Journal of the Archives and Records

Association of New Zealand

October OBJECTS OF THE ASSOCIATION The objects of the Association shall be: i. To foster the care, preservation and proper use of archives and records, both public and private, and their effective administration. ii. To arouse public awareness of the importance of records and archives and in all matters affecting their preservation and use, and to co-operate or affiliate with any other bodies in New Zealand or elsewhere with like objects. iii. To promote the training of archivists, records keepers, curators, librarians and others by the dissemination of specialised knowledge and by encouraging the provision of adequate training in the administration and conservation of archives and records. iv. To encourage research into problems connected with the use, administration and conservation of archives and records and to promote the publication of the results of this research. v. To promote the standing of archives institutions. vi. To advise and support the establishment of archives services throughout New Zealand. vii. To publish a journal at least once a year and other publications in furtherance of these objects.

MEMBERSHIP Membership of the Association is open to any individual or institution interested in fostering the objects of the Association. Subscription rates are: Within New Zealand $45 (individuals) $75 (institutions) Two individuals living at the same joint address can take a joint membership $55; this entitles both to full voting rights at meetings, but only one copy of Archifacts. Overseas $75 (individuals) $95 (institutions) Applications to join the Association, membership renewals and correspondence on related matters should be addressed to: The Membership Secretary ARA Ν Ζ PO Box 11-553 Manners Street Wellington New Zealand ARCHIFACTS

Published by the Archives and Records Association of New Zealand

99 ARCHIFACTS

Editor: Brad Patterson

Editorial Committee: Russell Clarke David Green Gavin McLean Brad Patterson John Roberts

Reviews Editor: David Green

Archifacts is published twice-yearly, in April and October.

Articles and correspondence should be addressed to the Editor at: PO Box 11-553 Wellington

Intending contributors should obtain a style sheet from the Editorial Committee. Articles and reviews should be submitted both in hard copy and on disk.

Printed by McKenzie Thornton Cooper Ltd, Wellington.

©Copyright ARANZ 1999

ISSN 0303-7940 Contents

Editorial ν

Political The Future of National Archives: Statements Party Leaders State Their Positions 1

Articles Janice Chong Anecdote and Memory: The Cenotaph Database Imaging Project at Auckland War Memorial Museum 5

Alexander New Zealand Materials Held in Trapeznik Moscow's Archives 10

Bernard Makoare Kaitiakitanga i roto i ngà Whare Pukapuka: Appropriate Care for Maori Materials in Libraries and Archives 18

Michael Hoyle Metadata and Government Information Locator Services: Opportunities to Expand New Zealand's Knowledge and Technological Capabilities? 27

Comment J.O.C. Phillips Archives and Heritage 46

ARANZ/NZSG A Response to Dr Phillips 53 Joint Action Committee

Reviews Michael Bassett The State in New Zealand 1840-1984: Socialism Without Doctrines? (Brian Easton) 60

continued over page Reviews continued

Australian Society Archives and Reform: Preparing for of Archivists Inc Tomorrow. Proceedings of ASA Conference, Adelaide, 25-26July 1997. Place, Interface and Cyberspace: Archives at the Edge. Proceedings of ASA Conference, Fremantle, 6-8 August 1998. (David Colquhoun) 65

Gregory S. Developing and Maintaining Practical Hunter Archives: How-To-Do-It-Manuals for Librarians, No 71 (Pauline Porteous) 69

National Library Guidelines for Preservation of Australia Microfilming in Australia & New Zealand (David Adams) 71

Dianne Archives at the Millenium Vogt-O'Connor (Gavin McLean) 73 (ed)

David Green: An Appreciation This issue of Archifacts is the last for which David Green will act as Reviews Editor, he having decided to step down after 11 years, a period of service to the journal without parallel. David's reliable and efficient management of reviews and reviewers, together with his contributions to the deliberations of the Editorial Committee, have appreciably lessened the burdens on successive editors and helped to raise the profile of the journal. He will be difficult to replace. His colleagues on the Committee, together with Council, members, and no less the journal's wider readership, wish to place on record their appreciation of his efforts, and to extend to David, Philippa, and now Kate, their best wishes for the future. Editorial The Archives Case: Where to Now?

In a 'further judgement' in the case ARANZ and NZSG ν R.W. Blakeley and the Attorney-General, released in Wellington's High Court on 23 June 1999, Justice A.A.T. Ellis ruled that monies voted to National Archives by Parliament in 1997 had been illegally diverted to other departmental purposes by Internal Affairs' Chief Executive Roger Blakeley. It had been alleged that $300,000 had been removed from the Archives' depreciation fund and spent on Internal Affairs restructuring initiatives. Yet, while the judgement vindicated the plaintiffs' decision to launch legal proceedings, there was acute awareness that a number of key issues, issues perhaps even more critical than those relating to funding, remained unresolved. In an earlier judgement (31 July 1998), while expressing concern over the proposals, Justice Ellis had ruled that it was 'too early' to determine whether or not incorporation of the National Archives within Internal Affairs' new Heritage Group significantly affected the Chief Archivist's statutory sole responsibility for the 'custody, care, control and administration of all public archives'. Hence, in early July, upon the advice of counsel, the plaintiffs sought leave to have aspects of the case reheard in the Court of Appeal. Soon after, the Crown gave notice of its intention to cross- appeal Justice Ellis' June 1999 judgement. Official reaction to the judgement had been initially muted, but consternation followed realisation in higher government circles that it placed in question wider Crown financial transfers encompassing many millions of dollars. What has become known as 'the Archives Case' is now scheduled to come before the Court of Appeal on 1-2 November, Dr D.L. Matheson QC appearing for the stakeholder organisations and the Solicitor-General 0J. McGrath QC) for the Crown. Archives and recordkeeping have traditionally been low-profile professions. Practitioners have tended to just get on with their jobs, out of the public view, doing the best they can within the limited resources provided. The recent court hearings represent the culmination of five years of unprecedented publicity for archives-related issues in this country. Just a few years ago it would have been inconceivable that archives stories might regularly feature in national

