The Australian Library Journal

Academic or community resource? Stakeholder interests and collection management at Charles Sturt University Regional Archives, 1973-2003

Don Boadle

Manuscript received April 2003

This is a refereed article

The impact of academic stakeholders - particularly historians - on the collecting activities of Australian university archives is widely acknowledged, but seldom explored.[1] An exception is Bob Sharman's paper on the Noel Butlin Archives Centre (NBAC) at the Australian National University. It demonstrates how 'scholarly archives builders' determined acquisition priorities, methods of arrangement and description, and access conditions 'with a view to facilitating research'.[2] There is no comparable work about community stakeholders. However, Sue Fairbanks' recent study of collecting by NBAC and the University of Melbourne Archives (UMA) suggests that the 'social warrants' or authorities which academic sponsors and collection managers invoked to justify acquisition advantaged scholarly users. UMA, for instance, represented its collecting of business records as a partnership between 'town and gown', and its decision to acquire private records as a 'community service', but made no immediate provision for access to these records by community members. And NBAC's academic sponsors actively enhanced its success in securing records from business, employer and labour organisations worried about confidentiality by undertaking to exclude the general public, and allowing depositors to regulate scholarly access on a case-by-case basis.[3]

The possibility that relationships with community stakeholders might be more critical for regional university archives than for their metropolitan counterparts is flagged in Chris Buckley's history of the University of New England and Regional Archives (UNERA).[4] He notes that the university's foundation vice-chancellor, Dr R B Madgwick, although himself an historian, was emphatic that deposited records were not to be reserved solely for academic research workers. In insisting on a 'policy of full public accessibility', Madgwick undoubtedly was influenced by ambitions to establish a combined function regional repository: that is, an institutional and collecting archive which might also serve as a repository for the State Records Authority (until 1998 the Archives Authority of New South Wales), providing custodial management of records of continuing value created by state and local government agencies in a designated region or regions.[5] Yet if community access to what after all were public records was one issue, an equally important question for the vice-chancellor of the regional university was engagement with, and outreach to, a variety of different interests in the predominantly pastoral northern district.[6]

Similar alignments of interest emerged once the archival collection at the then Riverina College of Advanced Education (RCAE, since 1989 Charles Sturt University) was segregated from the library's 'Special Riverina Collection' and began operating as a combined function regional repository on the New England pattern. In contention was whether the holdings had been acquired primarily to support research and teaching, as the academic sponsors maintained, or to serve broader community needs. A related concern was whether, to support its diverse clienteles, the Regional Archives needed to acquire and manage complementary library formats such as ephemera, newspapers, government publications, and even monographs and serials. Aligned with the academics were several university executives responsible for resource allocation, planning and audit, but to their discomfiture, the college principal and foundation vice-chancellor of Charles Sturt University (CSU), Professor C D Blake, threw his weight behind the community stakeholders. The ensuing, sometimes very public, exchanges led to a searching external inquiry in 1990. Because the proceedings were closely documented, it is possible to explore the impact of academic patronage, the conflicts of interest between academic and community stakeholders, and the effects of the inquiry itself on institutional configurations and collection management in the broadest sense of the term.

Keith Swan (1916-1996) already had accumulated a collection of local records for the Wagga Wagga and District Historical Society (WW&DHS) during the 1960s.[7] So when the senior lecturer in history proposed in February 1972 that RCAE establish a regional research unit, it was unsurprising that a key element should be a 'Riverina Archives'.[8] The offer of annual gifts of monographs and serials from the big working library of Margaret Carnegie (1910-2002) of Kildrummie, Holbrook, enabled Swan and his librarian spouse, Vera Swan, née Moore, to win Blake's backing and make a start on the project in 1973, albeit at the cost of setting aside their proposed archives in favour of a 'Special Riverina Collection' in the college's Information Resources Centre.[9] Carnegie's well-stocked library was not a regional collection, however. It was strongest in Australiana from the colonial period, with significant numbers of rare and scarce items purchased at the Ingleton and Mackaness sales. Yet Swan was adamant that in acquiring private records for the archival portion of the special collection they should maintain a Riverina focus. He consequently devoted considerable energy to courting what he saw as genuinely regional organisations such as the Murray Valley Development League, and individuals like the Hay engineer and grazier J Alan Gibson, one of the founders of a rival regional lobby group, the Murrumbidgee Valley Water Users' Association.[10]

