Photo of the day

AIATSIS

Some years ago I spent a little time in Canberra, mainly to take a peek at the then Screensound Australia, now the National Film and Sound Archive. However, over the river, quite near the National Museum is AIATSIS - the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. I'd been very impressed by Grace Koch (who ran the av archive) when I was secretary of IASA National Archives Committee, many moons ago, and learned a great deal from her about the complexities of archiving and trying to make available indigenous material. We in Europe tend to moan about the restrictions imposed upon us by IPR; well, that's nothing in comparison to the issues involved in archiving the memories of indigenous peoples.

The above link to AIATSIS takes you to the sound archives page, and there you'll find links to other indigenous collections in Australia.

I've recently been following @Indigeneity on Twitter, though rather disappointingly they never seem to tweet on Australian indigenous issues (mainly US and New Zealand).

Unfortunately AIATSIS was closed on the day of my visit, so I'll never know what it's like on the inside, I guess.