ν press pages, be the subject of television programmes, be the focus of ongoing questioning in the House of Representatives, or that New Zealand archives matters would be central to professional debates in locations as far spaced as Brisbane and Sardinia. It would have been equally inconceivable that the probity of the Crown's stewardship of public archives and recordkeeping might be legally challenged. It would have been beyond belief that a Secretary for Internal Affairs, the official legislatively charged with 'general administration' of the Archives Act, could be found to have acted in contravention of the Public Finance Act.The determined attempts by officials to 'reform' National Archives, to force the institution to conform more closely to the revenue- generating commercial model favoured by bureaucratic ideologues and an influential (yet perhaps shrinking) group of politicians, has arguably, and perhaps ironically, done more to raise public archives-consciousness than decades of dedicated service to the community. This is not to argue that heightened public consciousness means that the principal issues in contention are necessarily widely understood. Indeed, it is highly likely that the details of the controversy have passed most New Zealanders by. That the contested restructurings have caused so much fuss doubtless remains a matter of surprise even to many individuals expressing an interest in, and support for, archives. There is superficial appeal in the case for National Archives having a heritage identity, as put by Internal Affairs Acting Heritage General Manager Jock Phillips in the present issue; at least until his case is subjected to informed scrutiny. It is even possible that some ARANZ and NZSG members have questioned why so much energy, so much in the way of organisational resources has been poured into the defence of a single custodial institution. The critical point, of course, is that National Archives is not just one among many such institutions. It is New Zealand's paramount public records repository, the guardian of the public memory. With the constitutional and administrative arguments for a strong and independent national archives having been frequently rehearsed, there is no need for their reiteration. They are powerful in themselves. But an almost equally powerful argument, one that has tended to be overlooked, is that the health of the nation's leading repository has the power to dramatically influence the standing of institutions at all levels of the national archives and recordkeeping hierarchy. This was clearly discerned over 20 years ago by the late Dr Wilfred Smith, in his report Archives in New Zealand: The heart and centre of a national archives system must be a strong National Archives which has the authority, resources and staff to perform the functions which have been assigned to it and the ability to provide leadership, guidance and assistance throughout the country . . . In Smith's view, for National Archives to be able to fulfil its roles, 'independence from political or official influence' had to be assured. This would probably necessitate the conferral of separate department status, the Chief Archivist becoming the National Archivist, with direct responsibility to a Minister. Sadly, Dr Smith's vision remains unrealised. Despite hopeful signs in the 1980s and early 1990s, when a then Secretary could willingly concede that full administrative independence was the logical next step, the sustained bureaucratic assault on the institution's status and integrity from the mid 1990s has more closely resembled a McGillicuddy Serious Party great leap backwards' than enlightened public administration. The assault commenced in mid 1994 with the Treasury-inspired McDermott Miller review of the institution's form and functions. While eventually eschewing the officially favoured option of merger with the National Library, the reviewers nevertheless came up with the finding that a 'commercial' Crown entity model would be appropriate. It continued in 1995, a newly appointed Secretary for Internal Affairs, having discarded the McDermott Miller recommendations as 'insufficiently robust', instead advocating a three-way policy-funder-provider functional split of National Archives. With modification of that model being forced, the assault culminated in 1997 with what have become known as 'the Heritage proposals', those the subject of legal proceedings, the details of which have already been extensively written about. It was to halt what were believed to be illegal incursions upon the standing and statutory responsibilities of National Archives that concerned community groups formed a joint action committee. That committee's decision, backed by its constituent groups, to seek judicial review of the proposals was not one taken lightly. As has been observed elsewhere, it is no small thing for relatively small community groups to challenge the Crown, the latter with seemingly unlimited resources and backed by the full state machinery. However, in the public interest, it was considered that there was no other option. The Ellis judgement of 23 June 1999, while possibly tangential to the principal matters upon which clarification had been sought, could therefore be regarded as a first break through. Coupled with His Honour's observations in his earlier judgement, and those even earlier of Justice Heron, there were, and are, grounds for looking to the scheduled Appeal Court hearings with guarded optimism. Just weeks after release of the landmark Ellis judgement, however, a new Ministry of Culture and Heritage was publicly launched in Wellington. While the ultimate structures and responsibilities of the agency have yet to be decided, included in the announcement was intelligence that National Archives was to become the responsibility of the new ministry. Announcement of the new ministry itself was no surprise. It was an expected outcome of deliberations arising from the Historic Heritage Management Review conducted in 1998, a response to a critical report issued by the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment in 1996. What the announcement did reveal was that the goal posts had shifted and the administrative playing field had tilted. What had commenced as a review of agencies concerned with the preservation of physical heritage - sites, buildings, objects - concluded by encompassing, in addition to National Archives, organisations as disparate as Radio New Zealand and the National Library. Quite how this widening of focus occurred, and largely under wraps, is a story yet to be told. Perhaps it was simply that State Services Commission officials sensed opportunity for the downing of a number of troublesome birds with the single metaphorical stone. The Department of Internal Affairs has since claimed proprietorship of the concept, but if so its advocacy was possibly more immediately successful than had been considered likely. In its submission to the Historic Heritage Management Review, Internal Affairs helpfully offered to accept responsibility for all heritage matters in the interim! Launching the new ministry on 28 July, the Hon Marie Hasler, while seeking to reassure potential critics, placed great stress on overcoming perceived fragmented government involvement in the 'cultural and heritage sectors'. Collecting the various identified agencies under the one umbrella, she argued, would enable New Zealanders to better 'celebrate, foster and protect' their cultural and historical legacies, and would help promote 'distinctive national identity'. Background papers concurrently released confirmed that from 1 September 1999 the Minister for Culture and Heritage would be the Minister responsible for the National Archives, this being the portfolio in which support for 'collections of national importance' would in future be located. The papers also stated 'the Government intends to undertake a review of National Archives, to establish the best possible institutional arrangements, later in the financial year,' with 'the possibility of Crown entity status' being 'on the table'. Rumours that the Government was also contemplating merging the National Archives and the National Library into a single Crown entity were disavowed. Responding to Ms Hasler's announcement, ARANZ president Thérèse Angelo expressed deep disappointment that, as far as the future of National Archives was concerned, the advent of the new ministry seemingly represented little obvious positive forward movement. The legal questions relating to the statutory responsibilities of the Chief Archivist and the independence of the institution, raised in the High Court and now proceeding to the Appeal Court, remained largely unanswered. Pending clear official decisions otherwise, the subordination of the Chief Archivist fo the Heritage Group's General Manager would continue; the Heritage Group, in the absence of legislative amendment, would remain administratively with the Department of Internal Affairs; and the National Archives would still be under the 'general direction' of the Secretary for Internal Affairs. The only real change was the addition of a shadowy line of responsibility to a different minister, itself of questionable legality and with the potential to create further confusion. Mrs Angelo also took issue with the proposed review 'to establish the best possible institutional arrangements' for National Archives, noting it would be the sixth such review in five years, each coming up with a different option. In her view, the institution was being reviewed to death'. Mrs Angelo regretted that the Government seemed unable to grasp that National Archives was not primarily a cultural or heritage organ. The argument that like was being placed with like held little water. National Archives had little affinity with the Royal New Zealand Ballet, the Symphony Orchestra, or for that matter Te Papa. Aware of differing views in wider political circles as to the utility of the new ministry as a vehicle for solving long-standing problems over the administrative placement of National Archives, and conscious that the archives question' possibly has a higher public profile than at any previous time, the ARANZ Council resolved to circularise major party leaders in advance of the forthcoming general election, inviting them to submit clear policy statements on the future of the institution. The responses are reproduced in subsequent pages. All are broad brush, perhaps reflecting the recent reluctance of politicians of all hues to firmly commit themselves to courses of action prior to elections. As might be expected, the Government's response is largely a reiteration of established policy.That National Archives is a 'significant and unique entity', holding material of constitutional (as well as cultural) value, is nevertheless recognised.Though reaffirming the intent to further review the institution, the statement encouragingly concludes: 'key stakeholder groups will be consulted and will play an important part in the process'. Both Labour and the Alliance also consider a review of the institution's functions, structure and placement, in full consultation with stakeholders, to be essential. But these parties believe that the location of National Archives within the Culture and Heritage orbit should equally be subjected to reviewer scrutiny. Though broadly endorsing current directions, United is committed to the development and retention of the National Archives as an independent stand-alone Crown agency, with the Chief Archivist reporting directly to the Minister of Culture and Heritage'. ACT believes archives keeping to be 'an important function of Government' and that it is important to the integrity of the Archives that they are professionally administered and that decisions ...are made on sound professional grounds rather than on political expediency'. ACT's advocacy of 'a New Zealand policy' determining disposal decisions conflicts, however, with the long established principle (endorsed by the Archives Act 1957) that such decisions should be the prerogative of the statutory head of the archival authority. Pending the result of the November election, and no less that of the Appeal Court hearings scheduled for the same month, it might appear that an impasse has been reached. This is not necessarily so. In late August the presidents of ARANZ and NZSG, met with the Minister of Culture and Heritage. Though differences obviously remain, Ms Hasler received the delegation cordially, and a substantial amount of common ground was established. Subsequently, there have been constructive informal discussions with officials of the new ministry. In both instances, with the ongoing legal proceedings being put to one side, there has been a determination by all parties to forge a better and more co- operative working relationship than that which has recently existed between stakeholders and the Department of Internal Affairs. At the same time, dialogue has been maintained with the other major political parties. In the uncertain current political climate it is clearly advantageous that the contested issues relating to National Archives be as widely known, and hopefully understood, as possible.There presently seems to be near unanimity amongst politicians that National Archives should be afforded greater independence, and that stakeholders should be closely involved in decision-making about the institutions future. These are considerable steps forward. While few would disagree with the Hon Richard Prebble's observation that 'it would be a great pity .. (if the future of National Archives) . . . became a matter of party polities', the fact remains, as Justice Ellis noted in July 1998, that informed political decisions are likely to be required if the bitter disputations surrounding the institution are to be finally laid to rest. Whatever the complexion of New Zealand's government post November, it seems assured that there will be a further review of National Archives' functions, structure and administrative placement. However deep the residual misgivings about subjecting the staff to yet another of these exercises, the concerns about such reviews being

χ employed to promote wider control agency agendas, if the outcomes are generally positive, if the institution is afforded some stability, if its unique responsibilities are tangibly recognised, further scrutiny could be worthwhile. What neither the Crown nor stakeholders, much less National Archives, can afford is a replay of the 1994 McDermott Miller review. Then, the review team's apparent preconceptions and abrasive manner were the subjects of complaint to the Review Steering Committee and the Minister of Internal Affairs before even a draft report was tabled. Public input into the review was strictly limited. There was no consultation whatsoever once the report was delivered. Indeed, stakeholders were denied access to the report for a further six months, until 'appropriate action' had been determined. Equally, the subsequent 'in house' reviews undertaken by Internal Affairs officials - the foundations for successive proposed restructurings - should also serve as a warning. These were slanted to a predetermined outcome, the bolstering of the department. What is imperative is that the chosen reviewer, through reputation, should enjoy the confidence of all concerned parties. Ideally, the reviewer should be demonstrably independent, divorced from the recent controversy, with no institutional or ideological axes to grind. Ideally, too, the reviewer should be open-minded, prepared to consult widely, a good listener and a flexible thinker. It is also highly desirable that the reviewer should have a strongly developed appreciation of the place of archives and records in the affairs of government. Past preferences for reviewers without such knowledge have been costly. The ability to secure the services of an individual with the identified attributes may ultimately determine the success, or otherwise, of the projected review. So, where to now with 'the Archives Case'? Superficially, it might appear that the scheduled litigation has been overtaken by events, not least by acknowledgements from senior politicians on both sides of the House that the future of National Archives merits very serious reconsideration. But, notwithstanding the promise of recent discussions, the administrative structures deemed objectionable by the plaintiffs, those unilaterally imposed by the Secretary for Internal Affairs in 1997, remain in place. Their legality has yet to be fully tested. Determining the extent to which other officials, in this case the Secretary and/or his delegate, may legitimately impinge upon the Chief Archivist's statutory responsibilities for 'the custody, care, control and administration of all public archives' is not a trivial matter. Nor is the seeking of a ruling as to whether or not the Secretary's statutory responsibility for 'general administration' of the Archives Act 1957 empowers that official to radically alter the role, status and core functions of National Archives. Both issues must be satisfactorily resolved if the institution is to achieve the degree of independence now generally agreed to be appropriate. This is not to suggest that the stakeholder groups are resistant to a negotiated settlement, or to placing the case on hold. As much has been indicated to the Crown, but with little positive response. Moreover, with the Crown having cross-appealed Justice Ellis'June 1999 judgement, the initiative no longer rests solely in the plaintiffs' hands. B.P. The Future of National Archives: Party Leaders State Their Positions

At its 7 July 1999 meeting Council resolved that the leaders of each of New Zealand's major political parties should be written to in advance of the November general election, inviting a clear policy statement on the future of National Archives for publication in this journal. Letters sent in early August noted: While there is obvious immediate public interest in how the parties view the future of this significant national institution - including its perceived role, its probable future form and location within the government administrative structure, and the likelihood of early enactment of revised archives legislation - the journal's readership would welcome a wider statement of linked policies relating to the preservation of, and access to, official information. By late September five responses had been received. These are reproduced below.

National: Hon Marie Hasler, for Rt Hon Jenny Shipley Thank you for your letter of 6 August 1999 addressed to the Prime Minister, Rt Hon Jenny Shipley, requesting a policy statement on the National Archives of New Zealand. As Minister responsible for the National Archives your request has been referred to me. One of National's overarching goals is to celebrate, foster and protect our cultural and historical heritage. The establishment of the Ministry for Culture and Heritage on 1 September this year saw the National Archives included in this portfolio. The new Ministry will ensure a more co-ordinated approach to cultural and heritage objectives, and will see greater promotion and protection of our distinctive national identity. The National Party recognises that the National Archives is a significant and unique entity with an important role of collecting and preserving the government's archives, and holds material of constitutional and cultural value. To ensure and maintain the National Archives' role, the Government is currently reviewing its institutional arrangements, and Crown Entity status will be one of the options considered. As part of the review, key stakeholder groups will be consulted and will play an important part in the process.