In formulating a warrant for his collecting activities, Swan used language not dissimilar to that employed by his UMA counterparts. The Special Riverina Collection would foster 'vital links between the college and the Riverina community' and facilitate co-operation with local historical societies. But it primarily was a scholarly collection intended to support teaching and provide 'research opportunities' for staff. For this reason access would 'only be given to senior students and scholars who [could] establish their bona fides without doubt'.[11] Nevertheless, library staff members were making items available to professional historians external to RCAE, to local residents ('for genealogical purposes'), and even to schoolchildren.[12] Swan was either unaware of these exceptions, or chose to ignore them, probably because he and Vera effectively retained control over collection development. The annual selection of items from Carnegie's library was Vera's responsibility, while Keith concentrated on locating and acquiring virtually any primary sources of utility to scholars, including newspapers, business archives, private papers, records of community organisations, photocopies of original manuscript material held in other collections, photographs, cartographic material and oral history.[13] In this he was following a path well trafficked by his NBAC counterparts, who regularly accessioned collections of original and copied documents put together by academics, as well as 'ad hoc political collections' of pamphlets and other publications from 'trades union men'. These 'artificial research collections', Sharman noted, were 'denominated our "P" collections, though whether this stands for "Personal", "Pamphlet" or "Periodical" I have never been able to discover'.[14]

The acquisition of some seventy metres of records from Tubbo station prompted Swan to retain a consultant in September 1976 to advise on the future management of archives in the special collection. Digby Hartridge had previously worked at the National Archives of Rhodesia. Despite his public (or institutional) archives background, he was ready to accommodate academic preferences by conceding that 'grey' material such as 'college publications, the papers of research projects, local publications, "fugitive material" or "ephemera", cuttings, indexes to newspapers and other historical resources' could be housed in a university archives. On the other hand, he was critical of Swan's exclusive focus on the collecting function and neglect of the college's records. He argued that by also assuming the institutional function, and managing its own records, RCAE would significantly strengthen its warrant to collect and service those of other people and entities.

He accordingly urged Swan to create a separate archives unit with combined functions and employ a professional archivist accountable to a senior executive rather than to the librarian.[15] Swan was still attracted to the 'one stop research shop' convenience of the special collection model. But a tour of library special collections and university archives in Britain and North America during 1977 alerted him to the deleterious consequences of subjecting archives to library control. Back home, in his new post-retirement role as 'archival consultant', Swan persuaded Blake to establish a professionally managed combined function regional repository on the UNERA pattern, and arranged with the [State] Archives Authority for it to be responsible for the state survey and planning regions of Riverina and Murray. According to Swan, these approximated what historically had been regarded as the Riverina.[16]

Don Brech from the RAF Museum at Hendon [UK] took up duty as archivist in February 1979. He reported to the librarian, and the archives continued to be housed in the library because there was no other suitable accommodation. Swan did not regard this as disadvantageous. Indeed, he maintained that newspapers, parliamentary papers and other similar library formats should be managed in the archives, which was 'geared for conservation and preservation'. Senior library staff disagreed. Brech speedily resolved the impasse by negotiating with Vera Swan to repatriate these items to the Carnegie collection.[17] Keith Swan, however, proved unaccommodating. He had confided in Blake that he hoped to assume 'authority more overtly, even when the archivist is appointed', and soon was at odds with Brech over whether he should enjoy privileged access to restricted accessions.[18] Disgruntled at being treated like any other scholarly user, Swan threatened to exercise his right as one of the local historical society's trustees to withdraw the WW&DHS archival collection from the RCAE archives. In an attempt to head off possible damage to community relations, Blake convened a two hour meeting with Swan and Brech in mid-January 1980, and arranged a luncheon for members of the society's board of management in March, but made little headway. Three months elapsed before Swan wrote to Blake: 'I greatly regret thus severing my personal connection with the College Archives - perhaps, indeed, with the College - but I can see no alternative'.[19]

Nevertheless, Brech had largely given effect to Swan's vision. A policy statement, drafted during his first week in the job, emphasised the 'unique opportunity for innovation within the field of archives and education' and for the development of 'a community service not previously available within the region'.[20] The statement nevertheless gave priority to supporting 'bona fide research'. Intending users were required to write for an appointment, a strategy that effectively discouraged the casual or merely curious and kept researcher visits below 165 annually. This allowed Brech, who had a library attendant (John Winterbottom) as his only full-time assistant, to concentrate on the provision of records management and archives services for the college on the one hand and, on the other, the 'collection, preservation and control of records of administrative and historical importance relating to the Riverina'.

