The Australian Library Journal

Lost and missing Australian documentary heritage: is there any?

Anne Lloyd, Ross Harvey, Damian Lodge

Manuscript received April 2005

This is a refereed article

An absence of records can, in itself, be seen as evidence (Sassoon 2000: 113)

'Much cultural material has always been lost to following generations, through accident or intent', Marilyn Deegan and Simon Tanner (2002: np) note.

Sometimes we know what has been lost, as in the case of the destruction of the statues of Buddha by the Taliban in 2001, sometimes we don't, as in the Viking raids on Anglo-Saxon monasteries or the plundering of churches by Cromwellian forces.

Historically this has always been the case, so why is it worth examining further? What conditions are different? They continue:

But we are facing a new situation where, without urgent action, a digital black hole could open up in late 20th- and early 21st-century written culture - truly a digital dark age from which information may never reappear.

For some countries the loss of heritage materials is well documented. For example, the losses in Iraq in recent years are of great concern and have been notified to the international library and information management community. Although it is difficult to estimate the extent of destruction in Iraqi libraries and archives, it is acknowledged to be significant. This has been noted in surveys done for UNESCO in 2003 (Arnoult 2003), the Library of Congress in conjunction with the United States State Department (Deeb, Albin and Haley 2003; Russell 2004), and the USAID-SUNY Stony Brook University Program in Archaeology and Environmental Health (Filstrup 2004). The theme of the destruction of heritage materials is amplified in detail and extended backwards in time in Lost Libraries (Raven 2004).

More recently, information professionals have paid considerable attention to the consequences of loss of digital information. Increasing awareness of the threats of technological obsolescence of these materials is hastening the efforts to address the challenges posed. This awareness can be readily observed in the commitment of government funding in the United States and Britain to digital preservation. An example of this is the distribution by the United Kingdom's Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) in October 2004 of grants totaling more than £1 million to nine higher educational institutions for digital preservation and asset management ('Education gets £1m' 2004); on a much larger scale is the appropriation by the United States' Congress in 2000 of $100 million for the Library of Congress 'to develop a national program to develop standards and a nationwide collaborative collection and long-term preservation strategy for digital materials' (National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program 2000). It is difficult to locate specific examples of loss of digital information - typically there is an unwillingness to discuss and document failures - but examples that have come to light in interviews with Australian preservation specialists in 2004 have included early web sites in Tasmania, and databases of records developed by the State Electricity Commission of Victoria. There are undoubtedly more.

But while the loss of heritage materials in other countries is in some cases well documented, it has not so far been addressed in Australia. This paper describes the activities to date of the Lost and Missing Australian Documentary Heritage project, noting in particular the results of a survey of almost 600 archival institutions carried out in the first part of 2004. Conclusions are drawn from the results of this survey and future directions for the project are noted.

Australia's Lost and Missing Documentary Heritage Project

The UNESCO Memory of the World (MOTW) Program and its local version Australian Memory of the World have been described elsewhere (Harvey 2003; Harvey and Howell 2004). UNESCO's Program, established in 1992, aims to preserve documentary heritage that has world significance, and ensure enduring access to it. As Harvey and Howell (2004: 3) note,

[it] proceeds on the assumption that there is documentary heritage of such intellectual value that it is deemed to transcend the boundaries of time and culture, that it should be preserved for present and future generations, and that it should be made accessible to all peoples of the world in some form.

The MOTW Committee was established in December 2000 and has already carried out a wide range of activities, in particular maintaining a register of significant Australian documentary heritage material. Further information about these activities can be found on the website (http://www.amw.org.au). One of its activities is the identification of lost and missing documentary heritage materials. This is considered to be important because, as Ray Edmondson (a member of the Committee) puts it, 'developing a public record of this now inaccessible heritage is a crucial means of placing the MOTW Program in context, and is a precursor to the possibility of virtual reconstruction of lost and dispersed memory' (Edmondson 2002: 28).