Labour: Louise Thornley, Labour Research Unit, for Rt Hon Helen Clark Labour recognises that the National Archives has several important roles, including a constitutional role, administrative role and a cultural role. The National Archives has a special, unique role as 'keeper' of public records, acting as an instrument of accountability. Labour believes the functions of the National Archives should be formally recognised and safeguarded. The National government intends to change the reporting process of the Department of Internal Affairs Heritage Group to report directly to the Minister of Culture and Heritage. The Heritage Group will still be part of Internal Affairs, although the policy areas are likely to become part of the new Ministry of Culture and Heritage. Labour sees this as a muddled way to address the fragmented arts and culture sector. We will therefore be reviewing the structural changes recently announced by the National government. This will relate to the National Archives as well. As part of this review, Labour will address the issues with which your organisation is concerned, including the role of the National Archives, its probable future structure and appropriate location within government and also any necessary legislative changes. We will do this in consultation with your organisation and other interested parties. We are keen to ensure that changes are made only after thorough analysis of the issues, along with adequate consultation with key stakeholders. Labour's policy on the National Archives fits within our arts and culture policy, even though the Archives may not sit within the new Ministry in the future. We do accept that the National Archives has a much wider constitutional role as well as a cultural and heritage role. The aims and strategies presented in Labour's Arts and Culture Policy are based on the principles of protecting and preserving the past, celebrating the present and building the future.

Alliance: Tony Simpson, Alliance Policy Manager, for Jim Anderton Jim Anderton has asked me to reply to your letter of 9 August because I have been dealing with this area. I will keep our comments succinct for editorial reasons. The Alliance begins from the proposition that the official archives which any society keeps are its official memory. This is a crucial dimension in its identity and therefore the keeping of archival records is a central government and cultural activity. As a political party we are firmly committed to the protection, development and enhancement of opportunities for the expression of that identity. From this it follows that the official archives we keep should be as complete as possible, professionally managed, and as accessible as possible. For these reasons we consider that the recent changes proposed to the manner in which our archives are kept will do nothing to improve their situation, and may actually have a damaging effect. This is because under the proposed new administrative arrangements the management of archives will be taken out of the hands of professional managers and will instead be the ultimate responsibility of those whose primary concern is financial risk management, i.e. those who confuse cheapness with efficiency, and who are mainly concerned to see that the administrative functions of government are carried out at least cost and maximum return. This latter invariably leads to restriction of access on a payer uses basis. An Alliance government would take steps to review and if necessary dismantle and replace any administrative arrangements which are predicated on such criteria with those which fit with the real needs of a genuine national archive.

ACT: Hon Richard Prebble CBE Thank you for your letter dated 6 August 1999 asking me, as the Leader of a major political party, to make a clear policy statement over the future of National Archives. I am happy to do so. I believe that it is an important function of Government to ensure that the country's archives are saved, safely stored and then available for public inspection. It is important to the integrity of the Archives that they are professionally administered and that decisions regarding the Archives are made on sound professional grounds rather than political expediency. There needs to be a New Zealand policy with regards to Archives. Decisions on whether to keep or dispose of potential Archive material needs to be made against this professional and objective set of principles. It is important that the process be properly financed. I have made a personal commitment to this programme and have at the request of Archives and the National Library kept an extensive collection of archival material and I personally fought hard to ensure that the integrity of the collection is kept in place. It would be a great pity if such an issue became a matter of party political politics. I have stated as the Leader of ACT and as the MP of Wellington Central my view about the importance of the position of Chief Archivist and, indeed, the position of other officers who have important roles such as the Chief Parliamentary Librarian.

United: Hon Peter Dunne Thank you for your letter of 6 August 1999 requesting a statement of United New Zealand's policy with regard to the future of the National Archives and related issues. I am happy to provide the following comments, which should be of assistance: 'United New Zealand believes that all New Zealand's historic places - buildings, archaeological sites, places of spiritual or historical significance - and records are part of our rich and diverse heritage. These historic items must be properly supported so that they can be enjoyed by future generations. The National Archives of New Zealand are an integral part of our heritage and United New Zealand is therefore committed to the development and retention of the National Archives as an independent stand-alone Crown agency, with the Chief Archivist reporting directly to the Minister of Culture and Heritage. We are further committed to the urgent introduction and passage of a new Archives Act, both to give effect to this new structure and also to take account of technological and other changes in recent years. At a broader level, we will seek to encourage wider government and community involvement in the preservation of historic places and records to provide an environment where the cultural identities, achievements and history of a diverse people are recognised and nurtured.' Anecdote and Memory: The Cenotaph Database Imaging Project at Auckland War Memorial Museum

Janice Chong

Library and Information Services, Auckland War Memorial Museum

Somewhere on a troopship, July/August 1945, a war-weary soldier put his feelings on paper: From far-off b N.Z., came a stalwart b lad, To fight for b freedom, make good the b bad. In Farouk's b kingdom, right to the b Nile, And set his b tent up, he'd live in b style. The b heat was awful, it turned his b head, The b pestilence and sand, he ate it when he fed. Somewhere in Italy, summer 1944, another war-weary soldier pined for good old N.Z.: Oh Mr Fraser won't you take us home Don't you think we've had it now we've been to Rome We've had the sand, sweat and blood, And lived in snow, rain, and mud, So won't you take us home, Won't you take us home. Reminiscences such as these, expressed in song and verse, emerged from our participation in both of the World Wars. The memories are vivid and typical, expressed with humour, sometimes wry, at other times wistful, employed as a Kiwi antidote to adversity. They give us insights into the lives of ordinary New Zealanders caught up in extraordinary circumstances. It is the writers of such verses and the two hundred and fifty thousand others like them whom we endeavour to acknowledge and remember through the Cenotaph database project. At the end of the First World War, the people of Auckland were considering ways in which the terrible loss of their young men and women could be forever remembered. New Zealand, a small country with a population base of just over one million, had lost 18,166 young men and women, either in action or as a result of wounds or disease. The Auckland War Memorial Museum of 1929 was built to 'preserve for future generations the inspiration of the war's heroism and self- sacrifice. The quotation from Pericles above the main entrance of the Museum also reinforces the theme of commemoration - memorials graven not on stone but on the hearts of men', a theme continued in the exhibition 'Scars on the Heart'. Auckland War Memorial Museum has, since 1996, when our new Act was passed, renewed its commitment to its traditional war memorial role, while at the same time embracing vigorously and with flair the directions apparent in the new museology. The Cenotaph database project has become an extension to this recommitment to remembrance. Situated in the Armoury, a resource centre which complements the Scars on the Heart exhibition, the database is an innovative way to deliver information about all the New Zealand servicemen and women who went to war, not just those whose names are engraved in the Sicilian marble on the second floor. The database contains details of those who have served their country, from the South African (Boer) War, through two World Wars, Borneo and Malaya, Korea, Vietnam, the Falklands, and peacekeeping. Data entry began in June 1996 with New Zealand's First World War dead - a total of 17,000 service records entered and 5,000 images scanned. Subsequently the records and images of those who perished in the Vietnam conflict and the South African War have been added. We are at present entering those who died in the Second World War. One of the many outstanding collections held by the Auckland Museum is the New Zealand military collection. As a result of the marketing of our database, these collections are enriched through donations of original materials - diaries, letters, photographs, ephemera and other personal memorabilia. The archive of information and images about a special group of New Zealand men and women who experienced war and conflict is thus built jointly by the Museum and its community, a community which is not only national but increasingly international. Since Cenotaph was set up, a parallel database, Kitbag, has also been developed. Identical in format, it differs only in that the records and images are of servicemen and women who are still alive. Access is restricted to Library and Armoury staff. When appropriate, records from Kitbag are transferred across to the memorial database, Cenotaph. Kitbag has received much assistance from the Returned Services Association, whose membership has endorsed the project. How then did we first start digitising images for the database? Museum staff already had an appreciation of the benefits of digitising photograph collections, specifically in association with text records, from their study of numerous examples and their applications both in New Zealand and overseas. Financing the image-digitising project for the Cenotaph database required funding through sponsorship and donation. Raising the funds was a challenge that the Library and Armoury staff enthusiastically accepted. The Museum Library had already purchased Inmagic software to manage its collection records, and the Windows version, DBTextWbrks, made the design of a personalised database for war service records and images a straightforward task. Several strong factors contributed to our decision: the ability of the software to manage images, the OPAC facility and its ease of use at the public interface, its ability to generate a variety of reports, the responsiveness of the software producer to feedback from users about their needs, its regular upgrades, and the strong local support from Infospecs. We also needed to purchase the software to manipulate images, some additional space on the server, a scanner and a printer. To raise funds for these, Armoury and Library staff attended R.S.A. district conferences and spoke about the project. We were fortunate to receive funding for the scanner (Microtek), software (Photoshop) and the printer. Significant additional sponsorship was received from the New Zealand Herald. From sales of the newspaper on Anzac Day 1998 we received $25,000. This allowed us to employ two part-time research and scanning staff. The first images were scanned at 300dpi using TIFF image file formats, and simultaneously linked' to the relevant biographical database record. The image files and the databases were linked by network, from the Armoury through to the Library and the Curator of History. From experience, we amended our procedures. The TIFF formats were converted to JPEG because of the better compression rate. Initially we scanned black and white and colour images at 600 dpi. The later acquisition of Photoshop and some additional enhancing imaging software is enabling us to produce better images and at a lower 300dpi. Trial and error! At this stage, we do not watermark our images. Copyright resides with the owner/donor, and is not transferred with the loan or donation of images. The latter are processed through the same centralised registration system as all other donations to the Museum. In making the gift the donors understand and agree that Auckland Museum has the right to use the images, or copies of the images, in any way appropriate to the fulfilment of Auckland Museum's objectives and in accordance with their dignity and purpose, and this will include the information being available on a publicly accessible database'. The database currently consists of 60 fields in which vast amounts of information about an individual can be recorded. Included are details about rank and regiment, marital status, pre-service occupation, next- of-kin and physical description, and, as applicable, the circumstances of their death. It is, however, the anecdotal material - extracts from letters or diaries and the personal memories and impressions supplied by the subject, mates, friends or family - and the images we attach to these records, which make each record a unique and memorable tribute. Our specially designed database questionnaires can be uplifted from the Armoury or mailed out on request. The forms have been distributed nation-wide through the pages of the R.S.A. Review, local and national clubs and historical and genealogical organisations. Networking through family and friends is a fruitful source of contacts. There have been many examples of good-humour in the replies. A classic among these was a response to the question about military training received before going into action. The respondent, succinct and to the point, had written:Έ all!' Overall feedback has been excellent. In spite of the fact that personnel were instructed not to carry cameras, keep diaries or write about sensitive matters in letters, fortunately many New Zealanders disregarded the rules and kept records of their experiences. Photographs and other memorabilia often long forgotten have been retrieved from the most unlikely places and arrive in shoe boxes, ice cream containers, and plastic bags. In contrast, albums with neatly written captions under each photograph are often loaned for copying or donated. Donations of material come from people who tend New Zealanders' graves overseas and want to show us how well-cared for they are, or who visit war graves cemeteries and take photographs of the headstones. These images we attach to personal records. Other images scanned include those of troopships, training camps, weddings and sweethearts, parades and reunions, paybooks and certificates, and maps of the different theatres. Any images which personalise and individualise the records are accepted and added. We send a copy of the finished record for approval to everyone who provides us with information. Additions and alterations can be made at any time. Printouts of the records and images are available to the public on a cost recovery basis. They can be printed on a range of papers, from ordinary A4 photocopying paper to glossy photographic quality paper. Our project is, of course, labour intensive. Researching events, interviewing donors and selecting material are vital aspects of the project. In the course of this work we come across many stories that humanise the experience of war. As one serviceman tells it: This one here [photograph] I remember, you see it was Xmas, and we wanted to get in the spirit of things - a bit hard to do in the desert. So we found some white pebbly things and composed our own greeting in the sand, in front of the tent - Ά Merry Xmas from Egypt. Anyway, next morning, the message had walked' - the snails packed up and moved away in the middle of the night! From a nurse: This was our uniform . . . awful. I remember being invited out by some British officers. One of them took a bit of my uniform between his finger and said it was a bit rough and wouldn't you think that the Government would afford something better for its nurses. So what of the future? After text and images should come sound. Buying into the technology to add voices to the database records is a future goal. Through the magnificent work of the Radio New Zealand Sound Archives in Christchurch, of Bruce Russell, Norman Batty and their team, we have been able to purchase in digital format copies of the sound recordings made during the Second World War. These contain the individual messages sent home by the men and women in the front line, as well as reports by the war correspondents. They will soon be available for our public to listen to in the Armoury, though ideally they too should be integrated with the database records. In conclusion, the last word must go to one of the many to whom this project is dedicated. A staff member was asking a veteran about his time as a member of the Second New Zealand Expeditionary Force. They talked about the memories which the photographs brought back concerning VJ Day in 1945. 'Sure I was there, that's me, and I guess that must have been on VJ Day. But to be honest that's about it - you see, the war was finally over, I was so glad that finally I'd be going home - so I got myself as full as a bull!' 'So', he said with a smile 'now go and digitise that!' New Zealand Materials held in Moscow's Archives1