The first of these functions was not especially onerous so early in the college's corporate life. The second was made manageable by adopting 'a passive role' in relation to material which might lie in the ambit of State Archives and concentrating actively on acquiring private records from 'selected persons, commercial and other organisations'. Although Brech believed a survey of lecturers' teaching and research interests might 'assist in establishing criteria for the selection of such archives', there is no evidence of a survey being conducted. Instead he identified creating agency categories he wished to target, and compiled listings of those agencies he approached (or intended to approach) for deposits, giving attention in the first instance to the Wagga Wagga locality.

The biggest single category was companies, followed by members of parliament and significant individuals (many of them candidates for political office), then pastoral stations and properties, with most of the comparatively small numbers in the associations, clubs and societies category being drawn from pastoral and agricultural societies, and racing or gentlemen's clubs. A parallel project - inspired by Swan's original proposal for a Riverina Archives - was the compilation of a bibliography of records relating to the region in other collecting institutions, ranging from state libraries to local historical societies. By the time Brech departed in December 1982, to manage the Northern Territory Archives, the Riverina College Archives and Records Service (RCA&RS) held eight accessions of college records, fifty-eight accessions of State Archives and 178 accessions of private records.[21]

Brech's successor, Alan Ives, commenced work in mid-June 1983. An enthusiastic book collector and trained librarian with eleven years' experience at the National Library and Australian Archives' main library in Canberra, Ives swiftly reverted to Swan's special collection model. By November 1987 (when a recently employed clerical assistant began de-accessioning on her own initiative[22]) he and his staff had accessioned 451 consignments of government publications, serials and works of reference. They also had accessioned 170 consignments of 'grey' material, much of it ephemera. Whether consciously or otherwise, Ives reversed his predecessor's collecting priorities, acquiring 342 consignments of State Archives and 253 consignments of private records during the period between his appointment and his departure in January 1994.

Most of this collecting appears to have been unsystematic, but a common element in many of the public and private archival accessions was a preponderance of name-identified data, which Winterbottom began to card index in what became known as the 'Riverina Name Index'. Ives and he now quite consciously catered to a growing community interest in genealogy. Among their earliest accessions were some 500 metres of hospital patient files. To these they added extensive consignments of solicitors' client files, and registers of baptisms, marriages and burials from parishes in the Anglican Diocese of Riverina. Prospective researchers no longer needed to write for an appointment; Ives and Winterbottom opened the search room to the public during business hours on weekdays, with regular Saturday and evening openings for meetings of both the WW&DHS and the Wagga Wagga & District Family History Society (WW&DFHS).

These initiatives brought them into conflict with Ives' supervisor, Carol Mills, who became college librarian in July 1984. Ives had been 'part of [her] social circle in Canberra', and they shared interests in bibliography and book collecting.[23] But they soon were at odds over his purchase of library materials, his failure to use the Dewey classification system and Library of Congress subject headings in cataloguing publications, and his efforts to displace Vera Swan as the Carnegie collection manager. Concerned that bona fide (academic) researchers were taking second place to family historians from the local community, Mills and the bursar, John Biddle, voiced their misgivings to the principal.[24] Blake had been providing ex gratia payments to acquire genealogical resources and made it clear that his sympathies were with Ives. So much so that he began to explore how he might more closely 'associate' the Carnegie collection and RCA&RS without further alienating the Swans.[25] Failing to find a satisfactory solution, he reconstituted the Riverina Archives as an autonomous unit, initially accountable to himself, then afterwards to his deputy, Dr Jack Cross (1928-2002), and established an archives advisory committee under the chairmanship of a senior lecturer in history, Dr David Denholm (1924-1997).