Australia is the first country in the world to attempt a register of lost and missing documentary heritage: it is being developed by Ross Harvey, Anne Lloyd and Damian Lodge from Charles Sturt University's School of Information Studies. Because there are no precedents, this Australian activity is developing from scratch a methodological approach which will possibly be adopted elsewhere. We also describe the strategy and its results to date, note the preliminary scoping study carried out in 2003, which resulted in a genre approach, and a larger survey of archives, completed in 2004 and its results. We consider where these activities might lead: for example, are there other approaches that will prove fruitful, such as identifying the major Australian disasters likely to have resulted in loss of material and then contacting libraries and archives in affected areas; further genre studies; and surveys of other institutions and groups?

Scoping study 2003

The aim of this preliminary study was to test the survey format as a potential data-gathering method, and to clarify its scope. An initial query was placed on the Aus-Archivists listserv and a notice was published in inCite (Harvey and Lloyd 2003b). Two questions were posed:

1. Can you tell us about any collections or items which you think fit into the definition of lost or missing Australian documentary heritage of significance?
2. Can you suggest anyone else we should contact?

Respondents were referred to definitions of the terms documentary heritage and significance on the MOTW website.

The thirty responses were helpful in clarifying how to proceed. They indicated a diverse range of areas for further consideration: items were suggested for further investigation as being lost or missing, particularly audiovisual materials - thus raising the question of visual significance compared with the text-based documentary heritage.

Perhaps more useful was the conclusion that a fruitful approach to this research might be by category of material. Table 1 notes the categories identified.

One outcome of this scoping study was the identification of the concept of genre study as a useful way to proceed. A report in April 2003 to the MOTW Committee, prepared by Ross Harvey and Anne Lloyd, summarised the outcomes of the scoping study and included a sample genre study on lost and missing silent film. Ross Harvey developed the first genre study of Australian silent film to determine whether this was likely to be a fruitful approach. Because this genre is already well-documented it was a straightforward matter to develop a statement about Australian silent feature films produced between 1900 and 1930 that are missing, or of which only fragments exist, and to ascertain their significance, for example, as early products of narrative filmmaking. This genre study can be read on the Australian MOTW website (Harvey and Lloyd 2003a).

Table 1: Examples of categories of materials provided by responses to the 2003 scoping study

Archives survey 2004

As a result of the interest shown in postings to the Aus-Archivists listserv, the decision was made to formalise the responses through a survey of this cohort. The survey was conducted between December 2003 and February 2004, and 588 archives in Australia were asked to participate. The documents sent to each participant consisted of a letter of introduction to the study, an indication that approval had been given by Charles Sturt University's Ethics in Human Research Committee, the survey form and a brief definition of significance as currently used by the MOTW Committee. At the December 2003 meeting of the MOTW Committee, members were asked to comment on the appropriateness of the survey form before it was mailed.

Aims and questions

The aims were to:

• determine the appropriateness of the methodology and survey instrument for a larger scale survey which would be conducted at a later date;
• identify documents or collections of Australian documentary heritage which may be considered lost or missing, but where there is reliable evidence which supports the lost or missing status.
• Participants were asked to respond to four questions.
• Can you identify any significant Australian items, collections or materials that you think fit into the definition of lost or missing documentary heritage?
• Do you know the location of documentation about these items, collections or materials?
• Can you identify the last known location of these items, collections or materials?
• Can you suggest anyone else we should contact who can help us to identify Australian lost or missing documentary heritage?

Respondents who could identify relevant material were requested to provide any evidence they could about the item, including why they thought it was significant and its last known location.

We received 76 returns (12.5 per cent) from the 588 survey forms distributed. Of these, 21 returns (3.5 per cent) identified specific items and 53 returns identified no items. Table 2 lists the categories and provides examples from each group. The low response rate can be explained (hindsight is a marvelous thing) by the fact that participants were only required to identify themselves and their institutions when returning the survey with known lost and missing items; that is, we did not expect a return if participants were not able to identify any material relevant to our questions. Another factor is that the list used (Walker et al. 2001) was not fully up-to-date.

Table 2: Categories and examples identified in survey responses

The survey responses did not identify the range of items or areas that had been identified as potential sources in the online scoping study. There are a number of possible explanations.