Alexander Trapeznik

University of Otago

In August 1991, when the Committee on Archival Affairs of the Russian Federation (Roskomarkhivf1 took over the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and Presidential Archives, the Russian government created two major centres to house collections of CPSU documents: the Centre for the Preservation of Contemporary Documentation (Tsentr khraneniia sovremennoi dokumentatsii) [TsKhSD] and the Russian Centre of Conservation and Study of Records for Modern History (Rossiiski Tsentr Khraneniia Iizucheniia Dokumentov Noveishei Istorii) [RTsKhlDNI]. All collections are in former Party buildings. It is clear that the 'window of opportunity' for accessing the Moscow Archives that reached its peak in 1992 and early 1993 is now closed. Since then laws on archives and state secrets have severely curtailed revelations from Russia's archives. The initial enthusiasm and euphoria that greeted researchers and scholars with the opening up of the archives have, unfortunately, given way to complaints and frustration. Nevertheless, it should be noted that the archival scene has undergone some tremendous progress in terms of access and entry since its Soviet days. Soviet material relevant to New Zealand is certainly held by the Archives, but materials pertaining to the contemporary and Cold War periods are once again inaccessible to researchers. Moreover, the problems of restricted access are compounded by the serious underfunding of archival institutions, making academic research highly difficult. This situation is unlikely to improve in the foreseeable future.

Centre for the Preservation of Contemporary Documentation The TsKhSD is located at the Rosarkhiv site and contains 30 million files, the largest collection in the Russian state archival system. The TsKhSD offers researchers a reading room equipped with a sophisticated audiovisual system. No microfilm machines are used because the materials held are original documents. Photocopies can be made only with the assistance of an archival assistant at the exorbitant price of $US1.70 per page. The TsKhSD has only limited opening hours: Tuesdays 0930-1730, Wednesdays 1230-1930, and Thursdays 0930-1730. The TsKhSD houses CPSU Central Committee archives dating from October 1952 to August 1991, as well as some earlier materials transferred from other holdings because of their sensitivity or usefulness to Party and State officials during the Soviet period. The materials are divided into three record groups: the Archives of Leading Cadres, located in a nearby building, containing the files of former Party officials; the Current Archives of the CPSU; and the Archives of Leading Organs. The TsKhSD contains files on the internal workings of the CPSU and its ties to other Communist Parties throughout the world, papers of the Central Committee Secretariat, and documents from the Central Committee departments. Files are indexed by institution and by subject. Materials released thus far shed light on Soviet decision-making on the Cuban missile crisis (1962) and the Soviet interventions in Hungary (1956) and Czechoslovakia (1968). However, someone destroyed holdings related to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan (1979-1989) to protect, presumably, people who still hold important positions in the Russian government. The TsKhSD declassification system poses a serious problem for researchers: 70 to 95 per cent of the holdings remain classified at the 'secret' or 'top secret' level, particularly those dealing with international affairs. Ninety-five per cent of the International Department files, especially those from I960 to 1991, remain classified. This material includes information, letters, and reports of talks and discussions of the Soviet Embassy in New Zealand and its KGB operations on the contemporary situation in New Zealand, the Communist Party of New Zealand, the Socialist Unity Party, and the New Zealand trade union movement. TsKhSD managers claim that further records may become declassified, but this has not yet been attempted because there is no review system in place. Furthermore, a 30-year embargo applies for the viewing of documents. In most cases, archivists rather than managers make the final decision on whether or not a document is declassified. To date, archive managers have declassified innocuous holdings of the CPSU's domestic activities, including the holdings of the CPSU Organisational-Party Work Department, Ideology Department, Science and Culture Department, and Agriculture Department, and these are now open to researchers. Materials that have been declassified thus far include the following: • Protocols from the Secretariat from October 1952 to February 1981. • Documents marked Osobaia Papka (special files transferred from other holdings) from October 1952 to October 1961. • Documents from the CPSU Central Committee International Department, Cadres Abroad Department, Administrative Affairs Department, Medium and General Machine Building Departments, and Defense Industry Department between October 1952 and October 1961. • Documents marked 'secret', but not top secret', from the General Department, International Department, International Information Department, Cadres Abroad Department, Economic Department, Metallurgy Department, Light, Medium, and Heavy Machine Building Departments, Chemical Industry Department, Defense Industry Department, Transportation Department, Trade and Finance Department, and Administrative Affairs, and Administrative Organs Departments from October 1961 to October 1981. • Materials marked 'top secret' are still unavailable to researchers. In addition, information from the Gorbachev era still cannot be accessed.

Russian Centre of Conservation and Study of Records for Modern History The RTsKhlDNI is stored in the building of the former Central Party Archive of the Institute for Marxism-Leninism. Before the collapse of the CPSU in 1991, the Central Party Archive was treated as a branch of the CPSU Central Committee Ideology Department. The RTsKhlDNI contains approximately 1.5 million files. A dozen or so microfilm machines are available, although electrical shortages hamper their use. Photocopies can be made only with the aid of an archival assistant at the excessive cost of $US1.95 per page. The Centre's contents form three major holdings. The Social History of Europe Department contains materials in Russian, French, and German related to the development of socialism in Europe in the nineteenth century. The Department of Documents of the Political History of Russia includes the records of the CPSU Central Committee and its leadership from the Bolshevik Revolution to the nineteenth Party Congress in October 1952, including the personal papers of Vladimir Lenin, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Leon Trotsky, Andrei Zhdanov, Viacheslav Molotov, and others. Some files of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs [NKVD] are held that concern Stalin's purges in the 1930s, as is material pertaining to the activities of communist sympathisers in New Zealand in the pre-1917 and immediate post-1917 periods. However, a number of documents marked 'secret' relating to the Foreign Policy Commission of the CPSU Central Committee (Fond 17), primarily for the period 1949-53, are not accessible as they are currently under review by a special commission which meets irregularly. Officially, archival managers estimated that declassification will take a minimum of six months (although privately they said it was likely to take a year or more) to complete. The third major holding, the Department of International Labor and Communist Organizations and Movements, includes 50 million files from the Comintern and Cominform. The Comintern archives relating to New Zealand, which have only just been made readily accessible to researchers for the period 1923-1937 (Fond 495, Opis 63, 89 delà), are accessible.3 The Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington has an incomplete set of Comintern papers on microfilm (Micro MS 893, 6 reels), and 44 delà are 'missing' from the collection. The Moscow-based Communist Party of New Zealand collection is also not complete. Records are patchy for the period 1923-28 when the New Zealand Party was a section of the Communist Party of Australia. The records for the period 1929-37 appear to be largely intact, but even here, like elsewhere, there are gaps in the collection of documents. After 1937 the records grow patchy once more, perhaps reflecting the difficulty of communications with the start of World War Two in 1939. Some especially sensitive material may have been transferred to the Archive of the President of the Russian Federation, which holds CPSU Political Bureau and foreign intelligence records dating back to the 1920s and 1930s. Most of the archive's holdings are still classified as 'top secret' and the archive is closed to researchers. Some sensitive material for our period of study is held in the Centre for the Preservation of Contemporary Documentation, formerly the archive of the Central Committee of the CPSU, although the bulk of the collection dates from 1952 through to 1991. This archive holds files on the internal workings of the CPSU and its ties to foreign communist parties throughout the world, although virtually all of the Party's International Department files remain classified. Needless to say, the various intelligence archives are closed to researchers. Whilst most intelligence/sensitive material undoubtedly has been removed from the Comintern records or remains to be declassified, documents about clandestine activities remain and a diligent informed researcher with prior knowledge of personalities and events can unravel some of the Comintern intrigues. Nevertheless, while the relevant archives are closed or the documents remain classified, the whole jigsaw puzzle cannot be revealed and it remains for future researchers to find the missing pieces. Materials found in the three holdings listed above have references to special dossiers [Osobaia Papka], which indicate that they were transferred to the post-1952 archive. The files of the RTsKhlDNI are well-curated and are kept in a six-storey, concrete-encased, temperature- controlled vault in the centre of the building. The RTsKhlDNI's economic status is unstable, and its managers seek commercial relationships with Western firms. The electricity is kept off in low-priority areas of the building and a shortage of light bulbs makes matters worse. The financial situation has also taken a toll on the staff. Despite the fact that dozens of archivists have left their jobs in the last few months, 194 staff members remain, including sixteen Westerners contracted to work in the Archives.