In 1984 Denholm had begun teaching an undergraduate subject which gave students hands-on experience with archives from the Tumbarumba locality. Ives had allocated him an office in the repository, and Denholm had taken charge of map holdings, preparing meticulous finding aids that continue to provide the primary access point to annotated parish maps. Not surprisingly, he moved to shore up the status quo, telling Blake that in his 'own repeated experience', RCA&RS's descriptive practices guaranteed 'production of a requested item in two minutes or less'. The 'central problem', according to Denholm, was not Ives' limited archival experience - some ten months in survey and disposal at Australian Archives - but rather the 'ill-defined setting' in which he had to work at Riverina-Murray Institute of Higher Education (RMIHE), as RCAE now became known.[26] To remedy this deficiency, Denholm drafted a five-page document detailing 'purposes' of the archives, 'acquisitions policy' and 'usage policy'.

Apart from its usage section, the document's priorities were broadly consistent with Brech's 1979 policy, so Denholm had little difficulty in getting approval from the advisory committee. He then allowed the committee to slip into recess, seemingly unconcerned about monitoring implementation or compliance. When forwarding the policy statement to Blake in September 1985, Cross commented that it made the Institute Archives 'more formally supportive to ... research and teaching functions than ... hitherto'.[27] Yet in doing so it widened the Archives' mandate to embrace 'primary and secondary education in the region' and multiplied its functions to include 'publication, exhibition and reciprocal enterprise with external interested groups'. In discharging this last function, the Archives was permitted to 'extend ... co-operation to the ... mutual use of space and other appropriate resources': an authority Ives subsequently invoked to legitimate housing the WW&DFHS and its collection of books and microform in the Archives building.

By June 1987 Jack Cross felt obliged to point out that 'educational use of the Archives [was] below the level of policy expectation'. There were abundant indications that steps had been taken 'to provide community service', but there had not been 'visible effective steps ... to encourage development of the resource for academic purposes'. A proposal by Denholm to establish a research and teaching facility at the Riverina Archives seemed to him simply to impose another layer of administrative machinery, without doing anything to address these shortcomings.[28] Blake agreed. He moved in 1988 to associate the Archives with the major administrative division of Educational Services and, in March 1989, reconstituted the archives advisory committee under the chairmanship of Professor Richard Johnstone, dean of the school of Humanities and Social Sciences and soon to be dean of the faculty of Arts. Blake was emphatic, however, that the relationship between the Archives and the WW&DFHS was not a policy issue within the advisory committee's remit.[29] The concurrent creation of Charles Sturt University, through the amalgamation of RMIHE and the Bathurst-based Mitchell College of Advanced Education (MCAE), meanwhile presented the committee with the opportunity to commission an expert external panel to review the Archives' management and recommend how it might most effectively accommodate the new university's 'expanded regional obligations and ... aspirations for significantly enhanced research and higher degree profiles'.

Chaired by the University of Melbourne archivist, Frank Strahan, the five-member review panel received written submissions and met with interested parties during a two-day visit to the Wagga Wagga campus on 27-28 November 1990. Its report recommended the appointment of a fully qualified and experienced university archivist, accountable to the Wagga-based deputy vice-chancellor (academic). In the interim a board of management should control policy, budgets and personnel. Blake already had assigned responsibility for the University Archives to the Bathurst-based deputy vice-chancellor (services), Professor John Collins, and charged him with chairing the board of management and deciding how the university should implement the review's key recommendations. Central to these was the ranking of functions to give priority to the management of the university's own archives, followed by the personal papers of its staff and alumni. Thereafter it should serve 'as a repository for state and local government and private papers' relating in the first instance to the existing regions of Riverina and Murray. Finally, it should 'fulfil a genealogical and local history role for the university's communities', though the report emphasised that the commitment to this role would need to be reassessed as the usage rate by academics and students increased.

In assigning these priorities, the review quite consciously followed the Brech and Denholm policy statements. However, it differed from Denholm by highlighting the inappropriateness of the special collection model and pointing to the inadequate arrangement and description of the already processed portion of the archival collection. It acknowledged that the Archives were seriously understaffed in relation to the functions staff members were expected to perform. But it reiterated that, if the collection was to be used in support of teaching and research, accessions needed to be processed more thoroughly in accordance with the principles of provenance and original order, and not merely shelf-listed in the order in which they were boxed on receipt. Should additional staffing not be available to tackle the backlog of unprocessed accessions, this could still be accomplished by closing to the public one day a week, and by restricting acquisition to the existing regions of Riverina and Murray.

