2 June, 2010
Ladies
and gentlemen, I am really delighted to join you here this evening at our
marvellous National Library:
·
so thoroughly
Australian, yet world class in every respect;
·
your people,
·
your expertise
·
and your
standards in collection, access and preservation.
And
I’m especially pleased to be here to celebrate a decade of the Australian
Women’s Archives Project:
·
a truly important
living and growing body of work established and developed by the National
Foundation for Australian Women, in partnership with The University of
Melbourne;
·
a vital resource
for the enhancement of Australia’s
·
cultural,
·
social,
·
intellectual,
·
political,
·
and historical
understanding.
Tonight,
we honour the efforts of
o exceptional researchers,
o superb technicians,
o and courageous and generous donors of time and
treasures –
the
individuals who have through meticulous record,
·
professed the
offerings and achievements of Australian women.
They
have:
·
thoughtfully and
lovingly retrieved women’s history from silence and obscurity,
·
so that we may
set about to reassemble and reinterpret our collective past.
I
was privileged to observe one of our country’s finest examples of archival
management and curatorship when I was Principal of The Women’s College within
the University of Sydney.
There
is a profound sense there of the College’s place and part:
·
in Australia’s
history over the last nearly 120 years,
·
in nurturing some
of our most esteemed and prominent women:
-
women of
extraordinary intellect and facility
-
at the frontier
of their disciplines
-
forging models of
women’s leadership.
I
so admired the work of Dr Rosemary Annable:
·
her contribution
to the preservation of the history of the College, its staff and students
·
and her
leadership and editorship of the College’s outstanding Biographical Register
Project
·
she is, in my
mind, the genuine blue stocking article!
And
I would relish taking time out to visit the archives:
·
they were so
beautifully timbered and fitted out,
·
the room at
optimum temperature
·
for the precious
records stored in boxes, shelves, drawers and tissue;
·
I would utterly
lose myself down there, unable to resist the lure of the trail
·
I would hold our
sisters’ stories – the lives of my heroines – in my grateful, shaking hands,
·
then I’d suddenly
look up and wonder how many hours had passed, and panic that I’d been locked in
for the night!
These
are wonderful memories for me, but more importantly, they shine a light on
o quiet,
o patient,
o rigorous,
o life-affirming
o and nation-building endeavours.
Not
long ago I was reading the papers from the 50th anniversary
celebration of the Sophia Smith Collection at the Smith College, Massachusetts.[1]
I’ve
always wanted to visit Smith College, and I guess that’s largely because of how
much I have admired the writing and work of Australian-American author, Jill
Kerr-Conway, who was Smith’s first woman president.
I
quoted her only last week when I was at the University of Sydney to describe
how I felt about my time at the Women’s College:
…the places and people that give our lives an
aura of magic potential.[2]
And,
remarkably, in the same week, I met a group of Smith College academics who were
out here:
·
for an
international women and sport conference,
·
and a
meeting at the Women’s College!
There’s
a lot of wonderful serendipity in this role.
It’s
what I love most about it.
The
threads you can draw together to create whole new fabrics.
I
digress though.
Back
to Smith – in 1942, the College committed itself to the preservation of the
record of women’s lives and work.
There
were some pearls offered on the 50th birthday of the Sophia Smith
collection that I’d like to share with you here.
They
remind me of the universal bonds of respect and compassion among women across
generations and borders:
·
how we cherish
one another’s achievements and what we have done to progress the lives of women
everywhere;
·
our understanding
of the debilitating consequences of silencing women’s public and professional
lives
·
and our capacity
to turn that around, constructively and triumphantly.
In
the 1930s when feminist historian, Mary Beard, led the effort to establish a
World Center for Women’s Archives, she displayed marvellous creative talents:-
·
in cajoling
donors and sponsors,
·
and excavating,
·
documenting,
·
identifying
·
and cataloguing
women’s history.
She
conceived of the project not as antiquarian or purely curatorial but as:
·
a political
venture,
·
a meeting place
for women of many minds,
·
the source of an
educational revolution,
·
and the site from
which women’s public protests and social leadership might emanate.
This
is what she said:
Papers. Records. These we must have.
Without documents, no history.
Without history, no memory.
Without memory, no greatness.
Without greatness, no development among
women.[3]
Twenty
years later, when talking to an old friend about her life’s project, Beard put
it this way:
What I’ve been trying to do for years is
to awaken women to the reality of their historic power…
to incite women to realise who and what
they have been, with a view to their realising better who they are and what
they are now doing.[4]
Friends,
we owe a debt to Mary Beard and to the many, many women worldwide who have
swept up the baton since – and the women (and men) of the Australian Women’s
Archives Project.
I
can’t find better words than those of Sarah Pritchard, former Director of Smith
College Libraries:
·
you have affirmed
women’s agency in creating her own history
·
you have shown us
that history looks different through women’s eyes, and that no woman’s life is
a single story
·
you have taught
us about the critical role of archives – and documents – how we must always be
able to go back to the original sources and establish new links and
interpretations
·
and you have
allowed women to toot our own horns![5]
Happy
10th birthday Australian Women’s Archives Project!
You’re
a fledgling, a debutante:
·
knowing and savvy
for your tender years
·
with centuries to
catch up on and never a departure date.
Ursula
Le Guin wrote[6]:
When you find the hidden catch
In the secret drawer
Behind the false panel
Inside the concealed compartment
In the desk in the attic
Of the house in the dark forest
And press the spring firmly
A door flies open to reveal
A bundle of old letters
And in one of them
Is a map
Of the forest
That you drew yourself
Before you ever went there.
Thank
you, my friends, for leading us to what has always been, but never fully known.
