Call to service: The Register of Australian Accountants for National Service 1940–1944

PurposeThe paper explores the creation in Australia of the Register of Accountants for National Service. Established at the outset of the Second World War, the Register operated for four years from June 1940 providing voluntary, non-remunerated, part-time and after-hours services to a highly stressed and seriously stretched federal government bureaucracy by members of the main Australian professional accounting bodies. Departments of the Navy, Army, Air Force, Supply and Development and Munitions were the largest consumers of the services offered.Design/methodology/approachThe study of the Register relies mainly on an extensive archive of war-time documentation from the Federal Government and various accounting professional institutes which has survived, predominantly in the National Archives of Australia. The resource is particularly rich in material covering the complex negotiation processes that brought the Register into operation together with documentation recording and reporting the work of the Register. The themes of professionalization, institutional legitimacy, volunteerism and patriotism are all invoked to explain the presence of the Register in the machinery of government that was assembled to deliver the ultimately successful war effort. Created by the principal professional accounting institutes, the Register attests to the commitment of their members to the war effort and, thereby, the importance of the profession to Australian society.FindingsThe perilous situation of Australia at a time of war provided a compelling incentive for the accounting profession to organise itself in an efficient and highly effective manner to assist with the war effort. The disparate and somewhat fractured accounting profession at the time was able to work together in a structured, cohesive and disciplined manner to provide voluntary services when called upon. To deliver the voluntary services promised, a purpose-built set of institutional arrangements was put in place. An extensive inventory of the potential services that could be provided by members of the main professional accounting bodies was conducted to facilitate the smooth matching of government needs with services available.Research limitations/implicationsDiscussion focusses only on Australia where the Register was unique. No other examples have been discovered where a profession has self-mobilised to serve a nation in a time of war. A further limitation is that the activities reported are restricted to self-reporting by the Register and a small loose collection of documents prepared by the Department of the Navy.Originality/valueThe uniqueness of the Register is the core of the originality and value of this study. How and why it came into being and the method by which it completed the “task” assigned to it stand as testament to a profession strategically placed to contribute in a substantive manner to the war effort at minimal cost to the nation.

Sport and Defection From Romania During the Cold War

During the Cold War in Eastern Europe, sport and politics became increasingly intertwined and complicated as the communist states, which strictly controlled the movement of its athletes, allowed athletes to travel abroad for competition, consequently opening opportunities for defection. In search of a better life, many athletes knowingly put themselves and their families at great risk, seeking opportunities to defect to other countries once outside their national borders. The purpose of this study is to analyze how the communist state in Romania acted to stop the defection of athletes from Romania, focusing on two defection situations which occurred at different points during the Cold War, one in 1956 and the second in 1981. Historical data for this study were retrieved from the National Council for the Study of Securitate Archives (CNSAS) in Romania, the archives at the Lausanne Olympic Museum in Switzerland, and the online archives from the National Archives of Australia (NAA).

From DP Camps to the “Green Continent”

This review focuses on a monograph written by Jayne Persian, lecturer at the University of Southern Queensland (Australia). The work is the first complex study devoted to the adaptation of former “displaced persons” (more particularly, émigrés from the Soviet Union) in Australia between the 1940s and 1960s. The work refers to an extensive complex of documents from the National Archives of Australia, the National Archives (United Kingdom), the Noel Butlin Archives Centre, Australian National University, and interviews with former “displaced persons” residing in Australia. The study is very important because it provides new information on the second wave of Soviet emigration, which is seldom examined by contemporary Russian scholars. Persian demonstrates that political factors played an important role in how the Australian government granted immigration permission. Quite frequently, Australia preferred people who shared anti-communist positions. Therefore, many former collaborators of the World War II era came to Australia; this hindered cooperation between the USSR and Australia. Persian shows that “new Australians” had difficulty integrating into society. The government tried to assimilate them, which pushed the immigrants to seek isolation in their communities. This book helps us understand the controversial character of the state policy of historical memory, a problem that is also very important for contemporary Russia.

Reimagining the Archival Control Model of the National Archives of Australia for the Digital Age

The University of Houston Libraries previously had no data surrounding the environmental sustainability of its digital preservation program. We set out to gather this data and package it in a way that can be communicated easily to stakeholders such as Libraries administration. Additionally, we explore ways that the digital preservation program could become more environmentally sustainable in the future, and we provide actionable recommendations that other digital preservationists can quickly and easily implement to reduce the carbon footprint of their organization's digital preservation program.