Collins was afterwards to claim that neither the vice-chancellor nor the board of management had endorsed any of the review's recommendations, apart from establishment of the board itself. On the issue of making time to tackle the processing backlog, board members freely voiced their opposition. But on the more substantive issues of descriptive practices and the acquisition of library formats they deferred consideration until the university archivist was appointed: an occurrence that Collins admitted was unlikely in the foreseeable future due to budgetary constraints. This did not prevent members from endorsing Ives' proposal to acquire hardcopy runs of metropolitan newspapers including the London Times, the New York Times, the Brisbane Courier-Mail and the Hobart Mercury.

Challenged to justify this decision by Johnstone and the director of planning and development, Bernie O'Donnell, Collins replied that while there was 'some reservation expressed' as to whether this was consistent with the board's 'agreed collection policy, the final decision was that the papers were appropriate to the needs of the Archives' and a resource 'for both community and University researchers'.[30] The priority was clear, and not missed by Johnstone, who felt 'bound to register [his] disappointment that the opportunities for positive and productive change contained in the report ... [had] been so comprehensively missed'. Blake responded by recommending to the university's governing body in mid-1992 that responsibility for the Regional Archives, as they were now to be known, should rest with the executive director of Library Services, Margaret Macpherson.[31]

It is unlikely that Macpherson embraced this new responsibility with any great enthusiasm. In 1980 she had advised the MCAE principal against establishing a combined function regional repository in Bathurst. Nine years later she declared that the new university had 'many more vital matters to pursue than establishing a regional archive for more than one-third of New South Wales'.[32] Among these matters she instanced the management of its own corporate records. She consequently can have found little comfort in the 'policy statement and implementation plan' approved by the Regional Archives' board of management on 4 March 1992. Drafted by a working party consisting of Ives, an associate professor of public administration and two lecturers in history, it identified ten main functions, the most significant of which was the collecting of private records. The preservation of corporate records of the institution and its precursors was then ranked second, the community function fifth, and the regional repository function ninth. Acting 'as a publisher for material based on or about the collection' was in seventh place and arranging 'exhibitions from time to time' in eighth place.[33]

By giving priority to the collecting function, and authorising the acquisition of records 'representative of the urban centres of Albury, Bathurst and Wagga Wagga and their immediate agricultural and pastoral hinterlands', the board signalled its intention to break decisively not only with the review's recommendations, but with the policies enunciated by Denholm and Brech. Its decision was partly pragmatic, because Ives and Winterbottom had been collecting from courthouses in the central-west since 1990. But it was driven mainly by the determination of one of the historians, Dr Bruce Pennay from CSU's Albury-Wodonga campus, to align archival collecting and use more closely with the university's mission to address the distinctive needs of each of these urban centres and its rural hinterland. Rather than focussing on 'state administrative boundaries of dubious utility', Pennay believed that those responsible for collection development needed to come to grips with the provincial character of settlement in non-metropolitan Australia.[34]

Thus far collecting had been Wagga-centric and insufficiently inclusive of the city's rural hinterland. The board's implementation plan accordingly proposed the immediate acquisition of 'additional agricultural-based archival material from ... vineyards, farms, pastoral properties, wineries, etc.' within the three localities defined in the accompanying policy statement. To collect in these localities was an ambitious but ultimately unrealistic proposal, since the board already had decided not to act on the review's recommendation to appoint a field officer, and had not secured sufficient human or fiscal resources to cope with existing work, let alone the increased volume of arrangement and description that would be generated. Although the proposal was revisited in 1994, and again in 1997 - when the Bathurst City Council encouraged CSU to explore the feasibility of establishing a central-western repository in partnership with the Archives Authority - it was to founder on each occasion because neither the university nor the authority was prepared to commit enough resources.

In March 1993 an advisory committee chaired by Macpherson succeeded the board of management, but things at the archives appeared to continue much as they had before the review. In a spirited exchange with Johnstone when the review was first proposed, Ives had been adamant that CSURA was different from 'any other university archives in Australia. The closest parallel ... [was] the Geelong [Historic] Records Centre'.[35] The Geelong facility functioned as a community resource for genealogy and local history, and in many respects CSURA now had more in common with it than with the other university-based combined function regional repositories at Armidale, Newcastle and Wollongong. Central to its role as a family history resource was its extensive collection of printed reference material and microform guides and indexes.

