Preserve or Perish

Gail Davis, Senior Archivist at State Records NSW, stepped in at the last minute to present the seminar  Managing Local Collections  to our members and guests yesterday.

Gail Davis at Ku-ring-gai

We thank State Records and Gail for her fact-filled presentation and the takeaway of detailed handouts . Although she had never given this presentation before and had not had an opportunity to view the slides before facing our group Gail, a long-time employee of State Records,  did an amazing job in sharing their contents with us. Gail made what had the potential to be a dry subject most interesting by illustrating her talk with stories and examples from her time at State Records.

The topics Gail covered in two and a half hours were:

Archival collection management systems
Arranging and describing your collection
Collection policies, donor forms and accessioning
Conservation and preservation strategies
Developing an access policy
So you want to digitise your collection
Storage: avoiding the pitfalls

This content has provided much food for thought for society representatives at the seminar. As well as members from our Society your blogger chatted with members of societies from Manly-Warringah, Willoughby and Wyong and with staff members from the neighbouring Ku-ring-gai Library.

Ku-ring-gai Library staff

Happy attendees