open Collection Gallery, CMAG did not curate the show in the traditional sense. Of the material that was sourced and collected via the Facebook page, CMAG curatorial staff made the final decision as to what went into the gallery in liaison with those lending to the exhibition. Interpretive text was minimal, and the labels that were included used information sourced from the Facebook page and the authors of the Head Full of Flames book. There was little research required in addition to what had already been conducted via the Facebook page.

How successful was use of Facebook in the collection of primary material for use in a social history exhibition? As of May 2014, the Canberra Punk & Beyond Facebook page had 1082 Likes, and this number had grown slowly but steadily over the preceding months. Where CMAG might previously have sourced exhibition material via The Canberra Times or existing community networks, generating perhaps a handful of responses, this page gave access to the personal collections of hundreds of people.

Using Facebook to ‘crowd source’ the primary

research gave access to more research subjects, and overall a much broader scope than would have been possible using traditional research methods and the resources of one curator.

Another huge benefit of Facebook was that it made it very easy for people to share content. This of course had as much to do with levels of digital literacy amongst the Canberra punks as with the functionality of Facebook. Nevertheless, content was shared with ease. Digital copies of photographs and images of ephemera such as gig posters, flyers, handbills and tickets were uploaded to the page by page administrators and followers. Likewise, the ease with which followers could post comments to the page meant that facts (dates, places, names) were contributed by people who were first-hand witnesses to and participants in the Canberra punk scene. The book’s authors were also able to use the page to source additional material that they were lacking as the book took shape. Facebook made it very easy for them to seek information from their ‘crowd’ (i.e. followers) of willing research subjects and contributors.

18 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(4) – Winter 2014

Collaborative curating facilitated through Facebook

Involvement in this kind of social media project did have some disadvantages. Notable amongst these was the sheer quantity of material that was collected via the Facebook page. It is difficult to estimate what percentage of this material (images, ephemera and objects) went into the exhibition, but there is no doubt that it was a fraction of what was sourced. Of course, object selection (the refinement of an object list) is a necessary part of the development of any social history exhibition. But in this case, we really were spoilt for choice.

Aligned with the oversupply of material is the potential for the loss of academic rigor in the research process. As stated previously, the Open Collection Gallery’s philosophy is very much that the collector is the expert. Nevertheless, CMAG still operates with a baseline of academic integrity on such shows.

However in this instance, it would not have been possible for CMAG curatorial staff to fact-check an entire book’s worth of information.

The very nature of social media leaves institutions open to public criticism, and while this should not stop us from engaging with social media, we do need to be prepared to respond appropriately. The internet and social media have made it incredibly easy for comments and criticism to be made from behind the

protection of a computer screen. The interactions on the Head Full of Flames project were overwhelmingly positive, and we are not aware of any serious instances of negative comments being made against CMAG. However, strategies for dealing with these kinds of comments would have needed to be in place if we had been maintaining the page ourselves, and certainly would be required for future projects.

A final issue that this project raised relates to copyright permission and informed consent on the part of contributors. Despite the existence of some controls, such as through private groups and secret groups, the contribution of material on Facebook is largely unmediated. This raises questions over subsequent use of that material. Are contributors aware that their photographs will become part of an exhibition? If a person uploads a photograph, how can we be sure that they are the copyright holder?

These issues will be of increasing relevance as crowd sourcing for projects (for example, the National Archives of Australia’s Discovering Anzacs)[6] becomes more common.

Partnering with the authors of Head Full of Flames on a social media-based project was a positive experience for Canberra Museum & Gallery, demonstrating that social media can be

above:

Head Full of Flames gallery shots courtesy Steve Nebauer - a Bear Image.

1. See NAA’s website links at http://discoveringanzacs.naa. gov.au/, accessed 13/8/14.

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(4) – Winter 2014 19

used to generate primary research. Web 2.0 tools like Facebook pages are designed to be interactive and should not simply become extensions of an institution’s web presence. Using a Facebook page as a research tool takes this idea one step further.

Head Full of Flames demonstrated that with the right controls in place, and when dealing with appropriate content, social media can enhance the interaction that cultural institutions enjoy with community groups and potential new audiences, and provide a unique and efficient forum for the collection of content. [] Emma Williams is Curator, Social History at Canberra Museum & Gallery. This article is adapted from a presentation she made at the MA 2014 National Conference, at the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston, in May. Citation: Emma Williams, ‘Taking the ‘next step’ with web 2.0: Social media as a research tool for museums’, Museums Australia Magazine, Vol.22(4), Museums Australia, Canberra, Winter 2014, pp. 16-19.

20 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(4) – Winter 2014

e-connecting and other strategies for MA Networks

Practising to be a community of practice – Museums Australia Education a year on

Andrew Hiskens

W above:

Andrew Hiskens

hen the new Committee of the Museums Australia Education Network was elected in May 2013, we faced a number of not-very-surprising problems and a fundamental question: • Problem #1: Establishing and maintaining national professional networks is extremely difficult in a geographically dispersed country like Australia.

• Problem #2: You could (maybe) solve Problem #1 if you had lots of money to throw at it.

• Question: Given limited resources (money/time), how can you create an active professional network that has genuine value for its constituents?

In fact, you could argue that this is a decent problem definition for any national professional organisation in Australia, and certainly for Museums Australia as a whole. It’s partly a ‘tyranny of distance’ issue. Before the handover, the previous Education committee had helpfully undertaken a survey of members. This was designed to frame the kinds of activities, services and forms of communication that would best serve members’ needs, and constitute value in terms of their membership of the group, and of MA as a whole.

There were 80 respondents.

The report looked at how long people had worked in both museums and in education (for most, it was 5 years or more). Geographically there was a strong east-coast and capital-cities bias (in order, Canberra, Sydney, Melbourne, with Brisbane underrepresented); and the total proportion of regional respondents was more than Sydney but still less than Canberra.

In terms of communication: emails from MA, from the Education group President, and from state/ territory groups were rated the most effective. Almost no-one said they received information forwarded on by their museum or gallery manager, and lots of people didn’t know what MAENN (Museums Australia Education National Network) was. There were some tell-tale comments: ‘Apologies but I did not know what MAENN stood for and had to open the email to see what this was about’; and, more tellingly, ‘I don’t know what MAENN is so nearly deleted your survey message’.

When respondents were asked how they would prefer to receive information, most opted for email, with a reasonably strong preference against social

media – although there were those who also valued this form of communication. Mail to home or business was almost line-ball (although not a great option from an operational perspective). And there was a slight preference for regular blog posts. One of the comments explained the continuing value of email: ‘I don’t care how many communications methods are used, I need an email to circulate within a small staff group within office to encourage and promote the network’ – which is, after all, precisely what we want people to do. One respondent couldn’t find any emails from MAENN in the previous 6 years. Blogs got one, rather promising, comment: ‘Would love a blog! I feel a lot of the museum blogs I read are very US centric.

I’d love a collective museums australia education blog to learn more about what others are doing in Aus.’ Looking at the relative importance of the functions of the Education group: networking, professional development, and sharing of museum education ideas rated the strongest. Skills development and advocacy for museum education, both within and outside of the sector, were seen as less relevant; and somewhat surprisingly, employment opportunities as not at all relevant. In terms of topics for professional development, ‘case studies for education best practice in museums’ and ‘development of online resources for teachers and students’ rated the highest, followed by ‘failures and successes in museum education’ and ‘innovations in Australian contexts’.

All of this was really useful to an incoming Committee, because we were able to plan what to do with some degree of confidence that we had the evidence to support our actions. At the least, we knew where the key problems lay: • Brand • Identity: many respondents did not understand what MAENN was.

• Communication • Gatekeepers: we weren’t getting information to all of the people who might need or value it (77% of respondents reported they did not receive information from their manager).

• Method: there was a clear preference to get communications by email (because we tend to use our email as a single inbox).

• Professional Development • Geographic challenges: we needed to provide national opportunities on a regular basis, with all of the challenges of working out how to get

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(4) – Winter 2014 21

the best mix of online and face-to-face for a geographically dispersed group.

A sub-group of the Committee convened by our Treasurer, Peter Hoban, held a conference call to develop some potential solutions to these issues; and Peter, Christine Healey (our Secretary) and I met subsequently to workshop what this might look like as a cohesive plan (a photo of our whiteboard notes accompanies this article).

The Committee then decided on the following actions: • Branding • MAENN was renamed Museums Australia Education (MAE).

• Communication • After consulting Lee Scott in MA’s National Office, Christine set up a new MAE website in WordPress, allowing anyone interested to subscribe for automatic email updates,

top:

Screenshot from Kelly Carabott's presentation at the MAEd New workshop at the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney. bottom: Screenshot from Google Hangout with Dr Louise Zarmati.

thereby avoiding communications being held up by ‘gatekeepers’. See: http:// museumsaustraliaeducation.wordpress.com/ • Christine also expanded this initiative into social media, setting up a Facebook page, LinkedIn Group, Google+ and a Twitter account (links can be found on the website, and the Twitter handle is @MA_Education).

• MAE Newsletters and President’s Reports are still emailed to MAE members through the MA newsletter system, but are also replicated on the MAE website and alerts sent out via social media, as a kind of ‘belt and braces’ communication.

• There was an MAE drive to gather website subscribers and social media members over February/March 2014.

• Professional Development • Online PD: We have used Google Hangouts, which offers functionalities such as streaming live online panel discussions, then publishing the captured video to YouTube and also embedding it on the MAE website. This allows us to build up a library of PD resources over time. The first online PD for the year was themed as ‘Constructivism in Australian Museums’ – an Interview with Dr. Louise Zarmati. Future sessions are currently being planned.

• We ran a pre-Conference event — ­ MAE Day — on Friday 16 May, immediately prior to the 2014 Museums Australia Conference in Launceston.

This attracted around 40 participants for a series of varied and lively discussions about different aspects of museum education practice.

It also gave participants, many of whom had not met before, a sense of community through the

22 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(4) – Winter 2014

e-connecting and other strategies for MA Networks

3 days of the full MA Conference afterwards.

Some of these discussions have continued postconference. The Committee is now actively looking at how MAE could contribute to the 2015 Museums Australia Conference in Sydney (22-24 May).