• The inability of respondents to provide reliable evidence that an item is now lost or missing. Although the results from the scoping study were encouraging and indicated a range of areas for consideration, this was not the case in the survey of archives, where participants were required to provide evidence that would verify items' lost or missing status.
• The identification of lost or missing items may rely on serendipity, so that items may not be identified as lost or missing until actually required or until a stocktake of records is undertaken.
• Parts of items may still exist and, therefore, these items are not considered by respondents to be lost or missing.
• Participants had problems relating the concepts of lost and missing and significance to their own collections, even though these terms were defined in the material mailed out to them.
• Documentary heritage is in fact relatively intact, with few items lost or missing. Whilst evidence from the survey appears to suggest this, we would strongly argue against this proposition, on the grounds that the scoping study indicated many more items which were not identified through the formal survey.

The survey responses were not all negative. Several promising items were reported through the survey as known to be lost or missing. Some examples (see also Table 2 for further examples) of those we deem likely to be of national significance are:

• Governor Phillip's Instructions for the establishment of the first British colony in Australia (State Records New South Wales);
• the original signed Act of South Australia's constitution (State Records of South Australia;
• film and slides from the 1906 multimedia presentation Soldiers of the Cross (Salvation Army).

By comparison, we have categorised the items suggested by most respondents as lost or missing, such as the marriage registers of parishes in New South Wales and a run of a Manly daily newspaper, as being of local significance. Some items suggested will be examined to determine their significance. One that we will look at more closely is the collection of documents about the construction of Australia's first concrete bridge, reported by the Maryborough Historical Society, Queensland. Is this of national significance, or more of local interest?

These responses have prompted us to start to rethink our approach on the basis that, as Anne Lloyd (one of the Lost and Missing Heritage project's researchers) put it, 'small groups together make a large story'. In particular, the concept of significance needs re-examining.

Significance and provenance

The survey of archives illustrated the difficulties that participants encountered. The first is the application of the concept of significance, as defined by the MOTW Program, to their holdings or knowledge of holdings, especially when items are known to be lost or missing. The second is in understanding the concept of lost or missing, and how evidence might be provided to substantiate this claim. Participants from smaller local and regional institutions found the application of the criteria for significance difficult, particularly when items which were identified as 'lost or missing' might only have significance for the particular community (such as marriage records, photographs of the local area, or building licences). These items may not appear significant in the context of the current definitions because they relate to developments which will only have an impact within a community, and would, therefore, would fail a test for significance using the current criteria, which place value on national importance.

Lost and missing documentary heritage poses particular problems in assessing significance. The criteria against which a test of significance may be made can prove to be problematic where items are no longer physically available for assessment. Consequently assessments of significance of lost or missing items will, in most cases, need to be made against secondary documentary evidence (records, photos or oral recollections) and these may preclude judgments about some aspects of significance such as the contextual relationships of the item, the fabric of the item (how it was used) or against the main criteria for significance, that is provenance, rarity, representativeness, condition, integrity or interpretive potential (Russell 2001). In addition, any interpretation of the significance of a lost or missing item will need to take into account past interpretations of the item's significance, as well as any cultural or personal bias that may have influenced these interpretations.

All of this suggests that 'significance' should be viewed as a fluid concept that is historically, politically and socially influenced over time; that is, it is determined in relation to factors that change - we are really determining relative significance. In the context of this study, relative significance could be considered as the contribution a document (lost or missing) has made to the fabric or the collective consciousness of the local community, a community with a specific interest (religious or scientific, for example), a region, or a state. This is particularly important for countries with a very short period of documented development such as Australia.

Significance may often be constituted through local and regional occurrences and discourses which have had significant impact on specific communities or regions. We might use the loss of the scientific records at Mt Stromlo as an example. Some of these have significance at the national level, but they have also gained local significance as examples of material destroyed during the 2003 Canberra bushfires. The documentation of these events helps to shape the community and is often ascribed significance according to its historical, aesthetic or social value. An example of documents whose significance expands and changes are registers of marriages kept by religious groups, many of which predate the reliable recording of marriages by civil authorities. These then became surrogates, or a source, for government records and, much later, a significant source for local historians and genealogists. Surveys returned from northern New South Wales and Tasmania report lost and missing documents of this nature. When woven together this material contributes to the development of the fabric of collective cultural consciousness.

