Preserving Tasmania’s cultural heritage
Preserving our cultural heritage is essential to ensure that present and future generations are able to understand and appreciate our history, our contemporary society and our sense of identity.
Within the department, the State Library of Tasmania and the Archives Office collect, preserve and showcase items of Tasmania’s cultural heritage. This will ensure that items we value from our past and wish to pass on to future generations will be conserved. The State Library collects and preserves items of published documentary heritage including books, images, maps, documents, recordings and digital files. It also holds extensive collections of artworks including paintings, furniture, china, glass and silver, as well as objects of historical significance. The Archives Office maintains the state’s archives by preserving records from government and non-government organisations. These records include documents, photographs, architectural drawings, maps, films and videos.
The touring National Treasures from Australia’s Great Libraries exhibition demonstrated how valuable and fascinating the preservation of our cultural history can be. Presented by the State Library on the Tasmanian leg of the tour, the exhibition presented more than 170 extraordinary items that have shaped our nation. Items displayed included Captain Cook’s Endeavour Journal, Ned Kelly’s helmet and Don Bradman’s favourite bat.
Ensuring elements of Tasmania’s history are preserved forever, this year the records of over 75,000 Tasmanian convicts from the state’s archives were accepted for inclusion in the Australian Memory of the World Register. Maintained by UNESCO1, this register seeks to protect and promote material from significant events in our history. These records will now be nominated for inclusion in the International Memory of the World Register.
To support work in interpreting our cultural heritage, each year the State Library provides fellowships for research into the library’s Heritage Collections. Five State Library Fellowships were awarded in 2005 and four in 2006. These will support our understanding of items in the collections and provide greater access to them.
The State Library and the Archives Office work to both preserve their holdings and make them accessible to the public. To prevent damage to originals, techniques such as microfilming, and increasingly, digitisation are used. A range of items previously stored in superseded technologies have also been converted to formats that will ensure permanent accessibility. The Archives Office has developed a working ‘technological museum’ of projecting and playing equipment from the early 1900s to view original video footage.
Where possible digitised images and documents are published on the web. The State Library’s Tasmanian Images website stores images of paintings, prints, drawings, photographs and posters. Similar work has been undertaken to digitise and publish sheet music, and work commenced to digitise books and maps. The Archives Office also publishes digitised photographs and documents on the web and has databases to support easy access to the state’s archives.
The important work of the State Library and Archives Office in preserving our cultural heritage supports the achievement of Tasmania Together Benchmarks 21.6.2 and 21.6.3.
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