• We have actively encouraged State and Territory groups to be set up (where there is no group currently) and run their own face-to-face PD sessions. This strategy has worked particularly well in NSW and Queensland. Jo Henwood in NSW has worked wonders running engaging PD sessions pretty much by herself. These have been well attended, with some sessions even attracting participants from Canberra and Melbourne. Jo has also videoed some of the NSW PD sessions, and one has now been posted on the MAE website (http://bit.ly/1qDWTx1), thereby creating more online content for MAE nationally.

• Janis Hanley, Brendan Dahl and others have met to plan the setting up of a Queensland group (MAEdQ), and have already run some very popular PD events. The most recent, at Pine Rivers Heritage Museum, drew 30 attendees and had a waiting list of 18. Janis has also set up a website <www.maedq.org.au>, Facebook, and Google+ groups and Twitter account– @ MAEdQLD. Meanwhile the long-active envi group in Victoria (Education Network Victoria) and IMAGE group in the ACT continue to deliver regular programs and activities, and both share some of these things online.

This strategy of centralising our communications around the MAE WordPress site, attracting subscribers — who get updates via email — and syndicating information through social media, has worked well. As of 1 July 2014, Museums Australia Education (WordPress) had 146 followers and 1,638 views; MAE Google+ had 29 followers and 2,297 views; MAE Facebook had received 30 likes; MAE's Twitter account <@MA_Education> had 106 followers; and MAE LinkedIn had 11 members. These are perhaps not huge numbers, but they represent active engagement — people have chosen to subscribe.

Combined with support for State- and Territorybased groups, both to establish themselves (where there is no group at present) and to become more active in delivering PD sessions, the increased MAE momentum electronically has started to yield real benefits in addressing the issues that were identified by the original survey. It has also proved to be a reasonably replicable model — allowing distributed groups to do as little or as much as they want under the broader umbrella of Museums Australia and MAE — setting up their own web presence, social media identity and PD events. That element of choice around how much to do is always important for volunteer-run groups.

If I were to characterise it simply, I would say that we had lucked upon a way of providing a context and

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(4) – Winter 2014 23

There needs to be a regular rhythm to the community — enough to maintain vibrancy, but not so much as to be overwhelming

some models through which our desired outcomes can happen. I say 'lucked upon' because these solutions have been somewhat organic. Certainly they have built on the things Peter, Christine and I had learnt as part of envi in Victoria, before joining the National Committee. But the other aspect in hindsight has been to look at these fairly simple strategies in the light of the literature around communities of practice, and particularly the work of Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger.[1] Lave and Wenger highlight a series of characteristics and design principles that both reinforce our confidence in the approaches we have taken and provide an evidence-base to support future decisions. These include the following concepts, on which I have elaborated: • Communities of practice are for active practitioners and not appropriate for non-practitioners — largely because they rely on situated learning, and the context or 'situation' is practice.

• They exhibit generosity and are built around the notion of sharing – tips, best or interesting practices, questions, support. Of course, sharing is one of the better characteristics of the online world.

• Expertise is important, and valued — which, again, works well in an online environment (think of the value placed on reputation in communities such as eBay and Wikipedia, or in developer communities such as Linux or Drupal).

• The community needs to be able to evolve naturally — which, for MAE, is around dialogue via the website, and the encouragement of the State and Territory groups.

• External perspectives are important: The risk in a community of practice is that it might become a mono-culture (what Eli Pariser has described as a 'filter bubble'[2]). Diversity is important for innovation and problem solving — it enables you to think around corners rather than just in a straight line.

• It is also important to understand that there will naturally be different levels of participation: there is a core group (made up of the MAE Committee

and the organisers within the State and Territory groups); an active group (people who attend or participate in MAE and local events and/or online, but are less engaged than the core group); and a peripheral group (who are more passive participants but still learn from their engagement with the larger group). Wenger notes that this group is the majority and, indeed, if you were to graph involvement it would be a power law curve, representing a 'long tail' (which is also a very common characteristic of online engagement).[3] • There is a focus on the value of the community.

In an emerging community, that sense of value will grow and create a 'stickability' that maintains engagement.

• There need to be good opportunities for both public and private dialogue. Connections made through public forums can be taken off-line afterwards for deeper discussion and sharing.

• It is important to combine familiarity with excitement: Things needs to be challenging, but not too challenging; familiar but surprising. There also needs to be an opportunity for members to shape their own learning.

• And finally, there needs to be a regular rhythm to the community – enough to maintain vibrancy, but not so much as to be overwhelming.

Ultimately, none of this is necessarily new or unique.

But it feels as though it is working for MAE and the timing is opportune. As Goethe said, 'Everything has been thought of before, but the difficulty is to think of it again'.

I hope that we have indeed thought of things again, and put them together in a way that best meets the needs of the museum education community. [] Andrew Hiskens is President of the Museums Australia Education Network. He is Manager of Learning Services at the State Library of Victoria <ahiskens@slv.vic.gov.au>; Twitter: @ahiskens Citation: Andrew Hiskens, ‘Practising to be a community of practice – Museums Australia Education a year on’, Museums Australia Magazine, Vol. 22 (4), Museums Australia, Canberra, Winter 2014, pp. 20-23.

left:

MAE website screenshot.

1. Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger.

Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).

2. Eli Pariser, The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You (New York: Penguin, 2011).

3. On power law and long tail distribution, see: http://www.shirky. com/writings/herecomeseverybody/ powerlaw_weblog.html

24 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(4) – Winter 2014

Profiling Trove: the National Library of Australia’s innovative web-discovery service

Powered by Partnerships: Trove Year 5 and beyond

Tim Sherratt and Catriona Bryce

T

rove isn’t just digitised newspapers and our records don’t just come from libraries. From stuffed dogs and voodoo dolls to the latest scientific research: Trove’s contents are sure to surprise.

Trove is a collection of collections. It aggregates records from hundreds of Australian libraries, museums, archives, universities, research organisations, government agencies, and community groups. All these records can be explored through a single search. It’s Trove’s job to make unique Australian content easier to find and use.

No collection is too big or too small. Amongst the Trove team’s favourites are 154 records from the Queensland Police Museum. These include Peter, a stuffed dog, who was one of the key pieces of evidence used to identify a murderer in the 1950s. This collection also includes a small lump of metal – coins welded together after the Kenniff brothers set fire to the bodies of two murdered police constables in 1902.

But Trove is not just for finding records, it also helps you find connections. Starting with that tragic lump of metal, a search for the Kenniff brothers reveals a mug-shot from the State Library of Queensland; a statue and memorial from Monument Australia’s database; and books, journal articles and an entry in the Australian Dictionary of Biography. Then of course there’s the whole story recounted in detail by contemporary newspapers. Trove adds layers of context that no one collection can provide. It invites you down the rabbit hole of serendipitous discovery.

Working together With close to 400 million records, it’s tempting to focus on the scale and complexity of Trove. But alongside the servers and the schemas, the megabytes and metadata, Trove’s content is sustained by a series of collaborations. Trove is powered by partnerships.

Libraries Australia feeds Trove with information about the holdings of libraries across the country.

Through the Australian Newspaper Plan, the National and State Libraries coordinate the digitisation of Trove’s rich collection of newspapers. Meanwhile, the Pandora team work with web publishers to preserve online content. But that’s just the beginning. Trove collaborates with organisations large and small to

break down collection silos and expose their contents to the wider web.

If your organisation’s collections are online, there’s a good chance we can harvest the details and make them easier to find. Trove wants to help get people through to your website. There are more details in our Content Partners help zone.

A passionate community There’s another important group of Trove contributors — the public. Trove has an active and passionate community of users who work with us to improve our service.

The most obvious example is in our newspapers zone where volunteers work to correct the OCR-generated text of articles. So far they’ve fixed over 130 million lines of text. As one of our top correctors has noted: ‘It is no use having the information online if it cannot be found.’ Improving the quality of the text makes it more discoverable by all.

But the community adds much more to Trove than text corrections. Tags and comments also enhance raw metadata with valuable information – all of which is searchable. Sometimes our users go further. One West Australian enthusiast has been assembling lists of out-of-copyright Australian sheet music, using software to perform and record the pieces, and then adding links in Trove comments that point to these recordings on YouTube or SoundCloud. As a result, anyone viewing these records in Trove can just click on the link to hear them performed.

above:

Tim Sherratt and Catriona Bryce.

below:

Trove is a program of the National Library of Australia.

bottom:

News stand in a railway station showing billboards publicising the opening of Parliament House in Canberra and an advertisement for Lustre Silktex stockings, Melbourne, 1927. Photograph, B&W, 11.3 x 16 cm. Part of Howard, Bruce, 1936- Nostalgic Australian photographs ca. 1910-1975

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(4) – Winter 2014 25

This is just one example of how Trove gives people space to explore their passions. Annotation tools, like tags and lists, help users organise and share their research. The most popular tag on Trove (with more than 15,000 appearances) is ‘LRRSA’, representing the collective efforts of the Light Rail Research Society of Australia to identify and share resources of interest to their own community.

Lists can also be used by organisations and educators to create curated collections, bibliographies or simple exhibitions. For more on the collections of the Queensland Police Museum you might like to explore our ‘Murder in Queensland’ list.

Beyond Trove The public’s experience of Trove isn’t limited to a single website. Thousands of links to resources in Trove are shared through social media, blogs, publications and research projects.

Just recently, AustLit, an online database of Australian literary culture, started using Trove to enrich their own site. Entries about literary works now include a sidebar, automatically populated with relevant newspaper articles from Trove. This is already revealing previously unknown publications.

Looking at our website stats some time ago, we were puzzled by the high number of referrals Trove was getting from the knitting site Ravelry. Eventually we realised that Ravelry members were sharing hundreds of links to craft and knitting patterns discovered in newspapers and the Australian Women’s Weekly. Not only sharing, but making!

We’re also exploring opportunities for mobilising our collections within social media spaces. @TroveNewsBot is an experimental Twitter bot that not only shares random newspaper articles but responds to user queries. Yes, you can search Trove without ever leaving Twitter. We’ve shared the code so any organisation that contributes content to Trove can easily create their own customised collection bot.