We noted earlier the difficulty some respondents had in understanding the concept of lost and missing, and their inability to provide appropriate evidence to substantiate the claim that items were lost and missing. This lack of understanding is demonstrated by examples from the survey, one being that lost or missing was interpreted as the respondent's inability to access the material, despite its location being known. We have, therefore, concluded that we need to provide examples of the kinds of evidence that is appropriate to indicate that material is lost or missing, to give some tests that could be applied to verify this status. For instance, we will include on this list surveyor John Larmer's native vocabulary notebook and correspondence (1834-1853) which was noted as being in the collections of what is now State Records New South Wales until the 1980s. While the original item is missing, a copy of the original item is to be found in volume 8 of Sir Thomas Mitchell's Miscellaneous Papers (pp 419-436), in the Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales. In this case the original item is considered lost, but its existence is confirmed though a secondary source.

In another case, early images of a town in the Southern Highlands were considered to be missing from the holdings of the local historical society. However, some of these images were accessible from another institution through their online services, and others were available from other institutions for a fee. In this case, while the original images may have been lost, reproductions of the images are available and therefore accessible.

We have concluded that the concept of significance may need to be reviewed for this particular project, and/or for further studies, to include recognition for items of local and regional significance or of relative significance. While the survey's primary aim was to identify lost or missing items of national importance, the results suggest that consideration should be given to recasting the definition of significance currently being employed in the MOTW Program so that items which may not be of national significance, but are of local or regional significance, can be included in the register. This may necessitate the creation of two categories for lost and missing documentary heritage.

Where to from here?

The survey identified a number of items of national and local significance and was therefore useful as a preliminary step in establishing a register of lost and missing documentary heritage.

Surveys of this kind are also useful for establishing categories which can then be further explored using a genre approach. The archives survey identified six main categories or genres within which records or collections can be included. Two of these, corporate records and government records, were identified as areas needing further investigation as a result of the records located. An examination of the literature relating to these supports the need for further investigation; a preliminary review was undertaken to locate material in any form that provided clues to Australia's lost or missing documentary heritage in relation to corporate and government records. This initial search located a number of articles listing collections and documents that would possibly fall under the Lost and Missing Documentary Heritage definition of significance. However, as the results indicated, the concepts of significance and the ability to reliably provide evidence of the provenance of lost and missing documentary heritage proved problematic in the archives survey; they need to be carefully considered and defined more closely.

We recommend three sets of actions:

1. Terminology
   • Further discussion of the current concept of significance and its implications for lost and missing documentary heritage which may fall outside definitions of national significance, but which is valuable in terms of the local or regional cultural heritage. In this context, the concept of significance may need to be broadened and viewed as a 'tiered definition' which includes statements and criteria for defining 'relative significance', and statements and criteria which define national significance. In adopting this approach we can bring together the many small pieces that together create the fabric of a society's collective consciousness.
   • Identifying and listing examples of the range of evidence which might be used to support the claim that documents are 'lost and missing'. Undertaking the creation of a list will illustrate the range of documents which may fall under national or relative significance. This list could be included on the Memory of the World web site where it will be accessible to all members of the community who are interested in lost and missing documentary heritage.
2. Further research
   • Significant items identified in the archives survey should be further investigated with a view to their nomination for inclusion on the lost and missing register.
   • The archives survey identified a number of useful sources which should be explored further. This research may be advanced through targeting specific groups for the development of genre studies.
3. An expanded genre approach
   • A new study examining specific lost and missing documentary heritage relating to government and corporate records is required. Damian Lodge has agreed to do this. His study will explore the participants' concept of significance in relation to corporate records and government records. Data collection is to begin early in 2005.

References

Arnoult, J-M (2003) Assessment of Iraqi Cultural Heritage: Libraries and Archives, June 27-July 6, 2003, UNESCO, http://www.ifla.org/VI/4/admin/iraq2207.pdf (viewed 22 November 2004).

Bolton, G (2002) 'Confessions of a library user' LASIE 33(1): 7-16, http://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/lasie/aug02/aug02.pdf (viewed 22 November 2004).

