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Getting Started

Recording and documenting history, whether your own or a community, takes many resources. To begin with, it is best if you have a computer, printer, scanner and digital camera. Current trends and practices are making collecting information almost totally electronic. Digital cameras allow the photographing of objects to occur instantaneously and the computer is an excellent storage facility of information that can be shared. Recording equipment, such as a microcassette recorder with dictaphone capability, is also a very useful item to have and is a much more efficient means to record interviews and provides a more accurate account of what was said. In addition to this equipment, consumable items such as paper for printing out copies of documents or photograhs and CDs to store images and to back up your computer files are an ongoing cost, as is archival storage materials. All in all, it takes time and money to sustain a collection.

Before you start your project determine what is going to be your collection policy. That is, what are you going to collect? Then survey what is currently held to ensure that you are not duplicating what has already been collected. Always start with the elderly first and always catalogue photographs, objects etc with names, dates etc because it is always harder to go back and get the information. Whether these items are to be donated or to be copied should be left up to the individual. Custodians of this information must be prepared to preserve it. Custodians have a moral obligation to protect images being abused by stereotypes, so access must be controlled. Forms therefore must be prepared for authorisation of use, copyright and access. Names and addresses of donors should not be revealed as this would allow people to go directly to the donors and the risk of misrepresenting the donors is very real. If you are an organisation, it should be essentially a community-based one to give your collection credibility and it should serve the community and schools on immigration and socialisation. Try to have a collaborative agreement with main stream repositories such as libraries or museums where copies can be deposited. These comments are drawn from personal experiences by organisations and individuals who are collecting and documenting migrant history.

There is also a large amount of information available on the internet and a good place to start is on the National Library of Australia (NLA) website. The NLA has produced two starter kits: 'Preserving Australia's Multicultural Documentary Heritage-A Starter Kit' and 'Preserving Australia's Documentary Heritage-A Starter Kit for Community Groups'. These kits provide fact sheets on all the points listed above and more. The Migration Hertiage Cente NSW also provides some useful information on as well as Connections Australia Network. See links below

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