Several years ago the library thinker Lorcan Dempsey coined the phrase ‘discovery happens elsewhere’ to lift institutional horizons beyond the website. Trove is only one part of a developing ecosystem of reuse, sharing, and discovery.

From Portal to Platform Trove staff are in regular contact with other aggregation and discovery services around the world, particularly Europeana, the Digital Public Library of America, and DigitalNZ. We’re all exploring the same strategic shift — moving beyond a single website or portal to establish ourselves as platforms.

Being a platform means that Trove doesn’t just

aggregate data, it creates opportunities for others to develop new tools, interfaces and analyses using that data. Portals are for visiting, platforms are for building on.

The data that Trove pulls in is pushed out again through an Application Programming Interface or API. The API delivers data in a way that computers can understand, so software programs or developers can take the API and create something new.

Mitchell Whitelaw used the API to build TroveMosaic — a totally different way of viewing and navigating pictures in Trove. AustLit’s new sidebar is powered by the Trove API, as are our Twitter bots.

Europeana has connected their own API with Trove, DPLA, and DigitalNZ to create a new service, searching World War I-related collections from around the world. Just four APIs open access to millions of items in cultural heritage collections.

By providing a direct data pipeline, the Trove API also opens up new opportunities for research and analysis. The richness of Trove’s newspaper zone is well-known — more than 130 million newspaper articles from 1803 onwards! But this wealth of material can be overwhelming. QueryPic is a tool that uses the Trove API to visualise newspaper queries over time, revealing patterns and trends that underlie raw lists of results.

There are more examples of what the API makes possible in the ‘Building with Trove’ zone in our new help system.

Trove Year 5 Trove will be celebrating its fifth birthday on 30 November 2014. As we enter Trove Year 5 we’ll be continuing to think about the future.

We recently upgraded some of the technologies underpinning the newspaper zone, and there’s more to come including a mobile-friendly interface for the newspapers, and more full-text digital content.

We’ll also be working to feature open access content and provide better tools for finding openly-licensed resources.

But as we contemplate the future it’s clear that collaboration will remain the key. Trove will be what we make it, together. [] Tim Sherratt is the Manager of Trove at the National Library of Australia. He’s also a digital historian and cultural data hacker sometimes known as @wragge. Catriona Bryce is one of the Trove Support Leaders and regularly blogs for Trove, http://www.nla.gov.au/blogs/trove Citation: Tim Sherratt and Catriona Bryce, ‘Powered by Partnerships: Trove Year 5 and beyond’, Museums Australia Magazine, Vol. 22 (4), Museums Australia, Canberra, Winter 2014, pp. 24-25.

More information Content Partners -- http://help.nla. gov.au/trove/content-partners Building with Trove -- http://help.nla. gov.au/trove/building-with-trove Trove blog -- http://www. nla.gov.au/blogs/trove Murder in Queensland -- http:// trove.nla.gov.au/list?id=39531 Sherratt, Tim, From portals to platforms: building new frameworks for user engagement, http://www.nla.gov. au/our-publications/staff-papers/ from-portal-to-platform , 2013

26 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(4) – Winter 2014

Australian, New Zealand and international links surveyed in WW1 commemorative exhibitions

First World War Centenary Commemorations in Australia and New Zealand

Tim Sullivan and Meredith Foley

T top:

Images depicting service men and women, and battlefield names, selected from the Memorial's rich photographic collection, spanning the history of Australia's wartime experience were projected onto the Memorial building as part of the 2013 ANZAC Day commemmorations. © Australian War Memorial. above:

Tim Sullivan & Meredith Foley.

Acknowledgements Compiled with the support of the member institutions of the Council of Australasian Museum Directors (CAMD). This article is based on an earlier text by Tim Sullivan, ‘First World War Commemorations in Australia’, which appeared in ICOM News, 2014, No.1, April 2014, e-published by the ICOM Secretariat in Paris <http://icom.museum/media/ icom-news-magazine/icom-news2014-no1/>. That issue particularly surveyed some international museum projects in preparation for commemorating World War 1.

hree themes underpin the response of museums in Australia and New Zealand to the centenary of the First World War: commemoration, collaboration and community engagement.

Commemoration is at the heart of the program for the next four years. Around our countries, communities are seeking to connect with their forebears of 100 years ago in understanding their responses to the War and its consequences in shaping the destiny of our nations.

Families, schools and communities are finding a personal connection to the larger narrative through the stories of relatives who served or lost their lives, through the names on the memorials and avenues of honour across our two countries, and in the cemeteries where Australians and New Zealanders are commemorated.

The national institutions holding personal service military-unit records are creating online resources to help. More than just putting digital material online, projects such as the Australian War Memorial’s (AWM) Anzac Connections, the Auckland War Memorial and Museum’s Cenotaph, and Discovering Anzacs by the national archives in Australia and New Zealand will provide search tools linking archives and collection databases to create rich biographical resources. Cenotaph may also include an inquiry space within the museum building, with a community outreach program to help collect and preserve stories and objects connected with the records of service of New Zealanders in the First World War. Projects to identify and commemorate indigenous personnel are also underway at the AWM, in collaboration with the Australian National University

in Canberra, and at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery in Hobart.

The Canterbury Museum in Christchurch, Te Papa in Wellington, and Museum Victoria in Melbourne will provide online access to collections within commemorative programs and exhibitions. History SA (South Australia) will create a blog platform titled ‘With every good wish…’: drawing on primary-source materials about South Australians involved in the War at home as well as on the battlefronts abroad.

Sydney Living Museums is creating a microsite to tell the stories of individuals linked to the historic buildings making up its physical and sitebased collection, including expressions variously of patriotism, pacifism, and war-weariness. The city’s Powerhouse Museum will add First World War uniforms and fashion from public and private collections through the online Australian Dress Register, while the Australian Museum in Sydney is developing an exhibition on the Walers, the Australian breed of horses used by the Light Horse regiments in Palestine.

A rich fare of new and temporary exhibitions is being created. The largest venture is the AWM’s refurbishment of its First World War galleries, which will tell the story of Australians in each of the theatres of war and the significance of Australia’s contribution to the Allied victory. In response to audience research, the AWM’s new installation will incorporate a more cohesive timeline in its layout than the gallery it replaces; explore why Australia responded to the War as it did in 1914; the consequences for the nation of the loss of 62,000 lives; and the renewed focus on remembering its significance today. Over the four-year period, projections of each name on the First World War Roll of Honour will be projected in rotation on the exterior of the building, and recordings of the

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(4) – Winter 2014 27

names of each soldier killed in the War will be played in the Commemorative Area.

While the galleries are closed for refurbishment, a temporary exhibition, Anzac Voices, uses AWM’s archives of private records to tell some of the remarkable stories of individuals who served. AWM is also working with the Australian National University to present an international symposium: Gallipoli 1915: a century on; developing digital exhibitions on the photography of Frank Hurley and Hubert Wilkins, the photography of ‘Plevna’ Ryan ­— a Gallipoli veteran who had served in the Turkish Army; and producing a large-format book on the Memorial’s Gallipoli collections. The AWM is further providing objects and content for a range of international projects for the Remembrance Trail on the Western Front, including for new museums on significant sites in Belgium and northern France.

In March 2014, the creation of a new Anzac Legacy Gallery was announced as part of Queensland’s Anzac centenary commemorations. Scheduled for opening in 2018 at the Queensland Museum’s South Bank site, the $14.3 million gallery will feature a permanent Anzac exhibition that commemorates our past and provides a legacy for future generations.

The gallery will also become the permanent home of one of the world’s most significant war relics: the A7V Sturmpanzerwagen armoured assault vehicle, Mephisto.

Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa is developing a major exhibition on the Anzac relationship, which will include an immersive experience of a Gallipoli trench. Museum Victoria’s exhibition World War One: Love and Sorrow focuses on the impacts of the War on Australian society and on individuals. Entangled Islands: Samoa, New Zealand and the First World War is first in a series

of exhibitions at Auckland War Memorial Museum about the New Zealand war experience. Otago Museum, in Dunedin, is currently running a ‘Change My Mind Series’, which features a series of facilitated discussions examining how we remember the War. It also has several exhibitions pending, which will tell personal tales of the Gallipoli campaign, commemorate the role of Otago women during the War, and uncover the role of facial reconstruction and surgery for returning soldiers in Dunedin.

The National Museum of Australia’s suite of public programs onsite and online to support its exhibition What did you do in the War? together explore the emotional responses to war by Australians in their private and public lives. NMA is collaborating with the National Film and Sound Archive (also in Canberra) to create a large-format media screen in its Entry Hall showing stills and film of Australians engaged on the home front. The Australian Centre for the Moving Image in Melbourne will feature film from a century ago presenting Australians during the War — a program that may also travel regionally.

As well as hosting travelling exhibitions from the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, and AWM’s Lost Diggers of Vignacourt, Sovereign Hill in Ballarat, the largest regional museum in Australia, is developing an exhibition, Ballarat at War, exploring the enduring commemoration of the loss of so many from a typical regional city in Australia.

History SA, based in Adelaide, is developing exhibitions on enemy subjects interned during the War, together with a symposium on South Australia on the eve of war – both of these in collaboration with Flinders University. A program by the Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House, Canberra, will focus on the Commonwealth Government’s decision-making in the first crucial

above:

The original Menin Gate lions, now in Australia but on temporary loan to France. © Australian War Memorial.

28 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(4) – Winter 2014

Australian, New Zealand and international links surveyed in WW1 commemorative exhibitions

months of the War, and how this shaped Australia’s response during the armed conflict that ensured.

The South Australian Museum will commemorate the centenary of WW1 with two separate displays over the next two years. The first display will relate to objects collected following the takeover by Australian military forces of the former German colony of New Guinea in 1914. The second will focus on Aboriginal Soldiers, particularly the Ngarrindjeri Anzacs from Point McLeay Mission (Raukkan).

The AWM and the Canadian War Museum (CWM), Ottawa, will be collaborating on a project exploring the experiences of the two dominions in the First World War. The imposing stone lions that normally adorn the entry to the AWM in Canberra will be loaned to the CWM in Ottawa for this forthcoming exhibition. The lions once stood at the Menin Gate at Ypres, in Belgium, on the road along which so many Australian, New Zealand and Commonwealth troops marched in 1917 to the awful experiences of battle at Passchendaele, Messines, Polygon Wood, and Zonnebeke. Will Longstaff’s famous 1927 painting, Menin Gate at Midnight, will also be made available for loan. The lions will subsequently return on loan to Menin Gate itself during 2017, to commemorate the centenary of the Third Battle of Ypres.

