Documenting Social Change in Australia: A List of Archives at your Fingertips

Introduction

A list of mainly electronic archives in Australia that have documented social change. This is a live list. If you know of archive to add please let us know by filling in our contact form.

“It is essential to seize the power of archives and use it to hold institutional and government leaders accountable. All aspects of society should be documented, not simply those where power has traditionally resided.”
– Randall Jimerson

A – Z List

This list is organised alphabetically. This is a live list. If you know of archive to add please let us know by filling in our contact form. 

Professor Gary Foley with content for the Aboriginal History Archive © Victoria University

Aboriginal History Archive – Victoria University

Website: http://vuir.vu.edu.au/view/subjects/foley.html
About: The Aboriginal History Archive is held at Victoria University and is based around content collected for over 50 years from Professor Gary Foley. Victoria University is “committed to an indigenous research agenda of pursuing social justice outcomes through research within a framework of decolonisation. Digitisation of the collection started in 2017.
Article: Aboriginal History Archive goes digital
Platform: Research Repository – Victoria University
Tags: Movements_Campaigns – Racism – Racial justice, Aboriginal Australians

The AHA offers the material upon which the dominant version of post-invasion Australian history can be challenged, reappraised and rewritten. It contains the documentation not only of exploitation, repression and suffering, but also, more importantly, of Aboriginal struggle, confidence, pride and innovation.

Dr Edwina Howell, Chief Investigator of the Australian History Archive.

Australian Gay and Lesbian Archives

Website: https://alga.org.au/
About: The Australian Lesbian and Gay Archives is the biggest repository of historical materials about LGBTIQ experience in Australia. The Archives was established in 1978. It is a volunteer, community-based organisation.
Platform: Website
Tags: Movements_Campaigns – Gay rights_LGBTQIA

Australian Living Peace Museum

Website: http://www.livingpeacemuseum.org.au/s/alpm/page/home
About: The Museum aims to foster a culture of peace reflecting the multidisciplinary nature of peace efforts made personally by individuals and by organisations past and present. It does so in accord with a range of local, national and international contexts relating to disarmament, human rights, ecology, reconciliation (including Indigenous responses to colonisation), education and the growth of international humanitarian law. The Australian Living Peace Museum is an online museum presenting Australian narratives of peace-making, non-violent social change and alternative forms of resistance to war and violence. The ALPM is committed to sound scholarship, a participatory framework and community-oriented perspectives.
Platform: Omeka

Australian Museum of Squatting

Website: http://www.australianmuseumofsquatting.org/
About: This website is all about documenting and celebrating the lives, cultures and places squatters have transformed.
Platform: WordPress
Tags: Squatters

Australian Trade Union Archives

Website: http://www.atua.org.au/atua.htm
About: Australian Trade Union Archives (ATUA) is a gateway for researchers and scholars of labour history, linking together historical detail, archival resources, published material and information about Australian industrial organisations, mainly including trade unions and also employer bodies.
Platform: Website
Tags: Movements_Campaigns, Activism, Movements_Campaigns –  Labor_Worker’s rights, Unions

KareKarrme

Website: https://karekarrme.au/collection/
About: This collection is a place for the safe-keeping of materials related to the history of uranium mining in Kakadu National Park. It contains documents, photographs, newspaper clippings, videos, sound, objects and artefacts related to the resistance to unwanted uranium mining developments, and celebration of the end of mining in this heritage listed site. This is a project is an Australian Conservation Foundation and Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation collaboration.
Platform: Website
Tags: Movements_Campaigns – Anti-uranium mining

Lesbian and Gay Solidarity and Gay Solidarity Group Newsletter Archive

Website: https://web.archive.org/web/20220419144008/http://www.josken.net/archive.htm
About: The newsletter of the Lesbian and Gay Solidarity and Gay Solidarity Group from 1978 until 2010.
Platform: Website
Tags: Movements_Campaigns – Gay rights_LGBTQIA, Activism

Radical Times Archive – Documentaries

Website: http://radicaltimes.info/
About: An audio-visual archival resource focusing on radical activism around Australia, particularly during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s (although resources are not restricted exclusively to this time period).
The archive recovers “lost” and rare independent Australian documentaries (also vérité footage of historical significance) in order to preserve these films, videos and audio for posterity before they reach end of life and disappear permanently.
The archive is presented in twelve (12) sections as follows:

• Brisbane (1964-1975), Queensland, Australia
• Vietnam War Protests
• Brisbane (1976 to present), Queensland, Australia
• Brisbane Music Scene, Radical Theatre
• 1971 Anti-Apartheid (Springbok) Protests, Queensland, Australia
• Indigenous Australia
• 50 Years of Direct Action 1967 – 2017, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
• Victoria and New South Wales, Australia
• International
• Rock Against Racism
• Radio Station 4ZZZ-FM, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
• Nimbin Aquarius Festival, May 12 to 21, 1973