The Russian Foreign Ministry Archives Prior to the August 1991 coup attempt, access to the Soviet Foreign Ministry Archive was limited. Few interesting documents were released because of the declassification process. Only a handful of researchers was allowed entry into these Archives after August 1990, when the Soviet government decreed that materials over 30 years old could be declassified and that a committee of retired diplomats would review the documents. In 1997 the term was increased to 50 years. This has severely hampered research on Soviet foreign policy during the Cold War years, particularly during the immediate post-Second World War period. Simultaneously, the Soviet Foreign Ministry began to publish archival materials in Vestnik MID, its official organ. Soviet diplomatic materials on the Second World War were a popular subject within its covers. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Archives of the Ministry of External Relations and its successor, the Russian Foreign Ministry, came under the jurisdiction of the Russian Federation. Nevertheless, they remained autonomous from the Russian state archival system, since they were considered distinct ministerial archives. The Department of History and Records of the Russian Foreign Ministry supervises the two Foreign Ministry archives: the Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation (Arkhiv vneshnei politikt Rossiiskoi Federatsii) and the Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Empire.

Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation The AVP RF is housed in an unmarked, high-security building near the Russian Foreign Ministry. The AVP RF was formed from the remnants of the Archives of the Foreign Policy of the USSR in March 1992. Unfortunately, the AVP RF has a small reading room, charges an exorbitant price for photocopies ($US1.70 per page) and lacks guides to its holdings. The AVP RF contains materials related to Soviet foreign policy from 1917 to 1991 and Russian foreign policy from 1992 to the present. With about 1800 files containing 1.3 million items, the collection is small compared to other holdings, such as those of the TsKhSD. The archive, which contains information from the Foreign Ministry, embassies, and the United Nations, is divided into two main sections: the Central File and the Cable File. The AVP RF has several departments that help maintain these records: the Research Department, the Publications Department, and the Central Research Library (which is considered a department). An Archival Information Department is to be formed soon to undertake public relations work with foreign interests. Access and declassification are a problem at the AVP RF. Up to two- thirds of the material in the AVP RF holdings remain classified. Financial troubles have slowed declassification to a crawl and a staff cut of two- thirds has dashed hopes for a quick resolution of the problem. AVP RF managers consider that for every twelve months of chronological files to be declassified, several people will have to spend two or more years to read and review the sensitive materials contained in them. This will take an enormous amount of time, since the process is being undertaken in chronological order. By mid-1997, records from the period 1917-62 had been reviewed, but not all fonds had been declassified. Certain categories of documentation, such as ciphered telegrams and annual reports from embassies, had not been declassified. Memoranda of meetings through to 1947 had been declassified, but those from 1947 are not open for research. As diplomatic relations between the USSR and New Zealand were established only in 1944, scant information is available for consultation. Almost all of the material currently declassified from this archive pertaining to New Zealand has been compiled and published recently under the auspices of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Russian Federation Historical Document Department and Irkutsk State University. The book is entitled Russia-New Zealand 50 years of Diplomatic Relations. A Collection of Documents (Irkutsk University, 1995), but only 500 copies were printed and, to my knowledge, none reached New Zealand. An inventory of declassified documents not included in this collection, and covering the period 1953 to 1959 (Fond 2 European Department), was completed during the June 1997 visit. Most of these documents are fairly innocuous and relate to scientific and cultural exchanges and memoranda of conversations. State Archive of the Russian Federation The State Archive of the Russian Federation (Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii) [GARF] was formerly known as the Central Archive of the October Revolution of the USSR, or TsGAOR. Since its inception in 1920 it has developed into one of the most significant archives of the former Soviet Union. After 1991 it took its present name. GARF houses most of the records of the Soviet central government and various organs of state administration since 1917. Its pre-revolutionary division contains many records from the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, including the majority of pre-revolutionary police records and many files relating to the Russian revolutionary movement and revolutions of 1917. Materials pertaining to New Zealand held in this Archive are to be found in files relating to the British Section of the USSR Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries (BOKC, Fond 5283, for the period 1925-1957). Once again, most declassified documents are innocuous, dealing almost exclusively with cultural and scientific exchanges, correspondence with the New Zealand Society for Closer Relations with the USSR, or requests by New Zealand nationals or schools seeking Soviet stamps, photographs, maps, and literature.

Conclusion The catalogue of woes at Russian archives can sometimes seem depressing. The declassification issue seriously hampers research of a contemporary nature, particularly on topics related to the Cold War. The endemic funding shortages frustrate staff and researchers alike, and seem unlikely to improve in the foreseeable future. Nevertheless, matters have improved since the Soviet era and new historical vistas still beckon, with careful and patient research bringing rewards from the recently released archival material in Russia and from material which may yet be declassified.

1. This article is based upon personal observations made during a research trip undertaken in June 1997 to visit several archives in Moscow. The purpose of the trip included the identification of as wide a range as possible of materials pertaining to New Zealand which are held in Moscow's Archives and the compilation of an inventory of those materials. It was also hoped to ascertain the prospects for future access to documentation which remains classified. The material gathered is supplemented by information presented in Patricia Kennedy Grimsted's Archives of Russia Five Years After. Purveyors of Sensations' or Shadows Cast to the Past'?, International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, 1997; and material taken from Theodore William Karasik, The Post-Soviet Archives. Organization, Access, and Declassification, MR-150-USDR © RAND, Santa Monica, 1993, whose permission has been obtained to reproduce certain selected extracts.

2. Since then Roskomarkhiv has undergone a series of name changes. Its successor in 1992, the State Archival Service of Russia (Rosarkhiv - Gosudarstvennaia arkhivnaia sluzhba Rossii), was renamed in August 1996 the Federal Archival Service of Russia (Federal'naia arkbivnaia sluzhba Rossii), although it retains the official acronym of Rosarkhiv.

3. On the Comintern archives in Moscow see also Kerry Taylor, 'Archive Notes. The Comintern Archives, Moscow', Labour History, 64 (May 1993), pp. 139-142. Kaitiakitanga i roto i ngâ Whare Pukapuka: Appropriate Care for Maori Materials in Libraries and Archives

Bernard Makoare

Tumuaki ó ngâ Ràtonga Mâori/Mâori Services Manager Ngâ Whare Pukapuka o Tâmaki/Auckland City Libraries

How do institutions like libraries and archives come to grips with such complex Maori concepts as tapu, mana, wairua and mauri? This is an important question, one which is exacerbated by cultural and institutional environments which struggle to comprehend even the most fundamental Maori things. This paper seeks to explore some of the meanings of kaitiakitanga' and how this concept can be incorporated into the policies and practices of such institutions. Since the Treaty of Waitangi was signed over a century and a half ago, Maori culture has been affected and influenced by the settlement of tauiwi, the broader processes of colonisation, the ravages of introduced diseases and involvement in international conflicts. Against this gloomy backdrop, Maori cultural information, in any form, assumes even greater importance. It is essential to the preservation, even the rediscovery, of Maori cultural identity. It would be difficult to overstress the depth of feeling that now surrounds this information for Maori. Whereas its importance to past generations may have been determined by the spiritual connections the information facilitated, the importance today may be better understood in terms of the tenuous retention of Maori cultural identity in the face of the multitude of devastating influences outlined. The view presented is a completely Maori perspective. Non-Maori perspectives of the importance of the same information are founded on very different ideals and norms. Many institutions in Aotearoa-New Zealand are currently being forced to take note of international developments relating to practices surrounding indigenous materials and services. As well, many iwi, hapü and whânau are becoming increasingly aware of the large range of artefacts and taonga distributed throughout the country, and are beginning to determine for themselves their aspirations relating to the future of these items. Some important issues are being considered, for example, in the context of the WAI 262 claim, currently before the Waitangi Tribunal. It is likely that more appropriate approaches will be cemented into the fabric of this country and will influence the course of intellectual property policy development in the future, especially in the field of biodiversity. The Treaty of Waitangi and subsequent developments like the Mataatua Declaration have influenced the evolution of this sort of policy in the past and will certainly continue to do so. But, until the Treaty of Waitangi is seen as being in the interests of the whole country, and not just Maori, progress will continue to be painfully slow. Many institutions still need to be dragged, kicking and screaming, to the consultation table. Why has the Maori perspective not been accorded greater importance to date? I would suggest several possible reasons: • Cultural arrogance - Libraries and archives have been developed over centuries. The culture that has shaped their development knows best about collection management, care and conservation issues. • Cultural ignorance - Maori culture is mysterious and little known. Not many Maori speak Maori or know about customs anyway. • Cultural apathy - It doesn't matter, and why do anything different anyway? It may also be that the extensive structural and attitudinal changes that Maori responsiveness suggests for institutions, let alone the financial implications, are possible explanations for the reluctance of decision- makers to rapidly institute any meaningful change. Regardless of the mind-sets of the past, the responsibility now falls squarely on institutions and collections, and therefore their staff, to proceed to a position where Maori values, perspectives and people permeate into all levels and aspects of the custody of documents and other informational materials. There are no One size fits all' easy answers. It is up to individual institutions to explore what Maori information was and is through a Maori world view, and then to shape their collections, staffing profiles and services.This will be an immense task, but it is one that cannot be avoided any longer.