The Australian National Maritime Museum, in Sydney, will open a new Royal Australian Navy Pavilion in 2015, to enrich interpretation of its floating collection of naval vessels. A major ANMM travelling exhibition, The Test of War – the RAN in World War I, will meanwhile draw on objects loaned from local and international museums. The Museum is collaborating on projects exploring the enigmatic stories of Australia’s two submarines in the War – the AE1 and the AE2 – both lost in action mysteriously in New Guinea and the Dardanelles respectively. This exhibition will also launch a Centenary of Navy lecture series presented in Sydney in November 2014.

The Western Australia Museum (WAM) is leading the development of the new National Anzac Centre at Albany, on the south coast of WA, overlooking the spectacular King George Sound where the first convoy of Anzac troops departed in November 1914. The Centre will tell the stories of 33 men and women who sailed on that and subsequent convoys. WAM will host the Australian National Maritime Museum’s Test of War exhibition at its Geraldton and Albany venues.

Another travelling exhibition in 2014 will tell the story of the clash in which HMAS Sydney sank the German raider SMS Emden near the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, south-west of Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean. Outreach projects will include working with thirty historical societies, community museums and local governments to develop exhibitions on the impact of war on Western Australian communities.

A collaboration between Albany and its sister city in France, Peronne, will highlight their shared experiences of the War. Hobart’s Tasmanian Museum and Gallery is developing It will be splendid when we are all together again…: exploring Tasmanians in the War and its consequences for the state; the ways in which the War was commemorated; and the impact of grieving and loss on local communities. Meanwhile the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston, will use its collection to tell the story of the impact of the War on people from northern Tasmania.

The extent of museums and other institutions sharing collection resources to generate the range of exhibitions and online developments around the First World War is significant. Regional and local museums, historical societies, libraries and community groups are undertaking a great diversity of projects to explore the First World War and local identity, often in collaboration with the major state and national institutions. The Australian Government is providing $AUS 125,000 to each federal electorate for projects linked to the centenary commemorations. Many assisted projects are for refurbishing the memorials in hundreds of city suburbs and country towns across Australia, created to express the depths of mourning in the post-War period. These memorials are also providing a focus for school students to explore their local history and relate it to the larger national and international story.

The levels of interest and extent of widespread desire to engage in remembering the First World War and its consequences for our nations and the world is already extraordinary. Australia’s and New Zealand’s cultural institutions, large and small, will have a critical role to play in supporting this large effort of profound reflection on events of a century ago, together with the ensuing acts of commemoration and remembering that are to unfold over the four-year

top: Anzac Day National Ceremony, Australian War Memorial 2013. © Australian War Memorial. above:

Auckland War Memorial Museum.

right: Poppies inserted by visitors into the Roll of Honour at the Australian War Memorial. © Australian War Memorial.

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(4) – Winter 2014 29

period of armed conflict. To find out current details about our plans, please visit AWM’s website at www.awm.gov.au/.

Watch out for the calendar of WWI commemorative exhibitions, events and programs by the major museums that will be coming soon to the CAMD website <www.camd.org.au>.

‘Lest we forget.’ [] Tim Sullivan is Assistant Director, Branch Head National Collection, Australian War Memorial, Canberra (www.awm. gov.au). Dr Meredith Foley is Executive Officer, CAMD, Council of Australasian Museum Directors (eo@camd.org.au; www.camd.org.au).

Citation for this text: Tim Sullivan and Meredith Foley, ‘First World War Centenary Commemorations in Australia and New Zealand’, Museums Australia Magazine, Vol. 22 (4), Museums Australia, Canberra, Winter 2014, pp. 26-29.

30 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(4) – Winter 2014

A ‘national significance’ heritage item restored by volunteers in NSW

From Balikpapan to Parramatta: The story of a WW2 Matilda named ACE

Ian Hawthorn

I top: ACE:

AMatilda Tank of the 1st Armoured Regiment (AIF)(RNSWL).

bottom: Ian

Hawthorn with 'Adonis'.

t is 9.05 on the morning of July 1st 1945. The Matilda Tanks of the 1st Armoured Regiment (AIF) (RNSWL) plunge off the landing crafts into the Makassar Strait and head for the beaches of Balikpapan, in then Dutch East Indies. So began what is to this day Australia’s largest-ever armoured assault, mounted by what is now known as the 1st/15th Royal NSW Lancers, one of Australia’s oldest and most decorated Regiments.

At the end of the war, most of the Australian Army’s heavy military equipment in the Pacific area was destroyed rather than repatriated back to Australia.

This was the lot of the Balikpapan Matildas. Many of the surviving war stock of tanks back in Australia were meanwhile surplus to requirements. They were eventually sold, often ending up as replacement tractors on the land, since tractors in post-war Australia were almost impossible to buy.

Fast forward 50 years. Two volunteers from the NSW Lancers Memorial Museum have heard a rumour about an old Matilda Tank sitting in a paddock, somewhere in the NSW Southern Highlands near Moss Vale. Filled with more enthusiasm than common sense, they leap into a car and head off south, in search of the rumoured tank. At the end of a hot day, unsurprisingly the tank, if it existed at all, had eluded them.

In the finest tradition of retired diggers, they headed

for the nearest pub, to find themselves sharing the bar with a group of old locals, similarly laying the dust of a long, hot day. The diggers thought to themselves that if anyone might know the whereabouts of an abandoned Matilda Tank, these guys would be the ones. After shouting a couple of rounds and exchanging a few, well-worn war stories, our two worthy volunteers left the pub knowing to the nearest centimetre the location of that Matilda.

The owner of the paddock was soon located. He thought all his Christmases had come at once when a couple of blokes showed up and were actually prepared to pay good money, as a deposit on what he’d always seen as a rusting old heap of metal. Purchase secured, our two volunteers raced back to Lancer Barracks, Parramatta, and burst into a meeting of the Lancers Association, chaired by then President, Les Betts.

With great excitement they announced: ‘You blokes will never guess what we’ve just done. We’ve bought a Matilda Tank for the Museum, and it still has its old number on the hull — 29923; and its name is ACED.’ When Les Betts had picked himself up, he asked, ‘Are you absolutely certain about that number?’ He was given a very positive reply: ‘Definitely. I wrote it down.’ And the volunteer pulled out his shirt sleeve and read out ‘29923’, written clearly on his cuff.

Les Betts replied: ‘That was my tank back in 1945, and I drove it off the landing craft at Balikpapan. Its name is not ACED but ACE, and what you thought was a D, was actually an ace of spades playing card we painted on the hull.’ Les later explained that ACE had been the very first tank off the landing craft all those years ago.

The puzzle remained. How had ACE ended up in a paddock outside Moss Vale, when all the Balikpapan Matildas were supposed to have been destroyed in the Dutch East Indies? A little research later revealed that after the Balikpapan landings, ACE and two other Matildas had been sent to workshops for repair. When the workshop unit was given the order to repatriate to Australia, it had a tradition of never destroying the equipment of another military unit in its care. That is the reason for the situation today: there are three surviving tanks of Australia’s largest-ever armoured assault, rather than none at all.

ACE was eventually purchased by a Moss Vale timber mill around 1947. The owners intended to remove the tank’s two Leyland bus engines to power the mill. By a stroke of luck, electric power then came

31 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(4) – Winter 2014

to the area; ACE’s engines were no longer needed; and the tank was abandoned in a nearby paddock, where it remained for almost 50 years.

Neither of the other two surviving Balikpapan Matildas will ever be restored to full operation. At first sight, even if recovered from the Moss Vale paddock, no-one would reasonably have thought that ACE could have been rehabilitated. The hull was full of compacted vegetation that had fallen into it over the previous half-century, nicely topped-off with a layer of filthy water. It was more reasonable to think this could be a vessel for rice-growing. Small trees that had grown up around the tank also had to be cut down before ACE could be winched onto a truck and driven away.

Some time later, Les Betts sadly died and, with him, much of the Museum’s drive to get its collective mind around what would always be a very complex and expensive restoration project.

Fast forward another 10 years. Funded by a Community Heritage Grant administered by the National Library of Australia, Ron Mason and Helen Tierney were conducting a Significance Assessment of the Museum’s collection, which ultimately led to the entire collection being placed on the NSW Heritage Register. One item in the collection found to have national heritage significance, particularly if restored to full mobility, was ACE. The Museum Committee was re-galvanised to commence the restoration project. Fundraising was topped-off by a generous grant of $50,000 from the NSW Heritage Office, and Project ACE began.

One would have imagined that restoring a WW2 tank would have been all about heavy automotive

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(4) – Winter 2014 31

mechanical and electrical engineering – and it is.

However the first phase was focused on cleaning out the crew’s and engine's compartments, with much of the compacted vegetation still to be removed.

Fortunately this was done with a fair degree of care, and it revealed a small collection of historic items, presumably left behind by the tank crew during operations at Balikpapan. These included live and expended rounds of small arms ammunition from the crew’s personal weapons, a tin of emergency chocolate rations, several tins of tobacco and a container of cigarette papers. In some ways, of greatest interest were fragments of a 1945 edition of The Daily Telegraph.

Project ACE was always going to be extremely complex, and would inevitably throw up serious challenges. One that the restoration team did not anticipate was the closure, without notice, of the workshop of the military museum in which ACE was being restored.

Suddenly the team was faced with the need to find another heavy automotive workshop, reasonably located for where the majority of the team lived, and would be available for several years. This task was not helped by the fact that Museum funds could not stretch to paying a commercial rent. Regardless of rental considerations, it was both surprising and concerning how few suitable automotive workshops still exist in Western Sydney today.

below:

Les Betts and ACE.

bottom left:

Removing ACE engines for restoration. bottom right:

ACE as discovered among trees near Moss Vale, NSW.