Deeb, M-J, Albin, M and Haley, A (2003) The Library of Congress and the US Department of State Mission To Baghdad: Report on the National Library and the House of Manuscripts October 27-November 3, 2003, Library of Congress, http://www.loc.gov/rr/amed/iraqreport/iraqreport.html (viewed 22 November 2004).

Deegan, M and Tanner, S (2002) 'The digital Dark Ages' Update, May, http://www.cilip.org.uk/publications/updatemagazine/archive/archive2002/may/update0205b.htm (viewed 22 November 2004).

Edmondson, R (2002) Memory of the World General Guidelines to Safeguard Documentary Heritage, Rev. ed., UNESCO, http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0012/001256/125637e.pdf (viewed 22 November 2004).

'Education gets £1m from JISC for digital preservation and asset management' (2004) Public Technology.net, October, http://www.publictechnology.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=1976&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0 (viewed 22 November 2004).

Filstrup, E C (2004) The USAID-Iraq HEAD-Stony Brook University Program in Archaeology and Environmental Health Libraries Assessment: Baghdad Visit, 17-22 December 2003. Posted on Iraq crisis listserv by CE Jones, 8 January 2004, with subject: 'Baghdad Libraries Assessment: Baghdad Visit, 17-22 December 2003', https://listhost.uchicago.edu/pipermail/iraqcrisis/2004-January/000498.html (viewed 22 November 2004).

Harvey, R (2003) 'UNESCO's Memory of the World Programme and Australia's Lost and Missing Documentary Heritage' Australian Library Journal 52(2): 135-148.

Harvey, R and Howell, A (2004) 'Preserving the memory of Australia', ALIA 2004 Biennial Conference: Challenging Ideas, Gold Coast, Queensland, 21-24 September 2004, http://conferences.alia.org.au/alia2004/pdfs/harvey.r.paper.pdf (viewed 22 November 2004).

Harvey, R and Lloyd, A (2003a) Australia's Lost and Missing Documentary Heritage: Report, 30 April 2003, http://www.amw.org.au/rlmh/reports/rep_0304.pdf (viewed 25 January 2005).

Harvey, R and Lloyd, A (2003b) 'Australia's Lost and Missing Heritage' inCite, (June) 24: 13, http://www.alia.org.au/publishing/incite/2003/06/documentary.heritage.html (viewed 22 November 2004).

National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (2000) Funding Legislation for the NDIIPP, http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/index.php?nav=1&subnav=4 (viewed 22 November 2004).

Raven, J, (ed.) (2004) Lost Libraries: The destruction of great book collections since antiquity, Palgrave Macmillan.

Russell, R (2001) Significance: A guide to assessing the significance of cultural heritage objects and collections, Heritage Collections Council, Canberra, http://sector.amol.org.au/publications_archive/collections_management/significance (viewed 19 October 2004).

Russell, J (2004) Iraq National Archives: Water-damaged MSS. Posting to Iraqcrisis listserv, 28 January 2004, https://listhost.uchicago.edu/pipermail/iraqcrisis/ 2004-January/000525.html (viewed 22 November 2004).

Sassoon, J (2000) 'Chasing phantoms in the archives: the Australia House Photograph Collection' Archivaria 52:117-124.

Walker, R, Cytowicz, B, Martin, J and Evans, J (2001) Directory of Archives in Australia, Rev. ed., Australian Society of Archivists, http://www.archivists.org.au/directory/asa_dir.htm (viewed 22 November 2004).

Biographical information

Anne Lloyd joined the School of Information Studies at Charles Sturt University after professional experience in TAFE NSW. Her research interests are information literacy in workplace contexts and in embodied learning, information affordance and communities of practice. Anne's PhD thesis is on the nature, role and manifestation of information literacy in fire fighters' workplaces.

Damian Lodge is a lecturer and PhD candidate in the School of Information Studies, Charles Sturt University, and associate director of the Centre for Information Studies. His research interests lie in lost and missing documentary heritage, particularly in relation to corporate and government records, and in capitalising on technology to improve library services.

Ross Harvey is professor of Library and Information Management at Charles Sturt University's School of Information Studies. His current research projects include preservation of digital materials and the implications for library and archives practice, the history of nineteenth-century New Zealand newspapers, and Australia's lost and missing documentary heritage.