WW&DFHS members, lobbying the vice-chancellor to set aside the Strahan report, spoke proudly of the genealogical books and associated microforms as among the 'largest' collections of their kind outside Sydney.[36] Academics and information professionals, by contrast, drew attention to the heterogeneous character of CSURA's collections of library material, the absence of any discernible purpose underlying their acquisition, and the difficulty in accessing the mostly uncatalogued items, many of them duplicated in the campus libraries. Several of the submissions from academics advocated the maintenance of small collections of regionally-related reference books and university ephemera, but noted that pressure of space in an already overflowing repository made it essential for the boundaries of such collections to be very strictly policed.[37]

Senior staff from the Archives Authority offered comparable advice after they carried out a two-day inspection in May 1993. They found a 'substantial amount of space' was taken up with 'extraneous reference material', newspapers and quantities of time-expired records not required as State Archives. Publications were stacked in aisles. Intellectual control of State Archives was rudimentary. Efforts to identify provenance did not distinguish creating from controlling agencies and series identification was 'very poor' or non-existent. Even though the standard of collection management was 'well below that expected of [their] own organisation', the authority's officers hesitated to recommend the recall of State Archives to Sydney.[38] Relations with the university were uneasy because the authority had failed to deliver direct funding to support the regional repository function, and its chief executive had clashed with Ives over unauthorised acquisition of public records from the central west. For this reason the report was withheld, and only forwarded to Blake in summary in January 1994, after he had made it known that he had decided on a change of management at the archives.

Denholm, who had retired at the end of 1989, immediately proposed that Winterbottom be designated 'acting archivist' and he himself be employed 'to help advance the re-ordering' of the collections before the university appointed a new archivist. The fundamental issue, as he saw it, was 'the extra-mural holdings' of 'non-regional newspapers, loose parliamentary papers, books and other forms of reference' that he now proposed selectively dispersing. Three years previously, in a dismissive commentary on the Strahan review, he had opposed this action. More provocatively, he had insisted that his 'feel' for the archival portion of the collection suggested the review's recommendation about addressing inadequate arrangement and description misrepresented the situation. If 'my "feel" is sound', he concluded, 'the recommendation is on its way to the discard basket'.[39] Whether he had changed his mind was not made clear. Blake meanwhile was persuaded that palliative measures were woefully incommensurate with the problem. On the recommendation of Johnstone, now the deputy vice-chancellor, he seconded the author of this paper to serve as manager for ten months, commencing at the beginning of February.

The challenge I faced in implementing the recommendations of the Strahan review was fourfold. Firstly, to disperse library materials and get the archives functioning as a combined function regional repository rather than a special collection. Secondly, to enhance intellectual control over records already in custody. Thirdly, to implement the collecting priorities set out in the review. Fourthly, to realign reference and other client services to support corporate accountability and orderly administration, research, teaching and learning, and outreach to the university's regional communities.

The principal constraint was inadequate resources. With 1.5 effective full-time equivalent staff apart from myself, it was vital to use available labour as judiciously as possible. It soon became apparent that some 5000 metres of repository shelving (erected without backs) would require reconstruction. To minimise double handling we began by removing all non-archival holdings, and sentencing corporate and public records to identify time-expired series of no continuing administrative or research value. Officers of the WW&DFHS interpreted this as the first step towards transforming CSURA into a facility predominantly for academic research. Within a week of my arrival, Wagga Wagga's Daily Advertiser made the changes taking place at the archives front-page news. Under the headline, 'London Times on Death Row', it reported that some newspapers were still headed for the shredder, though the intervention of the Advertiser's editor, Michael McCormack, had ensured that long runs of several of the most important Australian newspapers had been reclaimed by their publishers.[40] McCormack proved a valuable ally. During the next few weeks his paper ran stories and photographs as out of town editors and librarians called to collect their booty. Concurrently, literally thousands of monographs and several hundred long runs of serials on shelves in the search room or loading dock were distributed to the university's campus libraries, to public and other university libraries, and to district schools. A couple of hundred genealogical books were placed on loan with the WW&DFHS, and relocated in November 1996 when the society moved out of the archives building and into its own accommodation on the university's south campus.

By December 1994 over a quarter of CSURA's total holdings of records had been destroyed or returned to creating agencies. Transfers of public records had been suspended temporarily and a small commercial intermediate storage facility established. The introduction of fee-for-service storage of public records not required as State Archives considerably reduced the number and size of consignments, with 121 accessions of State Archives received between January 1994 and March 2003. During the same period we accessioned 253 consignments of corporate records from CSU and its precursors, and 270 consignments of private records. Resources were not sufficient for proactive collecting, so priority was given to documentation projects.

