Libraries, indigenous Australians and a developing protocols strategy for the library and information sector.

The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Protocols for Libraries, Archives and Information Services (hereafter the Protocols) were published in 1995 (1) in conjunction with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Library and Information Resource Network (ATSILIRN), the association for professionals who work in Indigenous library, archive and information services. In 2004, researchers from the University of Technology, Sydney, Library and Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning surveyed and interviewed professionals from organisations across Australia with a view to using the data to assist in a revision and updated version of the Protocols. (2) This chapter describes and discusses this research and its implications for firstly, a revision of the Protocols, and secondly, for the reinvigoration of a cross-sector strategy to carry Indigenous information issues progressively forward and more widely across the library and information sector (LIS).

The 1995 Protocols were a key outcome of both Indigenous and professional concem about the state of Indigenous relationships with libraries, archives and information services. In Australia, these relationships became a point of professional focus throughout the 1990s.

The concerns of Indigenous people (3) had been on the record for some time (4) and they were amplified in the 1990s as the profession accelerated its activity in response. In brief, Indigenous concerns included issues such as: historical exclusion from libraries; the offensive nature of much of the material about Indigenous people in library collections and archives; subject headings that described Indigenous peoples and cultures in ways that had little to do with how Indigenous peoples described themselves, and which demeaned Indigenous peoples and cultures; access issues for Indigenous peoples and materials; and general Indigenous service issues. (5)

A number of LIS professionals contributed to professional scholarship on some of these issues. (6) However, professional activity was also stimulated by or occurred in conjunction with other events. These included:

* recommendation no 53 of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody in 1991 (7)

* the establishment, also in 1991, of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation to promote a process of reconciliation between Indigenous Australians and the wider Australian community (8)

* resolutions addressing the documentary heritage of Indigenous people that emerged from the National Library of Australia project, 'Towards Federation 2001: Linking Australians and their heritage', which commenced in 1992 (9)

* the 1995 National Library of Australia's Biennial Round Table meetings on library and archive collections and services for Indigenous Australians (10)

* the formation of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Library and Information Resource Network (ATSILIRN) (11) and the Indigenous Issues Special Interest Group within the Australian Society of Archivists (ASA) (12)

* the 1995 development by the Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA) of policy for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and services, (13) the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Recruitment and Career Development Strategy, and endorsement of the Protocols as the profession's guide to appropriate practice in the area, and

* recommendations (nos 21-29; nos 38-39) of the 1997 Bringing Them Home Report that further enforced the need for improved access to Indigenous records (14) and the resultant funding of special projects at the National Library of Australia and the National Archives of Australia.

The focus that these events brought to the previously neglected area of Indigenous information issues provided the stimulus for a range of projects and activities across the sector, from national to local organisations, in archives and libraries, as well as other specialist collections such as museums. The Protocols were the primary guide available to assist individuals and organisations to establish appropriate practices.

LIS Responses

It is useful to draw attention to some examples of LIS activity gathered in the course of our research. These are but examples of shifts in LIS practice that have helped to constitute an information context more relevant to Indigenous Australian needs and interests; they do not represent a comprehensive account of all innovations in practice.

A large part of practical activity has focussed on identifying and providing better access to Indigenous materials--historical and cultural--that are held in collections across the nation. The National Library of Australia, for example, produced Mura Gadi, an online annotated guide to information relating to Indigenous Australians within the library's manuscript collection, oral history collection and pictures collection. It described, annotated and indexed previously unidentified Indigenous material within these collections, based on the Thesaurus, (15) to facilitate better access.

The National Archives of Australia (NAA) likewise produced guides to Indigenous records, to make them more accessible to Indigenous peoples. One guide, to give an example, is a name index that lists the names of Indigenous peoples identified in the records. The issues associated with setting conditions of access centre on facilitating Indigenous access to records that normally would not be open and conversely restricting sensitive records of a personal nature that might be open to access by others. Identifying material and setting access conditions for records is a major part of building guides and indexes for Indigenous records and requires extensive consultations with the appropriate Indigenous peoples and negotiations with the owners of records. The NAA has also developed memoranda of understanding (MOUs) with organisations in the states of Victoria, South Australia and the Northern Territory, to assist people in these states to access their records.

The Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS), which houses the largest collection of Australian Indigenous studies research materials in the world, has developed appropriate processes for handling and assisting Indigenous and researchers' access to these materials. Whilst these processes are continually being refined, many precede the 1990s. For example, what is now the Aboriginal Family History Unit, established as a recommendation of the Bringing Them Home Report in 1997, was preceded by the Aboriginal Biographical Index, which has been indexing Aboriginal and Torres Strait names in its collection since 1979 (now in excess of 50,000 entries).

AIATSIS leads on many issues and is a reference source for other institutions; the Protocols confirmed rather than guided their practice. As an organisation whose entire collection is devoted to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, cultures and languages, AIATSIS' LIS focus has been on managing access issues in regard to…