32 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(4) – Winter 2014

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(4) – Winter 2014 32

A ‘national significance’ heritage item restored by volunteers in NSW

After losing nine valuable project months in the search for a new workshop, the Museum accepted the kind offer to use part of the land of a pistol and archery club at Cecil Park – meaning that the remainder of this complex restoration project would have to be carried out entirely in the open, and without the aid of any on-site workshop equipment.

Undaunted — or perhaps a little daunted — the restoration team began to construct a ‘make-do-andmend’ heavy-vehicle workshop.

First, they erected a huge shade cloth over ACE, to allow work to proceed in full sun, and a number of old tarpaulins were used to protect the hull. By the time the transmission and engines had been removed, with the aid of a vintage military wrecker truck owned by a Museum volunteer, a large garden shed had been added, together with an old shipping container, in which many original Matilda spare parts were stored.

The garden shed was soon filled with the multitude of components and parts that make up two strippeddown, 1930s era bus engines.

British Matilda Tanks incorporated a development of the Wilson, epicyclic, pre-select gearbox — somewhat innovative in the 1930s when the tank was designed, and a potentially complex piece of equipment to restore. When removed from the tank and stripped down, both the engines and the transmission were in amazingly good condition, given their total neglect for decades and their immersion in a mix of rotting vegetation and soupy water. Although still a complex and challenging job to restore, the question still remained: How did the engines and transmission survive so well over their 50 years of immersion?

If there weren’t already sufficient challenges facing the restoration crew, the terrible fires that raged through Coonabarabran district in country NSW in January 2013 badly affected the workshop of the contractor who was overhauling ACE’s generators, voltage regulators and starter motors — and the only other business willing and able to do this repair work was in Queensland! Fortunately ACE’s components proved to be undamaged. But more project time was lost while Coonabarabran and the contractor recovered after the fires and got themselves operational again. Never has a project plan had to be so flexible nor a restoration team so resourceful!

Some of the ‘lost’ time was devoted to re-fabricating a large number of components using original

workshop manuals, primarily because the components were made of brass and no original spares were available.

Brass is no longer a metal much used in automotive engineering, and few businesses still have both the capability and willingness to work with the metal.

Fortunately one of our volunteers, a retired RAEME tradesman, had the necessary skills, interest and equipment in his backyard workshop to get the jobs done.

That same retired tradesman also has the job of now completely rewiring ACE’s electrical system, incorporating a newly designed instrument panel – the original types no longer being available or meeting current safety standards.

In April 2014, a critical milestone had just been reached. Both engines had been successfully started and run — the first time they were tried! There needed to be an extended period of bench-testing; then, all being well, the engines could be reinstalled in the tank’s hull. It would still be a race against time to get a thousand other jobs, major and minor, completed by 30 August 2014. On this day, to commemorate the outbreak of World War 1 and the raising of the 1st Light Horse substantially from the ranks of the Lancers, the Museum, the Regiment, and Parramatta City Council would coming together to mount a unique, historic military Pageant through the centre of Parramatta.

The Pageant was planned to take history to the public in the streets of Parramatta, rather than asking the public to visit memorials and museums to commemorate and remember the sacrifices made

by Australians 100 years ago. There's no apology for this focus: it is to recognise above all the service and sacrifice made by all members of the Regiment, in war and in peace, from its inception in 1885 to the present day. Our aim is to demonstrate that the spirit of mateship, of self-sacrifice, and of volunteering are not just matters of history, but are as relevant today as when they helped forge the spirit of ANZAC almost

How had ACE ended up in a paddock outside Moss Vale, when all the Balikpapan Matildas were supposed to have been destroyed in the Dutch East Indies?

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(4) – Winter 2014 33

Linden House (1929) Text from Royal NSW Lancer Barracks and Museum website: <http://www.lancers.org.au/site/ The_Museum.asp>

above:

Linden House, 1828, which once stood in Macquarie Street, Sydney, near The Barracks.

It is now part of the Royal NSW Lancers Barracks and Museum complex at Parramatta.

one hundred years ago.

Drawing extensively on the Museum’s heritagelisted collection, the Parramatta Pageant provided an opportunity to tell the story of the Regiment: from its early days on horseback, as Lancers in the Boer War, and as Light Horse in WW1. The story continues through early mechanisation, when the Regiment was one of the first motorised machine-gun regiments in the British Empire; then the era of heavy armour during and after WW2; and through various armoured reconnaissance roles to the Regiment of today, with its Bushmaster Protected Mobility Vehicles.

The entire Regiment was scheduled to be on parade in Parramatta, marching behind the Regimental Band, one of the oldest in Australia, and the Regimental Guidons (the colours proudly carried through the Regiment’s history). In addition to the history on parade, one could travel the length and breadth of Australia today and rarely, if ever, see a 25-ton Matilda and a 50-ton Centurion Main Battle tank driving down the main street of a city or town.

So the ‘ACE race’ was still on in earnest to have ACE ready to make its first public appearance for almost 70 years, under its own power and honouring the Regiment’s surviving WW2 veterans, themselves the special guests of honour at the Pageant in Parramatta.

Well, that was before a last-minute hitch! Watch this space for the end of the story in the next issue. [] Ian Hawthorn is Promotions Officer, Royal NSW Lancers Memorial Museum.

Citation: Ian Hawthorn, ‘From Balikpapan to Parramatta: The story of a WW2 Matilda named ACE’, Museums Australia Magazine, Vol.22(4), Museums Australia, Canberra, Winter 2014, pp.30-33.

The building now known as Linden House can be described as a classic example of early Australian architecture. It originally stood in Macquarie Street about 500 metres from the barracks. A two storey building of sandstone, it was completed by 1828.

It was first used by the School of Industry, teaching domestic arts to the daughters of the needy. During the 1830s, it became quarters for some of the officers of the garrison. About 1840 it reverted to school use. The last school inside it continued until 1919, and during this time the name "Linden House" came into use. In more recent times the building served various purposes, including that of an RSL club. The property was bought up by the AMP society in 1963, and generously given to the Royal New South Wales Lancers Association for preservation and as a site for the Museum. Stone by stone removal to the present site in Parramatta followed.

The exterior is the original stone used in the building, re-dressed during re-erection. The doors, windows and internal joinery are replicas.

The fanlight over the front door is original. An annexe built nearby serves as a storeroom and workshop.

The building was dedicated on 1 March 1981 as a memorial to members of the New South Wales Lancers, South Africa, 1899-1902, 1st Light Horse Regiment AIF, Gallipoli-Sinai-Palestine, 19141918, 1st Armoured Regiment (RNSWL) AIF, New Guinea-Borneo 1939-1945.

34 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(4) – Winter 2014

Regional outreach and schools focus for WW1 commemoration

Victoria’s Shrine of Remembrance: Encouraging young people to engage with the First World War Centenary

Jodie Smith

A

s part of its objective to be accessible to all Victorians, the Shrine of Remembrance, Victoria’s preeminent war memorial, offers a range of education programs for students: both onsite at the Shrine, and in the community through its outreach programs. Victorian schools whose ability to engage in onsite education programs is inhibited – for example, through physical distance, socio-economic status or disability – are the target market for the Shrine’s outreach initiatives.

The Shrine’s regional outreach program, as the main focus of this article, has been in operation for over five years, and its audience demand predominantly originates from primary schools. For many, including some in the museum and education sectors, this comes as a surprise. In my role as Education Outreach Officer, I am often asked: What do you talk about? Is it really appropriate? What do the students get out of it?

In fact, working with these young people is amongst the most rewarding work I do.

Among students today, even the very young, it is evident that much of what is known about war is shaped by Hollywood, video games, and sensationalist, biased or decontextualised media and web content.

Such channels provide an inaccurate reflection of the realities of war, and are generally distant from the Shrine’s particular purposes and functions. Instead, the Shrine is a memorial to Victorian service men and women who have served at war and in peacekeeping operations, and their experiences are the focus of our education programs.

Whilst aigning with the Shrine’s purpose and values, all of our education programs also have strong

links to the History and Humanities domains of the AusVELS curriculum, which draws on the new Australian Curriculum. For example, as part of my regional outreach sessions, emphasis is placed on differences and similarities between the students’ daily life and that of those before them – as studied at Level 1; and the ability to identify and compare the past and present – as an historical knowledge and understanding for Level 2. This is implemented using objects and images illustrating aspects of daily life at Gallipoli and on the Western Front, which students then compare with their own knowledge and experiences.

Students as young as five demonstrate an ability to express empathy for service men and women, through recognising that disease and nits are easily spread through crowded trenches or a hospital, based on experiences derived from their own way of life. Equally, they understand the need to eat well, stay hydrated and keep dry in order to stay healthy.

They can relate to the discomfort of wearing wool in summer, being cold in winter, or an unbearable stench. Early primary students can appreciate the deprivation of basic amenities and everyday items we take for granted, such as toilets, bathrooms and beds; and the impact their absence could have on the morale of soldiers and families at home. Finally, awareness of the challenges of keeping in touch, without telephones, the Internet, computers or television, arouses a sense of historical change.

The primary school curriculum requires more than a focus on a topic’s main contents. It mandates enrichment of historical skills including: the ability to ‘distinguish between past, present and future’ in the sequencing of objects, people and events; and

top:

Class 2C from Lloyd Street Primary School visited the Shrine on Remembrance Day 2013. Classmate, Angus Grant, was the 2013 winner of the Shrine’s annual Remembrance Day poster competition. Image: David Grant, John Brown Photography.

above:

Jodie Smith.

Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(4) – Winter 2014 35

the ability to ‘develop a narrative about the past’ as well as an understanding that such narratives ‘can be communicated through photographs, artefacts, books, oral histories, digital media and museums’. All of these historical skills targeted in the primary curriculum are utilised in the regional outreach program of the Shrine of Remembrance.

Of greatest significance in the early primary curriculum is the knowledge and understanding of an ‘historical site of cultural or spiritual significance’, such as a war memorial; and ‘the days and weeks celebrated or commemorated in Australia (including ANZAC Day)’, as emphasised at Levels 2 and 3 respectively. These achievement standards are covered in the regional outreach program through discussions about physical, emotional and economic impacts of war on soldiers, family and community, and the community’s subsequent need to establish memorials, the RSL, and commemorative days.