The appointment of James Logan to the new position of collection manager in November 1995, and the employment of ten clerical assistants under the federally funded New Work Opportunities scheme, enabled us to make a start on the backlog of arrangement and description. The publication of Logan's Concise Guide to State Archives from the Riverina and Murray Regions (1997) and the uploading of it and his Regional records on-line guide (1999) on our website marked a significant milestone in intellectual control over both public and private records. Currently, Logan and the project archivist, Wayne Doubleday, are in the second year of a three-year project, funded by State Records, which is documenting the corporate records of CSU and its precursors using the Australian series system.

From the beginning it seemed probable that the very extensive holdings of public records at CSURA would ensure our usage profile would continue to be closer to that of a state archival repository than a combined function university archives. And this indeed has proved to be the case. While community usage dropped from over ninety per cent of all researchers in 1995 to seventy-five per cent in 1998, it stabilised at around seventy per cent thereafter. The concurrent rise in academic usage can be attributed to a number of initiatives, including my appointment in December 1994 to the joint position of director of CSURA and senior lecturer in history, the involvement of Logan and myself in teaching and supervision in history and politics, and our introduction of archives summer research scholarships funded from our fee-for-service storage operations.

Like all university-based combined function regional repositories, our most pressing concern remains the scarcity of resources in relation to the number of functions we are expected to perform. Under these circumstances active prioritisation is the key to successful management. Contrary to Denholm's claims in 1991, when responding to the recommendations of the Strahan review, CSURA is not a public archives that ought to have 're-geared [itself] to deal primarily with [its] non-academic publics'.[41] It first and foremost is a university archives whose first duty is to its host institution: to its orderly administration on the one hand, and to its prime functions of research, teaching and learning on the other. Only when these have been adequately addressed is it reasonable actively to divert resources to support community usage. And even then it is crucial that a broad range of community interests are served, and not simply the needs of a single organised interest group.

My thanks to Nancy Blacklow, Lyn Gorman, Richard Johnstone, David Levine, James Logan and Troy Whitford for reading this article in draft.

Endnotes

1 Boadle, D, 'Australian university archives and their management of the records continuum' in Archives and reform Canberra, ASA 1998 p247-255

2 Sharman, RC, 'Collections of archives maintained for teaching and research purposes' in LAA Proceedings of the 16th biennial conference Sydney, LAA 1972 p183

3 Fairbanks, S, Social warrants for collective memory: case studies of Australian collecting archives MA (Archives & Records) thesis Monash University 1999 p67-72, 104-105

4 Buckley, C, 'History of the University of New England Archives' Armidale and District Historical Society Journal 40 1997 p117

5 Boadle, D, 'Origins and development of the New South Wales regional repositories system' Archives and Manuscripts 23 (2) 1995 p274-288

6Ryan, JS, 'Early university responses to the matter of collecting and using archives in New England' Armidale and District Historical Society Journal 41 1998 p40

7 Boadle, D, 'The historian as archival collector: an Australian local study' Australian Academic and Research Libraries 34 (1) 2003

8 Swan, KJ, 'The establishment of a Riverina Research Unit within the College' 21 February 1972 RCAE SBLS Dean's subject files Riverina Research Institute CSURA, CSU1857 Box 2

9 Swan, KJ, 'Some Thoughts on a "Special Riverina Collection" in the Information Resources Centre of the Riverina College of Advanced Education' 18 August 1972 RCAE SBLS Dean's subject files Miscellaneous 1972-76 CSURA, CSU1857 Box 1

10 Swan, KJ, 'The middle reaches since 1900' in The Murray Waters Sydney, Angus & Robertson 1974 p137

11 Swan, KJ, Report on activities as consultant for the Archives and Riverina Collection at Riverina College for the quarter ending 30 June 1977 Swan papers CSURA, RW1586