Traditional Maori information There are many forms of traditional Maori information. Obvious comparisons can be made between whakairo (carving), kôwhaiwhai (rafter painting), tukutuku (woven wall panels of the wharenui - meeting house) and early Maori writings. This is in terms of Maori culture; issues such as tapu, noa, kai, mauri, wairua, mana - as well, of course, as the actual conveying and communication of information. All of these forms of communication, in a Maori world-view, are methods which go beyond the bounds of human memory, a vital component in the oral transfer of information. This notion could be explored in more depth, but for the purposes of this paper it is sufficient to simply identify the link between early Maori writings and the other forms of Maori information and communication It can also be shown that spiritual principles and actions were easily and readily transferred from pre-contact mediums of information communication to the introduced written forms of information communication. It can be safely assumed that although writing as a method of imparting information came to Aotearoa from another culture, it was quickly adopted as a new tool for informing Maori within the wider context of traditional Maori information. When this is acknowledged, and it is accepted that traditional principles and activities (i.e. rituals associated with the tapu or sacred nature of the information and therefore the material that is influenced by and reflects 'mana' or authority) were applied to this information, then clearly the appropriate collection management, care and conservation (or kaitiakitanga) must also reflect these principles and actions. What has tended to happen, particularly in institutions where all sorts of information, from a range of sources, has been collected, is that the care of material, and therefore information, has been structured on non-Máori foundations or paradigms. This, then, forms the heart of the problem from a Maori perspective. It is a problem which has been long voiced in Maori fora, but one which is only just being acknowledged in institutions and in wider decision-making circles. The wealth of written Maori material in the heritage collections in all parts the country is testament to how written information recording was so readily adopted by Maori. The Alexander Turnbull Library, the Hocken Library, the Auckland Museum Library and Auckland City Libraries's Grey Collection all hold significant collections of Maori manuscripts, letters and early printed material in the Maori language, as well as important collections of maps, archives, pictures, photographs and sound recordings. Other institutions nation-wide also hold special Maori information in their collections. The sheer volume of Maori materials, together with the firmness with which Maori are now asserting rights in respect of this cultural property and information, means that the time is ripe for some new thinking. Also, the raising of global awareness in relation to the rights and role of indigenous people, in all spheres of society, may well force a re-evaluation of what actually is appropriate collection, care and use of indigenous information. A redefinition by institutions of such terms as kaitiakitanga, mâtauranga and Maori mana motuhake, would be a good starting point.

Some underlying issues A number of institutions are already beginning to address the problem. These include the Auckland City Libraries, where I am employed as Tumuaki ô ngâ Râtonga Mâori/Mâori Services Manager. A discussion paper was recently prepared to assist the formulation of an institutional bicultural perspective and to promote more appropriate intellectual property policies. It seeks to provide guidance to staff in making day- to-day procedural decisions, but does not purport to provide absolute definitions for intellectual property rights issues. Nor does it presume to suggest operational solutions to the more complex cultural issues which institutions must themselves address. Some of the underlying issues discussed include: Indigenous information in libraries and archives Practices, policies, attitudes and behaviour in respect of the information and property of indigenous peoples are attracting attention world-wide. How such cultural information is presented, stored and subsequently used by others is being scrutinised. It is now widely held that there have been serious shortcomings in how some property (whether physical or intellectual) was collected in the past from one cultural group to be exploited by another. It is also accepted that there have been assumptions made about the ownership, collection and later use of that property, based on the culture of the collector, not that of the creator or donor. Such assumptions have sometimes led to assertions of self-determination by indigenous peoples in respect of their property, resulting in clashes and challenges with the institutions which have collected and cared for the property. In most cases, the policies of the institutions have been based on the cultural norms and understandings of non-indigenous peoples. Indigenous peoples and their perspectives have not played a large part in their operation.

Indigenous peoples Indigenous, first nations peoples, native, or people of the land are all descriptions used for people recognised as the original inhabitants of a land or country. The United Nations has begun to recognise the contribution of these people to the countries and lands to which they are intrinsically linked. Self-determination In many cases, indigenous peoples, as a result of influences like colonisation and the passage of time, are now minorities and relatively powerless in their countries of origin. In recent times, indigenous peoples and the role that they play in shaping the countries in which they live have come to the forefront of political issues. Indigenous groups and individuals world-wide have used a variety of methods to express their concerns and highlight issues, generally in attempts to regain control over their aspirations and property. The majority governments, or decision-making systems, in some countries have also attempted to recognise indigenous peoples and explore ways of including them and their cultural beliefs, values and practices into the fabric of that particular society. The inclusion of indigenous perspectives into the framework of a country is always likely to be dynamic and changing, as the nature of culture itself changes.

Intellectual and cultural property rights The issues surrounding intellectual and cultural property rights are very diverse and complex. But this should not be a barrier to understanding and working with the issues. It should nevertheless be noted that no universal or global international policy is practical, because of the diversity of the different indigenous nations and the even more diverse makeup of tribes, sub-tribes and extended family groups.

What are the fundamental issues for New Zealand institutions? In attempting to implement more enlightened policies in the New Zealand environment, a number of questions, in my view, have to be considered. These include: • What cultural property is there? (intellectual, physical artefacts). • From which culture does it come? (i.e. hapu, iwi). • Who are the key representatives of that culture or sector of that culture? (i.e. hapü , iwi). « What are the expectations of the institution? (professional standards and practices). • What are the expectations of the indigenous culture/people? • What is the best way and/or the best person to facilitate the process? • How can improvements - especially in terms of amendment of policies - be made in the future? (to ensure that the practices of institutions and people remain abreast of political and cultural changes in the environment of information and property rights). I now propose to consider some of these questions in a bit more detail. Identifying cultural property In my view, Maori cultural and intellectual property can be defined as: • all knowledge particular to the evolution and development of Maori race/culture; • a dynamic body of knowledge which distinguishes Maori as apart from other ethnic groups; • all knowledge which shapes Maori identity, i.e. whakapapa, language, stories, learning, as well as arts; • all knowledge which guides the organisation of Maori communities/ society, i.e. kinship, leadership, roles, occupation, decision-making; • all knowledge which provides an understanding of relationships to the environment, elements; • the lifetimes of learning that help give an understanding to the past, present and future in a Maori world view. This means that all such material will be of interest to the particular whanau, hapü or iwi to which the information refers, or from which it has originated. Information or property which has such a crucial part to play in the identity of the indigenous people of this country should be treated seriously. Ownership The ownership of intellectual property is a complex issue, one which occupies legal experts constantly. Determining the ownership of cultural intellectual property is even more complex. It could be this complexity which has discouraged the formulation of policies and legislation related to cultural and intellectual property by governments and institutions such as libraries and archives. Whakapapa is the mechanism in Maori culture which creates the linkages and connections with all elements of culture/existence/identity. That is, relationships with people, places, trees, land, sea, elements, animals, sounds, etc, can be understood by whakapapa. Therefore, the ownership or connection to information that is imperative to the cultural identity of Maori is not for any one person to own, per se. Each generation, in Maori understanding, has the responsibility to keep the integrity of the memories about the past people and their actions, and to add to these in the continuous and dynamic shaping of the culture.This means that each generation usually has identified guardians of knowledge about important matters pertinent to the whânau, hapü or iwi. It is the job of these chosen ones to educate their people, and to ensure that the next generation continues and adds to the cycle. It is these guardians who should be sought out by institutions and consulted regarding the appropriate use and care of cultural information. Consultation process An inherent difficulty with consultation is the dynamic nature of culture. Further, it must be recognised that there may even be diversity between sectors of a culture; for instance, tribal dialects and customary practices may vary widely. It is therefore doubtful that any across-the-board approach can be developed. However, there are some key principles, such as being listened to, being understood, and being respected, which can be applied globally. It is therefore a matter of devising a consultation process which reflects these principles and recognises the aspirations of the indigenous peoples, as well as those of the institutions which care for cultural property. This process must always aim at collaboration. Facilitating communication The role of facilitator is a vital one, success being measured in terms of the satisfaction of both the institution and Maori. If the communication is clear, there is more likely to be a successful result. This means that the facilitator needs to be an individual who can both hear and communicate with both sides, then assist in the formulation of an outcome which is a synergy of the aspirations of both. With an outcome established, it is the responsibility of the institution to develop a partnership which cares for the cultural property and determines appropriate future access and use.

Creating policy The creation of policy can commence once the respective expectations of the organisation and those of the whânau, hapü or iwi (the cultural representatives) are clarified and identified. It is a matter of marrying the two into practices and processes which are congruent to both. In developing policy there should always be consideration of the scope for possible future changes as well as accommodating present needs.

