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Macquarie University ResearchOnline This is the published version of: Griffen-Foley, Bridget. (2002). Confessions of a library user part 2. LASIE, Vol. 33, No. 1, p. 17-24. Access to the published version: http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/77226/20071011-0000/www.sl.nsw.gov.au/lasie/aug02/aug02.pdf Copyright: Version archived for private and non-commercial use with the permission of the author/s. People who come to work in research libraries are involved in exchanges of information and ideas. In this presentation I address how authors and academics move between research libraries to compile and assess the original material that forms the basis of major works of scholarship, particularly in the humanities. I look at how researchers disseminate their findings to the wider community, not just in the form of books but in articles, lectures and documentaries. By referring to my own work on the Packer media dynasty, I consider how libraries such as the State Library of New South Wales can help compensate for yawning gaps in corporate archives; the role played by experienced, specialist librarians in the successful completion of projects; and the ways in which researchers themselves can contribute to research libraries. CONFESSIONS OF A LIBRARY USER PART 2 Dr Bridget Griffen-Foley Historian and Biographer Department of History University of Sydney It's a great pleasure to be here today, although Photographers obviously find it hard to make I must say I do feel like a rather poor academic writers – especially non-fiction writers! – look substitute for the best-selling author John interesting and glamorous, and during the Birmingham, who was originally scheduled to shoot John relayed some hilarious stories about speak in this spot. Actually, the last time I saw even more bizarre things he had been asked to John was in this very library, when we were do to promote his books. We survived the both sprawled out on large cushions in the photo-shoot, although I can't say I noticed a Shakespeare Room in the Mitchell wing. I spike in my book's sales in the weeks after the should explain: John, Mark Whitaker and I article appeared. had been selected to feature in a magazine article about young(ish) Australian non-fiction While this was probably my most surreal writers. The journalist who had proposed the experience here, I've been and done many article felt that non-fiction writers got rather things in the State Library over the years. less attention than young and sexy first-time When I was asked to speak here today, I tried novelists, and I was quite happy to go along to cast my mind back to my first contact with with this until I walked into the Shakespeare this library. I worked out that I had had my Room for a photo-shoot and saw the cushions first encounter with the library at a very young artfully arranged around the floor. age. When I was 3 years of age, my father was LASIE August 2002 17 taken to nearby Sydney Hospital after how most academics and postgraduate collapsing with a heart attack. I have only dim students, particularly in the humanities and memories of the hospital waiting room, but social sciences, and freelance historians and my clearest memory is of my mother, my twin independent scholars based in Sydney view the brother and I walking back to the family car library. The State Library services the parked in Macquarie Street. The day I am international, the national and the local thinking of was bitterly cold and blustery, and community, and it is as a local reader—as an my brother's beanie blew off and around the academic and author working in Sydney—that corner. We all chased the airborne beanie, I have been asked to speak here today. I will capturing our prey near the old Mitchell leave it to other participants in this colloquium Library steps. to consider the historical development of library and archival resources, the challenges of There are other childhood memories. As we new information technologies and the made weekly visits to the eastern suburbs to (undoubtedly vexed) questions of funding and visit relatives, we would come off the Cahill sponsorship. Expressway and drive past those steps. My mother would point to the library and tell my I specialise in Australian media and political brother and I that that was where we would history and biography. My Honours thesis, study when we went to university. Well, we did which was researched almost completely in this both go on to university, and by 1992 I was library, examined how the press portrayed the doing Honours in Modern History at Labor politician Dr H. V. Evatt (who some of Macquarie University. I became a regular at the you may know was for more than two decades State Library, often walking past the sculpture president of the library's board of trustees). I of the hog outside Sydney Hospital that had so subsequently wrote a PhD thesis and then a fascinated me as a child. Over the last decade book on the history of Australian I've conducted a great deal of research in the Consolidated Press, one of Australia's largest State Reference and the Mitchell libraries; and most influential, but little studied, media become a member of the Library Society; empires. Following the publication of The attended conferences and book launches here; House of Packer, I wrote the first full-scale organised my own conference in association biography of the company's co-founder, Sir with the excellent Rosemary Moon; met with Frank Packer, and I am now completing a new publishers, editors, colleagues and friends in the book on the relationship between Australia's café; gone to exhibitions; attended the Friday four major media companies and politicians afternoon meetings of the New South Wales and political parties. Working Party of the Australian Dictionary of Biography held upstairs; and, on one occasion, While ACP celebrates publications such as the visited and become lost in the stacks. Bulletin and the Australian Women's Weekly as Australian icons, there is no in-house archive In his biographical note for this colloquium, or Packer manuscript collection. When, as a John Birmingham referred to the State Library probably rather naive postgraduate student, I as his 'second home', and that is, of course, first considered writing a company history, I 18 LASIE August 2002 put in an ostensibly quite casual call to the Theodore's secretary, before they were lodged ACP library and was informed that the firm's in the National Library of Australia. records had been sent to the State Library. This Incidentally, when one of Theodore's came as something of a shock as I thought I daughters was considering writing a memoir had thoroughly searched all the electronic and and she rang ACP, she was also told that the card catalogues. Feeling that I must have firm's records were housed here! overlooked something very obvious, I excitedly bounced back into the library. At the end of a So while I would not have the luxury of frustrating day, various librarians and I working on an 'Australian Consolidated Press' concluded that all ACP had 'sent' to the State manuscript collection in the Mitchell Library, Library was a run of its principal newspaper the holdings of public and private (non-ACP) and magazine titles. repositories were obviously going to be crucial for a study of the Packer dynasty. Soon after The Packer family is well known for fiercely embarking on the project, I made my way into protecting its privacy, and when I wrote to the archives of the John Fairfax group, for Kerry Packer explaining my interest in the decades ACP's principal rival in Sydney. At history of ACP, his office politely declined to that time – 1993 – Fairfax employed a full- be involved with the project. Only recently, time archivist, and I discovered that the while going through a manuscript collection archives housed a great deal of material – that had just been established here, I came minute books, personnel files, wonderful across a letter written by Richard Walsh, an correspondence and just plain gossip – of ACP executive, in 1993. Lamenting a directive direct relevance to my project. It was here that, from Al Dunlap, the former chief executive still uncertain whether a history of ACP was officer and managing director of ACP, Walsh even viable, I experienced a frisson of wrote: excitement as I saw my first letter written by Frank Packer. I can't remember what the letter You know how much it saddens me that this place was about, but this was the first opportunity I lacks any real sense of history and refuses to had to at least see the Australian Women's archive its records. I guess that kind of incipient Weekly's original letterhead and see how Packer cultural vandalism reached its apotheosis in the signed his name. As my research continued, of Late Great Al's famous memo instructing senior course, I came across many other, more staff to destroy all records that were more than six important, letters written by Packer preserved months old. Fortunately few obeyed, which is in the Fairfax Archives, the Mitchell Library lucky for us legally apart from any other and other repositories around Australia and consideration. overseas. Early in my research I became very enthusiastic And while my work on the Packer dynasty about working on the papers of Frank Packer's presented particular challenges, there is a business partner, the former Labor politician broader problem with corporate archives.