Whilst the regional outreach programs for lower, middle, and upper primary students don’t aim to provide an all-encompassing overview of the First World War, they nevertheless cultivate the same empathetic responses towards service men and women that can be seen in older students or adults, as well as improving their historical knowledge and understanding.

During the centenary period, Australia will inevitably be inundated with First World War narratives. The Shrine’s approach helps to ensure that primary-school-aged students extend their skills of historical inquiry to be well informed and analytical participants, rather than spectators vulnerable to the glorification of war or misinformation.

The demand for the Shrine’s regional outreach program, and repeat bookings from primary schools, provides strong evidence of schools’ support for the program as an engaging activity, while being a complement to classroom teaching and learning for young people.

The Shrine’s onsite education programs for primary-school level meanwhile include introductory programs, up to Year 4, that focus on symbols and objects that encourage an appreciation of remembrance, or deal with animals in service – for example, the story of Simpson and his donkey; or the role of pigeon carriers and mascots. The Shrine’s annual Remembrance Day poster competition for primary schools has a strong uptake, with more than 100 entrants. Additionally, the Shrine’s School Holiday Family activities target 6-to-12 year-olds, and have now been operating for a number of years.

The Shrine’s new Galleries of Remembrance, a multi-million-dollar Victorian Government-funded project, will open to the public on 11 November 2014.

This new facility will provide visitors of all ages with access to new facilities, including education rooms, a research centre, and an auditorium. The new Galleries of Remembrance will present over 900 museum objects, artefacts and stories, following the chronological history of Australians at war, with an

left:

Students from Hamilton (Gray St) Primary School participating in the Shrine schools’ outreach program at the Hamilton Art Gallery.

Image: Hamilton Art Gallery.

emphasis on individual and unit stories of Victorian service and sacrifice. The Galleries' development will provide for a new and enhanced experience for student visitors.

Furthermore, during the next five years of the centenary commemorations, the Shrine’s outreach programs will continue to evolve to best complement the Shrine’s centenary travelling exhibition, Australia Will Be There: Victorians in the First World War (1914– 19), while providing meaningful and valuable learning programs and activities for students of all ages.

The Shrine of Remembrance encourages all partner bodies and colleague institutions to provide opportunities for people young and old to engage with the many First World War exhibitions and programs that will be available during the long commemorative period ahead. Beyond the graphic, violent and often glorifying narratives, so commonly told of the First World War, and, moreover, beyond comprehension for the young, there is much more to be explored, and something for everyone to understand, connect with and commemorate. [] Exhibition tour details: Education outreach programs will travel with the centenary travelling exhibition Australia Will Be There: Victorians in the First World War (1914–19) to the following Victorian venues from 2014—2019: East Gippsland Art Gallery, Mildura Arts Centre, Yarra Ranges Regional Museum, Ararat Regional Art Gallery, Frankston Arts Centre, Warragul RSL, Mornington Peninsula Art Gallery, Gold Museum, Central Goldfields Gallery, Scope Gallery, Wangaratta Art Gallery, Portland Arts Centre, Heritage Hill Dandenong, La Trobe Regional Art Gallery.

Jodie Smith is Education Outreach Officer at the Shrine of Remembrance, Melbourne.

Citation: Jodie Smith, ‘Victoria’s Shrine of Remembrance: Encouraging young people to engage with the First World War Centenary’, Museums Australia Magazine, Vol.22(4), Museums Australia, Canberra, Winter 2014, pp. 34-35.

References 1. AusVELS 2012, History Scope and Sequence v.3. Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA).

Available at http://www.vcaa.vic.edu. au/Documents/auscurric/History_ scope_and_sequence_AusVELS.pdf

36 Museums Australia Magazine – Vol. 22(4) – Winter 2014

UNESCO’s World Memory program and Australian museums

Museums and Memory of the World: UNESCO’s capture of the world’s documentary heritage

Roslyn Russell

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Roslyn Russell.

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The Memory of the World Register is a program of UNESCO. The full Memory of the World Register is available at <tinyurl. com/7ouqzb6>.

The Australian Memory of the World Committee website is <www.amw.org.au>.

hat part do museums, as memory institutions, play in UNESCO’s Memory of the World Programme — internationally, regionally and in Australia?

UNESCO established the Memory of the World Programme for safeguarding documentary heritage in 1992. Non-governmental organisations with vital interests in preserving documents — the International Council of Archives (ICA), the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA), and the Coordinating Council of Audiovisual Archiving Associations (CCAAA) — were key players in Memory of the World’s creation. As primary custodians of documentary heritage, archives and libraries were regarded as the natural associates of Memory of the World.

While museum collections also hold documentary heritage such as photographs, film, inscriptions on stone, and paper-based items, they did not have a formal voice at the Memory of the World table, although museum specialists were appointed to some national committees when they were formed, including in Australia in 2000.

This began to change at the international level in 2005, when Alissandra Cummins, Director of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society and at that time President of ICOM, was appointed to the Programme’s International Advisory Committee.

Working with the Memory of the World Secretariat, she prioritised strategic partnerships between museums and the Programme, making them its fourth pillar through ICOM. This partnership found public expression in 2011 when the UNESCO Memory of the World Programme joined other heritage partners in ICOM’s International Museum Day (18 May), with the theme ‘Museum and Memory’. Museum sector representative Dr Lothar Jordan also initiated the development of a new Sub-Committee on Education and Research in 2013, with a view to involving schools and universities in the Programme, and developing Knowledge Centres at strategic locations.

The Programme’s registers are its public face, and are key tools for communicating the importance and raising the profile of documentary heritage, so that its crucial role in preserving the world’s memory is widely understood and appreciated. Documentary

heritage of world significance at three levels — international, regional and national – is inscribed on the relevant registers. An item or collection of documentary heritage may be inscribed on all three registers, determined by the geographical extent of its impact.

Museums are not as well-represented as libraries or archives in the Memory of the World registers at international, regional and national levels. However awareness of the Programme is increasing, and more and more museums are nominating documentary heritage collections to the registers, and publicising their inscription. The Memorial Museum of the Dominican Resistance in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, displays a plaque at its entrance marking the inscription of its documentary collection on the Memory of the World International Register in 2009.

Museum Director, Luisa de Peña Díaz, invited the Chief of the Memory of the World Secretariat, Joie Springer, ICOM President Alissandra Cummins, and the author (then Chair of the Program’s International Advisory Committee) to unveil the plaque together when the museum was opened by the President of the Dominican Republic in 2011.

Other museums with documentary heritage inscribed on the International Register include the Frederyka Chopin Museum in Warsaw and the Polish National Maritime Museum in Gdansk; the Beethoven Haus in Bonn, Germany; the Smithsonian Institution, Washington; and the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The latter museum’s records — interview transcripts of prisoners interrogated at S-21 Prison in Phnom Penh, a former high school used by the Khmer Rouge to incarcerate and then kill those whom it regarded as enemies; and nearly 6000 heartwrenching photographs of those about to be executed — illustrate a powerful theme in Memory of the World registers: human rights, their frequent violation, and the ongoing struggle to achieve their realisation in all parts of the world.

Nine museum collections are represented currently on the Australian Memory of the World Register, which began in 2001. Museums first achieved a presence on the Australian Register in 2004, when two museum collections — the Australian Children’s Folklore Collection of Museum Victoria, and the Powerhouse Museum’s Lawrence Hargrave Papers — were inscribed.

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Museum Victoria’s Australian Children's Folklore is the pre-eminent collection of children's folklore in Australia, and possibly the largest in the world

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Photographic print, black & white, Lawrence Hargrave kneeling beside box kite at Woollahra Point, New South Wales, Australia, original print. Photograph courtesy of Powerhouse Museum, Sydney.

Museum Victoria’s Australian Children's Folklore is the pre-eminent collection of children's folklore in Australia, and possibly the largest in the world.

Composed of thirteen collections documenting Australian childhood culture from an ethnographic perspective, it incorporates records in text, image, sound and 3D formats. The records collectively include dominant, Indigenous and immigrant cultures and span 140 years.

The Powerhouse Museum in Sydney holds the aeronautical journals and drawings of aviation pioneer Lawrence Hargrave. These are of historical significance as the documentation of his lifelong project to develop a practical flying machine and power plant. Hargrave’s ideas influenced many other aviation pioneers, and his contribution was acknowledged by experts such as Santos Dumont, the Voisin brothers, and Octave Chanute.

The first Indigenous museum collection inscribed on the Australian Register, in 2006, was the Ronald M. Berndt Collection of Crayon Drawings on Brown Paper from Yirrkala. This collection consists of unique historical cultural materials from Northern

Australia that document relationships between Yolngu people and their land in the period immediately before large-scale changes in the 1960s and 1970s transformed north-eastern Arnhem Land. Made at the behest of anthropologist Ronald M Berndt, who was concerned that his large collection of bark paintings would not survive the trip to Darwin, the crayon drawings on brown butcher's paper, the first executed in this medium by elders who normally painted on stringybark, also have extraordinary aesthetic significance. They resonate with religious belief and layered meaning, demonstrating the complex structure of Yolngu spiritual beliefs and interrelationships with particular sites and ancestors.

Hundreds of pages of dictated documentation, linked by pencilled key numbers on the works themselves, are an unparalleled social and cultural resource for the study of Indigenous Australia.

Three further museum collections were inscribed on the Australian Register in 2008. In one of these, the first film in a museum collection to be inscribed, the Australian War Memorial’s With the Dardanelles Expedition: Heroes of Gallipoli, captures an iconic moment in Australia’s history.

A silent black-and-white documentary film made in 1915 by British war correspondent Ellis AshmeadBartlett and official photographer Ernest Brooks, with inter-titles by Australian war historian C. E. W. Bean, With the Dardanelles Expedition: Heroes of Gallipoli was a remarkable achievement in film-making under difficult battlefield conditions. It is the only known moving-imagery record of the Dardanelles campaign.

Filmed at Imbros Island, ANZAC Cove, Cape Helles and Suvla Bay, the film shows Australian, New Zealand and British troops during military operations and in daily life, as well as Turkish prisoners of war and excellent footage of the terrain.