Building on consultation and communication The consultation process is a generic one which can genuinely assist the determination and incorporation of appropriate Maori perspectives into custodial practice and service delivery decisions. It can be employed to help resolve intellectual and cultural property issues. But there are other initiatives that could be associated with, or indeed build on, this communication and consultation process. These include: • the development of a strategic bicultural vision statement which clarifies an institution's Treaty and bicultural aspirations; • the systematic review of policies in terms of bicultural responsiveness. Relevant policies could include: human resources management (including staff support, training, development, supervision, communication); collection management; collection development; • the systematic review of staff profiles and recruitment procedures; • the education of staff through Treaty and/or biculturalism training, thus empowering them to develop bicultural initiatives themselves whilst having a better understanding of Maori customers and colleagues. Support for the promotion of Maori perspectives within the custodial institutions and professions is slowly emerging. The Library and Information Association of New Zealand/Aotearoa (LIANZA) has reviewed its structure to be more responsive to Maori aspirations. It has also entered into a formal partnership agreement with Te Rôpù Whakahau, the Maori Library and Information Workers Association. LIANZA's Bicultural Special Interest Group, BIC SIG, has successfully been involved in initiating projects aimed at promoting biculturalism in libraries. My own institution, Auckland City Libraries, has made significant moves in terms of researching Maori attitudes and consulting with iwi in respect of internal and physical structural changes. The establishment of my position within the senior management of the library, the subsequent establishment of Te Rôpù Ràtonga Mâori/Màori Services Team and the development of a special learning space called the Whare Wananga have all been steps in the right direction. These, in my opinion, are excellent starting points but in no way should be considered as absolute or final.

Conclusion Custodial practices in libraries and archives have been shaped by centuries of developments in many different countries and cultures. The Maori view of the world has also been shaped by a comparatively long history. As earlier noted, writing and written information was readily adopted and utilised by Maori to record and impart knowledge, especially knowledge fundamental to the preservation of a uniquely Maori cultural identity. But, just as readily as writing was utilised by Maori to record information, regulators such as tapu, noa, mana, and wairua were applied to the care and use of that information. It is these concepts or regulators which should be updated to influence library and archives developments in terms of collection and conservation issues, or kaitiakitanga.This kaitiakitanga would then be truly reflective of the respective cultural needs and expectations of the custodians and the people from whom the information originates. A quick analysis of the information professions reveals that there are few Maori employed within them. Further examination reveals that even fewer are speakers of the Maori language, or knowledgeable to any significant degree in cultural practices. Only a handful of Maori occupy positions which are able to influence policy and the structures within their institutions. When this dearth is coupled with the deeply ingrained attitudes and behaviours resulting from over a century and a half of colonisation and urbanisation, it is little wonder that there is so little in the way of policies and initiatives reflecting the needs of Maori.This whole discussion illuminates the strenuous path to biculturalism. To be sure, there have been some positive initiatives, but the path is also littered with the reluctance, indecision, apathy and inactivity of very conservative influences. The key to success, I think, is to acknowledge and resolve the negatives and affirm and build on the positives. The issues earlier outlined should be recognised and understood by institutions if they are serious about understanding Maori perspectives and incorporating that thinking into their institutional cultures. This is the stuff of which inclusive policy is made. The common denominators in these complex issues are people and their need for excellent and clear communication. Concepts such as whakapapa, mana, tapu, noa, mauri wairua, etc, are Maori idioms to comprehend the human condition and therefore the actions and behaviours of people. There is also a deep underlying motivation: the human need to be heard and respected. This would seem to be a fundamental need, one transcending race, colour, culture and language differences. Any person or process which ensures the facilitation of excellent communication, communication which genuinely reflects Maori expectations and those of the library and archives professions and institutions, will truly reflect the Treaty of Waitangi.This must surely be seen as positive. Metadata and Government Information Locator Services: Opportunities to Expand New Zealand's Knowledge and Technological Capabilities?*

Michael Hoyle

Manager, Statutory Regulatory Group National Archives of New Zealand

Many nations are attempting to adapt to the technological revolution currently sweeping the globe. Creating learning and knowledge societies is viewed as essential if countries are to compete on a world scale, and increasingly commerce and other business transactions are being performed electronically. In North America and Australia the creation of standard metadata sets and the establishment of government information locator services (GILS) are envisaged as supporting a learning society and enabling or facilitating the conduct of business over the Internet. Records are a by-product of business and as such play a fundamental role in the new environment. How they are managed and maintained over time and how they mesh with other online information services are questions under investigation. In 1997 National Archives staff raised the issue of government information locator services with the New Zealand Government's then Senior Information Adviser, based in the State Services Commission. In early 1998 a National Archives representative spoke to a Government Information Systems Managers' Forum on the development of GILS overseas. It became apparent that public sector information managers were largely unaware of these initiatives and, once outlined, there was scepticism that such solutions would work in the highly devolved New Zealand state sector. Yet by the end of 1998 the situation had begun to change. New interest was being exhibited in overall government

* The views expressed in this article are those of the author and not neccessarily those of the National Archives of New Zealand. coordination of information management and technology, perhaps partly sparked by concerns that New Zealand was falling behind the rest of the world in its fostering of the information society. This paper first provides some background to New Zealand's growing knowledge economy, and assesses the potential impact of electronic commerce on the conduct of business in both the public and private sectors. It then considers overseas experiences in developing quality access to government information using metadata elements, and notes how this is becoming an enabler in transacting business. It considers implications for recordkeeping in electronic environments. The paper next examines recent New Zealand initiatives in the provision of government-wide services, and explores whether, in light of current public sector theory and management, it is possible to develop a whole- of-government approach to enhance access to information sources. Finally, possible ways forward in the present New Zealand environment are outlined.

New Zealand's knowledge economy Like most western countries, New Zealand sees itself playing a part in the global information and knowledge economy. A high level 1996 report prepared by the Information Technology Advisory Group within the Ministry of Commerce noted that: Knowledge workers will use networked IT as an indispensable tool. New Zealanders will increasingly work globally, learning particular communication and cultural skills. Organisations will flourish or falter depending on their ability to respond to the changing environment. Our agricultural, horticultural, forestry and fisheries industries will continue their evolution as 'knowledge' industries, producing a wide range of high-quality and high-value food and fibre products for niche markets world-wide. Globally networked IT will be indispensable in the production, processing and marketing tasks.1 Adding knowledge and information to industry sectors in order to produce top quality products and services was seen as the key to advancement. Information technology and telecommunications would drive change through industry sectors of society and customers would benefit by receiving faster services and superior products.2 By July 1998 New Zealand was recognised as the most networked country in the world, outstripping many larger economies, with the capital, Wellington, at the forefront of this development.3 At this time there were 4.938 Internet connected computers per 100,000 inhabitants in comparison to Australia's 4.034, Silicon Valley at 3.555 and Great Britain at 2.064.4 There is recognition that a well-educated and self motivated population linked to world information networks is likely to prosper. Globalisation is seen as fuelling competition, with the development of knowledge and technological innovation driving economic growth.5 It is argued that online information services will help reduce New Zealand's geographic isolation. Indeed, the Ministry of Commerce has contended that the development of electronic commerce might be likened to the nineteenth-century breakthrough in technology which saw the first freezer ships transport meat and dairy produce to Great Britain, thereby greatly increasing the nation's wealth and prosperity.6 But it is also recognised that there are difficulties. In terms of infrastructure, New Zealand has fewer people with technology skills in its workforce per head of population than most other OECD countries.7 In terms of electronic commerce, New Zealand has been given a wakeup call by recent reports that it has fallen behind many other western nations. A recent study suggests that businesses have a poor understanding of the potential of electronic commerce, viewing it simply as a cost cutting tool or in competition with other marketing strategies.8 One commentator notes that New Zealand is still straitjacketed by an economy based on primary products and commodity exports and that, while it may aspire to a standard of living of many European nations, its profile in the information and knowledge sectors is akin to some African states. Countries such as Australia, Canada, Ireland and Singapore are viewed as moving ahead much more quickly through strong visionary leadership and policies.9 In 1996 self-regulation and minimal intervention were seen as the watchwords of government policy. While government could play a part in fostering networks amongst key players and organisations, particularly in the innovation and technology environments, the state's primary roles were seen as setting those environments and removing barriers to growth where problems were identified, rather than making direct investments.10 Government would only intervene if there was clear market failure, and a consequent requirement to protect business and consumer confidence. Intervention would be viewed in technology neutral terms, and should only be in the form of simple and predictable regulation, which would be able to respond to change in the technological environment." By the beginning of 1999 it was being suggested that market failure had already taken place, particularly in the education and telecommunications sectors, and that Government must take decisive action to bring the country up to speed in terms of meeting the challenges of the technological revolution.12 In August 1999 the Government made a significant statement on the knowledge economy, launching its Five Steps Ahead policy package. The objectives included lifting skills and the intellectual knowledge base, better focusing efforts in research and development, improving access to investment capital, ensuring legal requirements, supporting innovation and promoting a positive environment for creative and innovative New Zealanders.13 Later in the same month a detailed report on the knowledge economy, prepared by the Information Technology Advisory Group, was released.14 Meanwhile, the Ministry of Commerce and the Law Commission have been examining potential barriers to electronic commerce, as well as issues the government needs to consider to promote a conducive environment for business to flourish. These include, for example, the admissability of electronic records as evidence. There are also security issues, including authentication of electronic communications, commercial confidentiality, integrity of transactions, as well as records retention issues, consumer protection, intellectual property rights, collection of official statistics and law enforcement and redress.15 Many of these issues are relevant to the recordkeeping profession worldwide. Government itself sees more of its work being conducted online and believes it can be a role model for doing business and offering services in the networked environment.16 It has released a Vision Statement - Electronic Government in New Zealand, which outlines how electronic government could affect New Zealanders by 2005.17 However, unlike some, generally larger, countries, New Zealand still has very few within the government structure co-ordinating a response to these challenges. Moreover, it has no specific office focusing on the information economy, such as the Australian Office of Government Online or National Office of the Information Economy.18