Digitization for Everybody (Dig4E)

In the 1960's Peter J Scott and colleagues at the now National Archives of Australia developed a new way of documenting records known as the Australian 'Series' System. Adopted by public records institutions in Australia and New Zealand, and selectively around the world, this approach forms the basis of the National Archives Commonwealth Record Series (CRS) system. In 2018 following views expressed that digital records pose a serious challenge to traditional ways of contextualization it was decided to review the CRS system in this respect. This paper looks at the process of that review and the eventual development of an enhanced model merging concepts from PREMIS with the CRS to enable a more flexible approach of documenting records in all forms.

Produtores/usuários e profissionais de arquivo: colaboração para organização da informação – o caso do Tribunal de Contas do Estado de Minas Gerais | Producers/users and archival professionals: collaboration for information organization – the case of the Tribunal de Contas do Estado de Minas Gerais

RESUMO O propósito deste artigo é relatar a experiência do Tribunal de Contas do Estado de Minas Gerais, por intermédio da Coordenadoria de Arquivo Geral e do Grupo Permanente de Avaliação de Documentos (GPAD), na elaboração de seu Plano de Classificação de Documentos de Arquivo, referente às suas atividades meio e fim. Foi utilizada a metodologia ISO 15.489-1, detalhada pelo Arquivo Nacional da Austrália, que prevê a criação de equipe multidisciplinar para a execução dos trabalhos. Abordamos neste artigo as adaptações necessárias à formação da equipe diante da realidade da instituição e de seus servidores e a relação de cooperação e troca de conhecimento entre os profissionais de informação e os servidores especialistas das áreas do Tribunal de Contas. Tal cooperação redundou na abertura de um canal de diálogo entre os envolvidos, possibilitando o entendimento sobre as necessidades dos produtores/usuários de informação e dos profissionais responsáveis pelo seu tratamento.Palavras-chave: Documentos de Arquivo; Plano de Classificação; Profissional de informação; Usuários; Recuperação da Informação.ABSTRACT The purpose of this article is to report the experience of the Tribunal de Contas do Estado de Minas Gerais, through Coordenadoria de Arquivo Geral and the Permanent Records Evaluation Group, in the elaboration of its Filling Plan, including core and common functions. To achieve it, it was used the ISO 15.489-1 methodology, detailed by the National Archives of Australia, which forecasts the creation of multidisciplinary team to execute the tasks. In this article we adress the needed changes to train the team in the face of the reality of the institution and its servants and the relationship of cooperation and exchange of knowledge between the information professionals and the expert servers in the areas of the Tribunal de Contas. Such cooperation has resulted in the opening of a dialogue channel among those involved, that made it possible to understand the needs of the producers / users of information and the responsible professionals for its treatment.Keywords: Archival Records; Filing Plan; Information Professional; Users; Information Retrieval.

Pioneering flying: The vision and the failure of Australasian Aerial Transport, 1919–20

The early post-World War I period saw a dramatic increase in aviation activity in Australia. Using material from the National Archives of Australia, and from newspapers and journals, the development and significance of Australasian Aerial Transport is documented in the context of early post-World War I era progress of commercial aviation in Australia. Australasian Aerial Transport was one of these nascent aviation ventures and was the first in Australia to have planned scheduled passenger air services between the country’s major cities. This paper notes the visionary and speculative elements of Australasian Aerial Transport. The company never actually operated a single commercial flight, but the value of that experience is great and has been poorly documented.

Script of Louis XI

The script of Louis XI used as the basis for this edition is the only known surviving version, a typescript on lined foolscap held in the National Archives of Australia, Canberra, in the Copyright Applications Series CRS A1336/1 item 14,222. It appears to have been typed from an earlier script that has not survived — probably a much-amended manuscript given numerous transcription errors, and was not subsequently corrected. As a consequence, it retains traces of that earlier version. Its title, typed in caps at the top of each page, is ‘SHELL SHOCK’, but on the first page this has been crossed through and ‘Louis XI’ written in heavy black ink, followed by ‘written and produced by GP Hanna at Cremorne Theatre Brisbane/1924’.