The National Gallery of Australia’s James Gleeson Oral History Collection — the first from an art museum — was also inscribed in 2008. This collection consists of recordings by one of Australia's foremost artists, James Gleeson, interviewing 98 Australian artists represented in the National Gallery, and constitutes a significant primary research collection unparalleled in Australian art. In addition to his activity as a Surrealist painter, Gleeson, who died in 2008 at the age of 92, was also a poet, critic, writer and curator. He brought a perspective to

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UNESCO’s capture of the world’s documentary heritage

his interviews that provide profound and personal insights into the diverse creative processes, stories and meanings behind some of the nation's pre-eminent contemporary artists' works. The interviews are accompanied by transcripts and 2000 reference photographs of the relevant artworks in the National Gallery's collection.

A second Indigenous museum collection was added to the Australian Register in 2008 — the Donald Thomson Ethnohistory Collection held by Museum Victoria. It records the life's work of Professor Donald Thomson (1901—1970), who undertook extensive fieldwork in Arnhem Land, Cape York Peninsula, Central Australia, the Solomon Islands, and West Papua between 1928 and 1963.

Thomson lived in Aboriginal communities and meticulously recorded their cultural practices.

The remarkable material he collected spans the fields of anthropology, linguistics, botany, zoology, ornithology and ecology. Thomson’s records include film; high-quality photographs; sound recordings and transcripts; original maps detailing the landscape and Indigenous occupation, including drawings of ceremonial grounds; notebooks recording genealogy, kinship and language; correspondence; illustrations and equipment. The audiovisual material contains some of the earliest extant moving and still colour film of Central Australia.

The first museum collection from Tasmania was inscribed in 2011: William Buelow Gould’s Sketchbook of Fishes, held in the collection of the Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts, Hobart. The Sketchbook was created by this convict artist while he was incarcerated on Sarah Island on Tasmania’s west coast in 1832, at the behest of the resident medical officer, Dr William de Little, to whom Gould was assigned.

Gould’s delicate watercolours of fish species include the earliest representation of the world’s largest freshwater crayfish, the genus Astacopsis, which was not described and taxonomically classified until 1845.

The South Australian Museum partnered with the National Archives of Australia and the National Archives of Papua New Guinea to nominate the photographic collection of F.E. Williams, consisting of almost 2000 glass-plate photographs and negatives, to the Memory of the World Asia-Pacific Register in 2012. The F.E. Williams Collection documents

the life and work of anthropologist Francis Edgar Williams (1893–1943), variously assistant government anthropologist and government anthropologist in the Australian Territory of Papua from 1922 until his death. This collection is of outstanding significance for its depiction of Australia's role in administering Papua in the 1920s and 1930s.

Williams’ photographs are also a rich resource for the Asia-Pacific region. They record first contact with a culture barely known to the West at the time; they reveal the customs, behaviour and lives of their Papuan subjects; and they tell a larger story of the colonial milieu of Papua in the 1920s and 1930s. The breadth and duration of Williams' work – covering almost 18 different ethnographic locations over a timespan of almost 20 years – make his photographs unique in their coverage of the inhabitants of Australia's largest former colony. The F.E. Williams

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Collection was subsequently inscribed on the Australian Register in 2013.

Another remarkable South Australian Museum collection was inscribed on the Australian Register in 2013: the Norman Barnett Tindale Collection. Tindale began working at the South Australian Museum in 1918, became its full-time ethnologist in 1928, and finally retired in 1965 after 45 years’ service at the Museum. His significant contribution to documenting Aboriginal Australia arose from his association with Maroadunei, a Ngandi songmaker from Arnhem Land, whom Tindale met during his first expedition to Groote Eylandt from 1921—22. Maroadunei introduced Tindale to the concept of 'tribal boundaries', establishing that Australian Aboriginal people were not 'free wanderers' but were linked by culture, kinship and language, and were bound to the land geographically and ecologically. Tindale collected and collated empirical data from numerous expeditions, culminating in his 1974 map of tribal boundaries and its accompanying catalogue, 'Aboriginal tribes of Australia, their terrain, environmental controls, distribution, limits and proper names'. Tindale recorded his fieldwork observations and data in journals produced over five decades. His collection in the South Australian Museum Archives comprises expedition journals and supplementary papers, sound and film recordings, drawings, maps, photographs, genealogies, vocabularies and correspondence.

Whilst museum documentary heritage collections currently amount to only a fifth of the total of 47 inscriptions on the Australian Memory of the World Register, we hope that more museums will nominate their documentary heritage in our latest round.

Information and a nomination form are available on the Australian Memory of the World Committee website at <www.amw.org.au>[] Roslyn Russell is Chair of the UNESCO Australian Memory of the World Committee and a former Chair of the Memory of the World International Advisory Committee (2009—2013).

Citation: Roslyn Russell, ‘Museums and Memory of the World: UNESCO’s capture of the world’s documentary heritage’, Museums Australia Magazine, Vol. 22(4), Museums Australia, Canberra, Winter 2014, pp. 36-39.

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Field Stations of N.B. Tindale 1921-1965. Annotated map of Australia showing field stations visited by Tindale during expeditions dating from 1921 to 1965. Expedition routes are drawn in purple, black and orange crayon. Names of field stations and expeditions are not included.

Photograph courtesy of South Australian Museum, Adelaide.

left: Bickerton I aborigines at Yetibah Groote Eylandt, H.E Warren photo for N.B. Tindale August 19, 1921, journal p. 235.

(Tindale standing in the middle of the group). Photograph courtesy of South Australian Museum, Adelaide.

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A story of seven themes for museums

Once upon a time… gatherings from Phoenix and Seattle

Helen Whitty

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Helen Whitty

nce upon a time there was a museum educator called Helen.

Every day she thought about literacy in relation to families and museum collections.

One day she travelled to the west coast of America to attend the Association of Children's Museums Conference in Phoenix, and the American Alliance of Museum Meeting in Seattle (where she presented a paper).

Because of this, Helen attended every session linked to her three passions in each conference.

Helen soon noticed that the crisis in formal learning meant that children's museums overtly thought about literacy and numeracy, whilst for other museums audience engagement with collections and ideas had greater currency.

Nevertheless Helen realised that every attended session considered best ways to connect the museum with the community, and each response was positive proof of a kind of literacy.

And ever since these experiences, Helen thinks about museums as 'seed banks', and considers ways to trace how, where and why these seeds disperse and grow. (an adaption of Pixar's 22 Rules of Storytelling – Rule #4) [1]

1. In 2011, Pixar Artist Emma Coats tweeted 22 story basics. The 'fill in the blanks' template is the framework for every Pixar film plot.

2. A list of websites relating to the article's themes, as well as more about Helen's studies, can be found at <www. museumsliteracies.blogspot.com.au> 3. Building 'The Children's Discovery Centre' is underway as part of the Early Start facility at the University of Wollongong.

4. In 2012, Children's Museums underwent a three-year 'Re Imagining' process (hence the Conference title, Are we there yet?), with Design and Design Thinking forums as part of this process.

Pixar's storytelling template was used in at least two sessions at the American Alliance of Museums Conference held this year in Seattle (18—21 May 2014), and one at the Association of Children's Museums Conference in Phoenix. So this is the story of my trip to the States in May, including an appraisal of some of the sessions I attended, seven themes drawn from across one or both conferences, discussions held with other punters and a list of related websites. [2] The size of the American Alliance of Museums’ Annual Meeting and Museum Expo was a standout.

Yes, AAM was big, with 5000 attendees from 50 US states and 46 countries, all navigating their way through a program offering a dazzling 600 presenters in 150 sessions. It was also business, and whilst the international contingent was welcome all round, I gained the impression that representatives from the Middle East and China were of particular interest.

By contrast, the Children's Museums’ 'InterActivity' Conference was a quarter of the AAM’s size, and possibly because of this, my overall impressions were more nuanced. Australia doesn't as yet have a CM,[3] though we are increasingly attentive to the family audience. Members of CMs regard themselves as part of a movement rather than simply a type of institution.

They are growing in number, and amongst their goals is leveraging their collective power. Debates over audiences and audience mix are eliminated, as all are for children – it's as simple as that. Learning through play is also a given, and as AAM attested, this approach is fast bleeding through into museums for grown-ups as Maker Spaces.

The surprise was that serving the interests of

the child also involves developing tangible ways to strengthen local communities. Children's Museums hold a banner for social justice. Any contestant in a CM pageant would talk of alleviating world poverty and fostering world peace without a blink. Conference goers were earnest and refreshing, in equal parts, and meeting them was the start of my initiation into the American 'can-do' attitude, surrounded as they are with numerous potential patrons, even post-GFC. Even with such expansionary thinking, conference attendees only saw you coming from within their sector and not from the broader museum field, assuming that you worked for a CM as a staff member, volunteer, funder or board member. Or were you starting a CM from scratch? No problem: get your feasibility study in place, start 'shopping for funders', and it should take around five years.

Connections do abound in this sector: across funders, foundations, committees, politicians, and an unapologetic yet considered incorporation of the commercial. This was not only pertinent to CMs, as AAM members also work within this cultural and entrepreneurial frame. The CM program had a written welcome by the Governor of Arizona, putting pen to the phrase 'children's museums are recognised as vital community anchors'. The Mayor of Phoenix, in his written and ebullient address, attributed to Children's Museums the capacity to shape identity.

Below are my seven key themes drawn from both gatherings, starting with the CM conference but blending into AAM.

Theme #1: Creative Placemaking The CM Conference kicked off with a series of 'Small talks', showcasing everything Arizona from speed painting to the science of encouraging brain development in pre-schoolers. One that caught the attention of many was Kimber Lanning, who initiated a non-profit organisation that fosters local business.

Her argument is that the arts and culture can mutually support local business to be change catalysts.

Architect Doug Suisman[4] embeds museums into ‘threshold spaces’, leading into new public squares within walkable cultural districts and a networked city. Applying this to real cities, he seeks to create 24-hour communities that attract and include families. He has mapped ages (and their safety), from tots to teens from the museum, onto these walkable districts and navigable networks, so in this way they don't ‘outgrow us’. If these connections don't currently exist, Children's Museums should make them.

Anthony Bridgeman, Director of Community Initiatives from Indianapolis Children's Museum (Extraordinary. Always) spoke of using the museum’s own funds to attack symptoms of local decline, including redeveloping derelict buildings for low-income families as well as area beautification with extensive tree planting.

