2023 at the Archives
2023 was another busy year at the Monash University Archives, with many accessions, projects and other activities. Read on to find out what we got up to last year.
Accessions
In 2023 we had 42 accessions covering a wide range of material. Some of the most significant accessions of 2023 were:
Faculties of Arts and Law
In 2023 we began working with faculties to assess hardcopy legacy records located around the University. We provided disposal advice and transferred any permanent records to the Archives. From the Faculty of Law we received a number of publications, building plans and drawings, and thirty VHS tapes which have been digitised and will be uploaded to our YouTube channel in early 2024. From the Faculty of Arts we received photographs and negatives, and records related to the faculty, the Menzies building and the Alexander Theatre.
In February we received six boxes of records from Emeritus Professor Graeme Crawford Smith (Psychological Medicine) following his death at the beginning of the year. These records include correspondence, personal papers, and unpublished papers.
We received a number of records from palaeontologist, Emeritus Professor Pat Vickers-Rich to add to our existing collection of her papers. These include records related to the Monash Science Centre/PrimeSci of which she was the founder, records related to the UNESCO International Geoscience Programme, and exhibition records for Wildlife of Gondwana, Continent of Koalas, and Dinosaurs: Dawn to Extinction.
Margaret Plant
We received 27 boxes of records from Emeritus Professor Margaret Plant (Professor of Visual Arts 1982-1996). The records include personal papers, correspondence and artists’ files.
Glass plate negatives
December saw us receiving an unexpected but very exciting accession in the form of eleven glass plate negatives, donated by Vice-Provost (Academic Affairs), Matthew Gillespie. More information about these items will be shared during 2024, so stay tuned!
Other activities
As well as all the accessions, we were busy with a range of other projects and activities. These include:
AV digitisation
We continued our work digitising our audio-visual materials. In January we had 65 film reels returned after digitisation and in September 124 Umatic tapes were digitised. Twenty-five digitised videos were uploaded to our YouTube channel with more to come in 2024.
Council minutes digitisation
The digitisation of the Council minutes from 2000-2010 was completed.
Social media and communications
In 2023 we made 52 posts to our social media accounts and grew our Instagram audience by 260 followers. Content from the Archives will continue to be shared on our social media accounts so make sure to follow! We also started producing monthly articles for the internal Monash staff newsletter, and hope to make these publicly available on our website sometime in 2024.
Publications
A particularly large project undertaken in 2023 involved working through a collection of over 2,000 University publications located separately to our main collection. At the completion of this project, approximately 1,100 University publications were formally added to our collection.
2024 is already shaping up to be another busy year for our team with many more exciting projects in the works! We look forward to sharing these as the year progresses.