12 Hartridge, D, Memo to registrar 10 October 1977 RCA&RS Policy file RCA79/2 CSURA, CSU1923/2

13 Swan 'Some Thoughts ...'

14 Sharman op cit p186

15 Hartridge, D, Report by archival consultant December 1976 RCA79/2 CSURA, CSU1923/2

16 Swan, KJ, Draft letter to principal archivist Archives Authority 13 July 1977 CSURA, RW1586

17 Brech, DB, Notes on Margaret Carnegie Collection 28 May 1979 RCA&RS Margaret Carnegie Collection file RCA79/33 CSURA, CSU1923/20

18 Swan, KJ, Letter to Blake 10 March 1978 RCAE Central records M79/113 vol I CSURA, CSU2040; Brech, DB, 'Aide memoire-meeting with principal and director IRC Monday 14 January 1980 to discuss letter from KJ Swan...' RCA&RS Archives Policy file pt 2 RCA80/4 CSURA, CSU1923/40

19 Swan, KJ, Letter to Blake 18 June 1980 Copy on accession file Swan papers CSURA, RW40

20 RCA&RS Policy Statement 8 March 1979 RCA79/2 CSURA, CSU1923/2

21 [Brech, DB,] Holograph notes 'Acquisitions-Riverina Archives' [April/May 1979] RCA79/2; 'News Notes' Archives and Manuscripts 7 (5) 1979 p296-297

22 Harris, J, Submission to Strahan review committee 9 November 1990 CSU Central records Archives, review of 90/245 pt 1 CSURA, CSU2075/57

23 Mills, C, Submission to Strahan review committee 7 November 1990 90/245 pt 1 CSURA, CSU2075/57

24 Biddle, J, Memo to Blake 6 November 1984 RCAE Central records M79/113 vol II CSURA, CSU2040

25 Blake, CD, Memo to deputy principal Cross 6 August 1985 M83/113 vol II CSURA, CSU2040

26 Denholm, DD, Memo to principal 12 March 1985 CSURA, Denholm papers

27 Cross, JA, Memo to principal enclosing 'RMIHE Archives and Records Service Policy Statement' 11 September 1985 M83/113 vol II CSURA, CSU2040

28 Cross, JA, Memo to Denholm 30 June 1987 M86/113 vol IV CSURA, CSU2040

29 Blake, CD, Directive to deputy principal Brooks 13 March 1989 M88/113 vol VI CSURA, CSU2040

30 Collins, JM, Memo to Johnstone 24 April 1992 90/245 pt 6 CSURA, CSU2075/58

31 Blake, CD, Memo to Collins 19 May 1992 90/245 pt 6 CSURA, CSU2075/58

32 Macpherson, M, Memo to acting principal MCAE 14 December 1989 Executive director Library Services Archives 1986-90 CSURA, CSU 2183/13

33 Collins, JM, Memo to university secretary 24 March 1992 covering CSURA Policy statement and implementation plan 4 March 1992 CSU Central records Archives CSU 90/078 pt 2 CSURA, CSU2075/27

34 Pennay, B, Memo to Boadle 25 June 1994 CSURA Director's subject & correspondence files Archives-review of policy and procedures 1994 CSURA, CSU2096/2

35 CSU Archives Advisory Committee agenda papers 20 August 1990 item 4(b)

36 Fellowes, D, Letter to vice-chancellor 6 February 1991 90/078 pt 1 CSURA, CSU2075/27

37 Submissions from J Mills and W Eather, C Mills, S Morris, D Boadle 90/245 pt 1 CSURA, CSU2075/57

38 NSW public records in the CSU Regional Archives, Wagga Wagga Report of inspection visit 4-5 May 1993 Copy in CSURA Staffing 1994 CSURA, CSU2096/37

39 Denholm, DD, Letter to dean of studies (copied to vice-chancellor) 17 January 1994 90/078 pt 2 CSURA, CSU2075/27; 'Comment on report of review of the university archives' 8 February 1991 90/245 pt 5 CSURA, CSU2075/58

40 The Daily Advertiser 9 February 1994 p1, 33

41 Denholm 'Comment on report of review ...'

Biographical information

Don Boadle is director of the CSU Regional Archives and a senior lecturer in history at Charles Sturt University. He read history at the University of Sydney and St John's College, Cambridge and has taught at the University of Sydney and Charles Sturt University. He has written about British foreign relations, Australian regional history, and Australian university archives. He may be contacted via Locked Bag 588 Wagga Wagga NSW 2678 Australia, or by e-mail at dboadle@csu.edu.au Telephone 02 6925 3666 Facsimile 02 6925 3992