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Theme #2: Museums as a learning laboratory 'Lifelong learning' as a public-good product of museum work is one banner held proudly by all. The belief that museums could lead by example to change formal learning institutions, aka schools, was apparent in both conferences. The tension is around whether they could do this and still be sites of informal learning, i.e. not become a school.

Replies to direct questioning focused on the nature of the partnerships formed, and the need to retain museum identity within these relationships. Although Maker Spaces and Art Galleries are in this space, this then addresses Foundational Skills (a topic which drifts between literacy, numeracy, and STEM subjects into the broader C21st must-haves, such as critical thinking skills).

The Children's Museum of Pittsburgh, for example, dedicates 25% of its space to be used as incubator space for other child-focused organisations – such as Reading is FUNdamental (literacy); Pittsburgh Public Schools (two, on-site Head Start/Pre-K classes); and the University of Pittsburgh Center for Learning in Out-of-School Environments (UPCLOSE). Stepping Stones Museum for Children, on the other hand, runs an Early Language and Literacy Initiative (ELLI) School as part of its collaboration with Norwalk Community College, Literacy How, and the Norwalk Housing Authority.

The Eriksson Institute has been working with Kohl Children's Museums piloting numeracy professional development for teachers. It links simple activities,

such as sorting, to mathematical concepts such as sets and patterns. Jennifer McKay recommended selecting children's books for literacy but also numeracy. For example using the book 'I know an old lady who swallowed a fly' as an exploration of a cumulative or growing pattern. These micro-activities underpinning Big Ideas can be applied to exhibition and program development, but also bring fundamental changes to the language used by staff and volunteers.

Meanwhile over to San Antonio, which is redeveloping as The DoSeum (2015). Half of the redevelopment will be funded by a personal donation of $20 million dollars, with the only condition being that one gallery is devoted to Literacy. The Gallery theme is story making, and is being developed with the San Antonio Public Library Head of Children's Services. Noting that the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) is the primary source of federal support for libraries and museums, theirs is a formal connection.

Relevant here is the IMLS report, Growing Young Minds, from the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading.

Early on in AAM, Elizabeth Merritt (Center for the Future of Museums) convened a session around Building the Future of Education: Museums and the Learning Eco System. The report is described as a call to action for museums to become an integral part of a 'Vibrant Learning Grid', which is essentially a way for museums to maintain relevance and also be the catalyst for change in a system that is beyond tinkering. Of course there is the matter of getting our own house in order, whereby education is no

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Delegates from the Children's Museums Conference enjoying their Field Trip to the Phoenix Children's Museum. left:

AAM was held in Seattle with this vista greeting attendees at the National Association for Museum Exhibition Party — one of many events and gettogethers across the program.

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A story of seven themes for museums

longer in a separate silo but is an organisationwide responsibility. Key competencies were also in question: our collections? 21st century skills? and/or critical thinking? All of these! Agreed.

Theme #3: Re-connecting with collections ‘If we knew more about how people respond to and engage with objects would it change the way we work?’ (John Russick from the Chicago History Museum) Research into visitor responses to objects has been undertaken by Elee Wood from Purdue University, the Children's Museum of Indianapolis (a CM which does have a collection), Cleveland Museum, and the Chicago History Museum. This of course was at the pointy end for me, and accessing collections was on a number of agendas.

Nothing startling in the results: An object that is more memorable was judged as more important.

Familiarity was not a factor in ranking the object as important. People liked real things and stories. Other characteristics of objects that afforded engagement were scale, uniqueness, evidence of age and/or the time of creation; a mystery or connection to a known event or person versus ordinariness; any object type that is dense, small, archaic; or linked to a difficult topic.

A suite of natural history museums presented on how they were using their collections for learning.

Of note was Chris Norris, of Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, who sidestepped the power of individual items to apply correlative analyses of large datasets held by museum collections to reveal national or international patterns.

Cleveland Museum of Art’s new Gallery One, and its ArtLens App, showcase their permanent collection.

The Gallery features the largest multi-touch microtile screen in the United States. The interactive map in ArtLens uses indoor triangulation-location technology to find works of art with additional content and visitor voting. As far as I could tell, ArtLens takes our MONA’s ‘O’ a few steps further along a participatory path. A visitor can log their comments, read others, and see how they correlate. One of the target audiences for the gallery was Families. Post-visit analysis reveals that groups with children have risen from 9% to 30% of visitors.

Theme #4: Teens and adults This highlighted the rise of the family audience (actually, the child component) in response to campaigns to get them. The participatory model, and related spaces that conflate play with creativity, is causing some concern, with even a session devoted to 'Not just for kids'. Museums want family and education audiences; but not at the expense of their

adult audiences. It is becoming of particular concern to Science Museums that adults either don't go or can't get a look in. Perhaps in reaction: whilst in San Francisco, I noted that both The Exploratorium and the Californian Museum of Sciences have started weekly adult-only nights.

Design of spaces that include adults was seen as critical, with these pointers: • signal that play is for adults as well as children • include rich, multiple-entry points and outcomes • provide a materials-rich environment • use both child- and adult-height gallery furniture • create sophisticated play experiences that are also authentic and organic • design for comfort of users • populate spaces with artists and makers • provide a lot of different things to do, but no pressure to do any of them • ensure staffed spaces • don’t neglect adult nostalgia • include invitational content for adults – e.g.

'Had a hard day?' – which encourages adult-toadult connections • provide social media opportunities, including but beyond 'the selfie' Great teen programs were outlined by MOMA, artlab at The Hirshhorn, as well as the Noguchi Museum, and here I commend my list of websites to you. Youth Advisory Councils and Committees abound.

Theme #5: Maker Spaces There seems to be an avalanche of Maker Spaces in all institutions, with museum evaluation pointing to longer engagement, deeper learning experiences, incorporated adult communication, and modelling and continuation of the engagement into the home.

The hallmark of these spaces was authentic, ‘real’ experiences, using real tools, processes, and access to real people working in related areas. A cautionary note was that these spaces require greater staff facilitation.

Theme #6: The pyramid of engagement Daniel Davis from the National Museum of the American Indian (Smithsonian) described this pyramid, with its base being Watching, followed

by Sharing, Commenting, Producing, until finally Curating. The number of museums actually planting their flag at the apex is questionable (and I wonder where the 'open play' of Children's Museums sits), but this is now AAM aspirational material. There were some fine Producing examples – though as Daniel advises, the process rather than the product is the

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An example of one item from the Excellence in Exhibition label writing competition 2014.

This is an introductory label from the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, and reads:

NEW IN TOWN 8:30pm, August 14. Reese, who's 9, searches for lizards in his Chatsworth neighborhood.

He's an experienced reptile stalker and has already caught a "bazillion lizards" with his bare hands. The lizard he catches this evening is one for the record books.

Reese knows right away it's something different. He submits a photo to the museum and learns that this is the first Mediterranean House Gecko documented in L.A.

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most radical outcome.

'Stories from Main Street', the Smithsonian's Traveling Exhibition Service's online home for stories from rural America, is one example. The Carnegie's 'Oh Snap' also brought Producing into the gallery, with a participatory open-sourced project that asked for photographic responses (later displayed) to the Gallery's own Photographic collection. 'Oh Snap' is one of many Carnegie initiatives that are supported by ‘scanning days’ for visitors who don't have the equipment or expertise to otherwise contribute.

'I wished somebody had told me when I started in museums...' that there would be no such thing as a holiday from them, especially when travelling.

Theme #7: Organisational change An inspiring talk by Marsha Bol and Susanne Serif from the Museum of International Folk Art prompted this theme. They talked about their Gallery of Conscience: not as an example of public Curating but through its impact on organisational change. As they said, the biggest obstacle is 'not seeing the need to change something that isn't broken'. Yet this depends on whose perspective you are considering, especially when the aim is to reach new audiences rather than pleasure existing patrons. And in fact, those new audiences include the artists whose work they sell at the very popular International Folk Art Market – but who, when asked, did want greater and more respectful involvement.

Typical of the response to the first exhibition by existing patrons was 'This is the ugliest exhibit MOIFA has ever done’; ‘This looks amateurish' – versus community members who said 'This is a beautiful exhibit, accessible in ways museums haven't felt before'. Happily the benefits of audience engagement are being felt with new donors stepping up. The question of the nature of new institutional expertise as a result of these experiments was touched on only as a side-issue.

Australian Seb Chan, now at Copper-Hewitt, also talked about building capacity for innovation across organisations, rather than in discrete sections. He felt his own institution was shifting away from an art museum and more towards a science museum model, in that Cooper-Hewitt is increasingly drawing attention to the processes and materials, and the people behind the design works. Seb's other change agent is the collecting of born-digital objects.

The session 'I wished somebody had told me when I started in museums...' attracted huge interest, even for AAM. The storytelling format was very well received, as four museum workers told funny, personal stories about their working life. Nina Simon, Director Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History (and Museum 2.0 blogger), was positively impassioned, essentially

stating that she is no longer attending institutional forums, so her participatory vision could be the entertainment. She now only spends time amongst allies who want to build stronger communities through inclusive arts and arts practices. Nothing personal.

But of course our experiences of museums as a visitor, staff member, or researcher are passionate and personal even at overseas conferences. Attending these conferences provided a timely link back to museum practitioners and their interests. It was also most enjoyable.[] PS: Congratulations on Museum Victoria’s Award at AAM! On a national note, it was great to hear that Museum Victoria's 'First Peoples' exhibition was one of only four (and the only one outside the States) that received Special Distinction Honors in the 26th Annual Excellence in Exhibitions Competition (aam-us.org/about-us/mediaroom/2014/26th-excellence-in-exhibitons).

Helen Whitty is currently a doctoral candidate with the University of Technology Sydney having previously managed Family and Community Engagement at the Powerhouse Museum. Her travels were supported by the UTS ViceChancellor’s Postgraduate Research Student Conference Fund.

Citation: Helen Whitty, ‘Once upon a time… gatherings from Phoenix and Seattle’, Museums Australia Magazine, 22 (4), Museums Australia, Canberra, Winter 2014, pp.40–43