ALIA West

November 2005

Guide to John Curtin archives wins Australian Society of Archivists' Mander Jones Award

At the September Australian Society of Archivists' conference in Wellington, New Zealand, Kandy-Jane Henderson, John Curtin Prime Ministerial Library archivist, and Ross Gibbs, director general of the National Archives of Australia, accepted the society's prestigious Mander Jones Award 'for the best finding aid to an archival collection held by an Australian institution or about Australia'. The award was received for the publication John Curtin: Guide to archives of Australia's prime ministers.

The guide, jointly published by the NAA and JCPML and authored by David Black (JCPML Historical Consultant) and Lesley Wallace (JCPML Collections Librarian), includes biographies of Australia's wartime prime minister John Curtin and his wife Elsie and a comprehensive listing of archival records relating to them. The guide was released in both print and electronic forms simultaneously in November 2004. The electronic version (a pdf file which can be freely downloaded via the NAA website at National Archives of Australia online shop) contains hyperlinks to many of the records listed so researchers can quickly access digitised material via the NAA's RecordSearch database and the JCPML's Electronic Research Archive.