Platform: Website
Tags: Movements_Campaigns, Activism

Reason in Revolt

Website: http://www.reasoninrevolt.net.au/index.html
About: Reason in Revolt brings together primary source documents of Australian radicalism as a readily accessible digitised resource. By ‘radical’ we refer to those who aimed to make society more equal and to emancipate the exploited or oppressed.
The Reason in Revolt website is an expanding record of the movements, institutions, venues and publications through which radicals sought to influence Australian society. Reason in Revolt is sustained through a partnership with the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History, Melbourne Branch.
Platform: Website
Tags: Movements_Campaigns, Activism

Wendy Lowenstein Oral Histories

Website: https://www.wendylowenstein.com/
About: Wendy Lowenstein recorded interviews with over 800 everyday people from all around Australia, who talked about their struggles to obtain better working and living conditions over a period of 40 years from 1965. The Lowenstein Family Collection of over 900 hours of interviews is available for research purposes. These interviews are listed by the interview subject and names of interviewees can be searched on subject, place and industry.

• 1930s Depression collection: 108hours of interviews by Wendy Lowenstein
• Outback Australia 1969 Working People: 126.5 hours
• Melbourne Waterside Workers: Lowenstein & Hills Interviews; 60 hours
• “The Left” in the Arts and Community: 125 hours  interviews by Wendy Lowenstein
• Wonthaggi Miners Collection: 50 hours of interviews by Wendy Lowenstein
• Robe River Industrial Dispute W.A. 1986: Wendy Lowenstein Interviews; 80 interviews
• Work Changes 1990’s  over 80 hours of interviews by Wendy Lowenstein

Platform: Website
Tags: Movements_Campaigns, Activism, Movements_Campaigns – Labor_Worker’s rights

Women’s Web – Women’s stories, Women’s actions

Website: http://www.womensweb.com.au/
About: A secular feminist website established to give women a medium to promote the women’s movement, and to document the lives and actions of social justice and environmental activists from Victoria, Australia. It includes interviews and stories regarding activism as well as books which bring together quotes, articles and other primary source materials chronicling the long history of women’s leadership and involvement in campaigns for equality, social justice and peace.
Platform: Website
Tags: Movements_Campaigns – Women’s rights, Movenments_Campaigns – Women’s rights – Victoria, Melbourne

Other Archives Around the World

• Radical online collections and archives
  Comprehensive A – Z list organised by country and topic.
• Digital Transgender Archive
  The purpose of the Digital Transgender Archive (DTA) is to increase the accessibility of transgender history by providing an online hub for digitized historical materials, born-digital materials, and information on archival holdings throughout the world.
• The Freedom Archives
  The Freedom Archives contains over 12,000 hours of audio and video recordings which date from the late-1960s to the mid-90s and chronicle the progressive history of the Bay Area, the United States, and international movements.
• The Centro Documentazione Pistoia, Italy
  An archive established in the 1970s by participants in Italian radical social movements. Now housed in a public library not far from Florence, its collection holds hundreds of journals, leaflets, books and posters gathered over the last fifty years, as well as producing its own journal and book series.A
• Archivo Autonomia, Italy
  An immense online archive for the Italian autonomist movement of the 1970s.
• Libcom.org
  Libcom.org is an online platform featuring a variety of libertarian communist essays, blog posts, and archives, primarily in English.

Explore Further

• Radical Collections Re-examining the roots of collections, practices and information professions, 2018, Senate House Book (Book) – Creative Commons 
  Do archivists ‘curate’ history? And to what extent are our librarians the gatekeepers of knowledge? Libraries and archives have a long and rich history of compiling ‘radical collections’- from Klanwatch Project in the States to the R. D. Laing Archive in Glasgow, but a re-examination of the information professions and all aspects of managing those collections is long overdue. This new book shines a light on pressing topical issues within library and information services (LIS)- to encompass selection, appraisal and accession, through to organisation and classification, and including promotion and use. Will libraries survive as victims of neoliberal marketization? Do we have a responsibility to collect and document ‘white hate’ in the era of Trump? And how can a predominantly white (96.7%) LIS workforce effectively collect and tell POC histories?
• Power to the People: Counterculture, Social Movements, and the Alternative Press, Nineteenth to Twenty-First Century, a new digital archive by Gale Cengage brings together materials that document the movements, events, individuals and grassroots organizations that worked to effect change in cultures and societies around the world. This unique collection offers a comprehensive view of the struggles and triumphs of activism over time, enabling users to make key connections and comparisons between past movements and the challenges humanity faces today.
• Get archiving! Archivist Activist Backpacks, Hackathons and Other Ideas