APSIG newsletter no. 62: November 2006

Wendy Smith : in memoriam

Many in the region will be saddened to hear that Wendy Smith, well-known as a teacher and expert in Asian and Pacific conservation, passed away earlier in 2006.

One of Wendy's major interests was the special problems of preserving library and archive materials in Asian and Pacific countries and she undertook a number of training courses and workshops in the region under the auspices of ALIA-APSIG and the National Library of Australia, and later as a volunteer.

Wendy started her career as a textile physicist, and began to take an interest in the conservation of cultural materials when she lived in England in the early 70s, as a result of visiting the many museums and historic houses there. After she returned to Australia, and when the first conservation course in Australia started at the University of Canberra in 1978, Wendy was immediately interested. She decided on a career change, and enrolled for her second Master's degree, specializing in the conservation of paper-based materials.

After graduating, Wendy first worked at the National Museum of Australia, and then joined the Preservation Services Section of the National Library of Australia. She found the work at the National Library challenging and immensely rewarding. She saw that Preservation Services needed to be part of the mainstream library functions rather than just a specialist area, and rather than treating individual objects, the emphasis should be on managing the whole collection. So that she could better understand librarians' needs and priorities, Wendy enrolled in a Graduate Diploma in Librarianship.

Wendy went on to become the Director of Preservation Services at the National Library of Australia. However, she retained an interest in teaching, and in 1993 she took the opportunity to take a three year job rotation from the National Library, and became the Lecturer in Paper Conservation at the University of Canberra. On her return to the National Library, Wendy moved into the increasingly important area of preserving electronic information, and was the inaugural manager of the National Library's PANDORA digital archiving project.

Wendy had a special interest in preserving library and archive materials in countries in the Asia and Pacific region. Much of the material available about conservation procedures and practices had been developed in Europe and America, and was simply not suitable for libraries and archives in the Asia and Pacific region, which have major problems caused by the tropical climate, lack of resources, and lack of trained staff. In response to this challenge, Wendy developed a large amount of teaching and training material that was specifically designed for the problems and circumstances of these countries. Over a number of years she ran workshops and training courses in Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Fiji, Samoa, the Philippines and the Cook Islands. Several of these occurred after Wendy had retired, and were given by Wendy acting as a volunteer. She was also generous with the notes and teaching materials that she prepared for these courses, and was happy for people to copy them, asking only that she was acknowledged as the original author.

Wendy retired in early 1998 and enrolled as a PhD student at Charles Sturt University in Wagga, with Professor Ross Harvey as her supervisor. Her field of research was concerned with problems of preserving and ensuring long-term access to electronic information. During this time Wendy had a number of papers published in library journals, and she was nearing the completion of her PhD when she was diagnosed with kidney cancer just before last Christmas and died in the middle of this year aged 62 years.

A tribute to Wendy by her colleagues at the National Library appears in the October 2006 edition of the National Library publication, Gateways.
(With thanks to Mike Smith)