Development of information locator services in North America One of the keys to the information economy is access to information collected or generated by government as part of everyday business. Agencies collect information on a myriad of social, economic, scientific, technological, foreign policy and defence matters which, assuming the information is not sensitive or covered by privacy or commercial considerations, could be used by commercial interests and members of the public in the enhancement or development of services and products. Some agencies - libraries, archives and museums - are information repositories in their own right, and hold vast resources which could be made more accessible to the wider community. Perhaps predictably, initiatives aimed at improving access to government-wide information resources began in the United States. These were linked to broad information policies, most specifically the objective of reducing bureaucracy and paperwork. In 1994 the United States Federal Government began implementation of a Government Information Locator Service (GILS) project, which was viewed as an innovative networked-based approach to assist users in locating government information resources.'19 For some years there had been a push by the public, researchers, librarians and government agencies to improve access to information in both paper and electronic formats. Traditional finding aids were not keeping pace with the sheer volume of resources, and distributed networks were bringing new challenges to the dissemination and control of information.20 Better records management also became an objective of GILS. This appears to have arisen from the notion that information and records are an asset of government, and as such need to be quantified and entered on to a government's balance sheet. Data dictionaries, information resource directories and other metadata systems were examined with a view to supporting electronic records management.21 The goals of GILS were outlined in an Office of Management and Budget bulletin to all government agencies. It was anticipated the system would: • identify public information resources throughout the Federal Government; • describe information available in those resources and provide assistance in obtaining the information; • serve as a tool to improve agency electronic records management practices.22 Achievement of the goals would improve agencies' abilities to respond to Freedom of Information requests and would also 'serve to reduce the information collection burden on the public by making existing information more readily available for sharing among agencies.'23 Core locator records were to be generated which would describe information resources and formats, as well as identify other locators of information resources. Agencies were expected to determine whether records identified in the core locators were covered by an authorised disposal schedule, and if they were not they were to be brought to the attention of the Archivist of the United States with an indication of long term value once they were no longer required by the agency.24 It was always intended the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) should play a significant part in the development of GILS, publishing a guide and providing training for those producing locator records, as well as outlining how agencies could best meet their records management responsibilities. Towards the end of 1996 NARA hosted a GILS Conference, bringing together agency implementors, vendors, academics and members of the public. It quickly became apparent that there was a mix of reactions to GILS, some agencies having made progress in meeting the goals, but with others still either unclear as to their responsibilities, confused by the purpose and definition of GILS, or even resentful of having to implement such a project.25 A more comprehensive review in 1997 sought to understand how well GILS was meeting user needs, including how it improved public access to government information, how agencies were progressing with their implementation programmes and how the system was working as a tool for information resources management. The reviewers concluded that the original vision had not been achieved. What had been created was a disparate collection of agency GILS, uneven in their implementation, coverage and utility.26 Lack of lead agency co-ordination and oversight appeared to be a significant problem. In addition, there were no reporting requirements as to progress in meeting deadlines. The records management functions appeared to have been largely ignored.27 The complexity of the GILS metadata set had led to widespread implementation difficulties.28 When these problems were combined with tight budgets, a small workforce and heavy workloads, it is scarcely surprising that agencies were unable to fully realise the GILS vision. Structural change, downsizing within government and significant technological innovation were also very much a part of the state sector at the time, which meant that GILS had to compete for attention and resources in a fiscally tight environment.29 Canada has also been piloting a GILS project. Although there are similarities with the United States approach, this initiative appears to have had a clear lead agency from the outset - the Treasury Board, working with an interdepartmental group within the federal government. The objective of the Canadian GILS project has been to identify and describe government information resources and to provide high quality access to information. A record is made summarising and pointing to decentralised information resources, including information on the web, publications, databases, phone-based services, physical objects, maps and a wide variety of other formats. The aim is to create a common look, format and search service. At present it appears to be early days, the participating agencies producing thirty GILS records each.30 A further project with its roots in North America is the Global Information Locator Service, which has taken the GILS ideals beyond government in individual countries to a world service. Set up by one of the pioneers of the United States GILS project, its aim is to make it easy for people to find information of all kinds, in all media, in all languages and over time.' While it applies to all sectors, its speciality is the sharing of environment information through a project which is part of the G7 Global Information Society.31

Metadata elements The projects outlined above used metadata sets to facilitate access to government information. Metadata is data about data, and has been analysed in the following way: The Macquarie Dictionary defines the prefix 'meta' as meaning 'among,' 'together' or 'behind.' That suggests the idea of a 'fellow traveller': that metadata is not fully fledged data, but is a kind of fellow traveller with data supporting it from the sidelines32 Metadata describes resources ranging from information documents to objects, whether in electronic format or not.33 Studies indicate that describing information using a standard framework or set of principles saves time and expense in locating, accessing and finding resources within an organisation, government or globally. Precision is increased by using metadata elements for searching purposes, thus reducing the large number of hits.' Users can refine their search based on metadata fields such as name, title or keywords. This results in the delivery of smaller, more manageable and precise lists.34 Metadata can be used to catalogue an organisation's resources into simple small packages, containers, or envelopes of information. As such, these can be made available to more people than the information resource itself. Embedding metadata in information sources occurs with metatagging. SGML was viewed as the key markup or tagging language, but with the development of XML, which combines the simplicity of HTML and the power of SGML, it is likely this will become the standard of the future.35 Web-based search engines using powerful information retrieval protocols, such as the American national interconnection and interoperable query standard Z39.50, are being used to facilitate metadata interrogation.36 Worldwide there are numerous metadata standards, some more detailed than others. An architecture has been developed to handle metadata sets. This is known as the Warwick Framework, which is conceptual in its approach and uses the package and container model as its basis.37 According to Warwick Cathro of the National Library of Australia, a package may be of three types: • a 'primitive' package, which contains one or more pieces of metadata; • an 'indirect' package, which refers to another resource, for example through a link to its URL; • a container' package: a package may itself be a container.'38

The Dublin Core One particular metadata set that is beginning to take off worldwide is the Dublin Core, developed in Dublin, Ohio, to help facilitate discovery of information. Essentially a retrieval aid from the library world, it consists of 15 elements which are designed to work with other more detailed metadata standards. It has a non-prescriptive optional core and users can add additional elements if required. Simplicity is a primary objective. Basically anyone can create Dublin Core metadata elements, either manually or automatically, using appropriate software.39 The Dublin Core has attracted libraries, archives, museums, government agencies and private sector organisations and is reportedly acquiring an international reputation, having been translated into twenty languages.40 The fifteen elements are:

1. Title 2. Author or creator 3. Subject and keywords 4. Description 5. Publisher 6. Other contributor 7. Date 8. Resource type 9. Format 10. Resource identifier 11. Source 12. Language 13. Relation 14. Coverage 15. Rights management41 The Australian Government Locator Service (AGLS) metadata set Australian governments have also decided that metadata and a government locator service is a key to improving access to official information resources. The AGLS originated in the Information Management Steering Committee (IMSC), which was established by the federal Office of Government Information Technology. The IMSC released a report in August 1997, which proposed frameworks for government information policy and the deployment of information technology into the next century. One of its recommendations was the establishment of an Australian Government Information Locator Service. It was originally intended that this would follow the United States model, however in late 1998 it was decided to instead base the locator service on the Dublin Core metadata standard. The service would be cross- jurisdictional, taking into account the three tiers of government in Australia - federal, state and local. For this to be effective, it has been recognised that every agency needs to use the same elements to describe resources, and to include AGLS metadata into their information management plans. Overall, the AGLS initiative is seen as a key enabler encouraging both agencies and individuals to conduct business transactions in electronic environments, and specifically over the Internet.42 It was recognised at the outset that a high proportion of government information online, as well as business transactions between the public and/or agencies, would involve the use of records. It was also noted that the primary purpose of assigning AGLS metadata is also one of the requirements of a recordkeeping system.' As a result, the National Archives of Australia has become the lead agency for AGLS development and deployment, in conjunction with the Commonwealth Office for Government Online and the Online Council Officials.43 AGLS metadata is designed as a simple system, one easily used by government staff and adaptable to their agencies' needs. Visibility and accessibility are seen as primary objectives of the AGLS metadata standard. Primarily, the author or publisher of the resource will create the metadata that describes it.44 This process will be assisted by software tools such as robots that allow for automatic extraction or harvesting of the metadata. AGLS sets out seventeen descriptive elements, seven of which are mandatory. A reference manual setting out how these elements are to be used has been developed for agencies.45 It should be noted that AGLS has two additional elements to the Dublin Core - functional descriptor and availability. The functional descriptor is viewed as essential, as any resource made available by an agency should relate to one or more functions. This is a link back to government recordkeeping regimes and use of the Australian Records Management Standard AS4390, which employs functions-based classification methodologies. Related to this development is the role of thesauri.46 These play an important part in the control and retrieval of information. Function-based thesauri can capture the finite number of functions performed by government. Examples include Keyword AAA: A Thesaurus of General Terms, developed by State Records NSW and recently sold to the Commonwealth Government, which covers common administrative functions at all three tiers of government, and the CRS Thesaurus, which includes federal and some state and territory functions.These thesauri help users gain access to information without the need to know which tier of government administers the required information or service.47 The National Archives of Australia is pursuing various activities in its role as AGLS maintenance agency, including convening a cross- jurisdictional group to guide ongoing development of the standard, registering schemes and extensions to it, as well as liaising with the international Dublin Core community. In February 1999 the AGLS Working Group finalised its terms of reference and has settled down to work considering additional elements, such as authentication to cater for digital signatures and public keys and identification of the target audience. It is still early days, with governments and agencies in very different phases of implementation of AGLS metadata. On the positive side, it was noted that New South Wales, particularly the health, education and welfare agencies, had adopted AGLS metadata elements; that South Australia website building protocols had made AGLS the standard; and that the Tasmanian electronic publishing guidelines required AGLS for resource discovery and retrieval purposes. On the down side, there is very little metadata activity in Victorian government departments. Ausinfo reported earlier this year that it had indexed 333,000 web pages, of which some 40,000 contain metadata (about 12%), but that only 1% of searches are using metadata for accessing resources.48

Research into the development of an Australian recordkeeping metadata standard To date, most of the discussion has centred around 'information.'While records are a subset of information, they are evidence of business transactions and are 'time bound.' Information is current, up to date and timeless.' Records need to be captured into recordkeeping systems which will have quite different functional requirements to information systems. Electronic records are recognisably different to other information sources, often needing to be migrated into new generations of technology.49 As noted above, AGLS is being viewed as a key enabler for the transaction of business electronically. Records are a by-product of business and, given that governments and organisations are conducting services and business electronically, there is a need to ensure that records survive for accountability and evidential purposes. A group of academic researchers at Monash University and the University of New South Wales, in conjunction with partners from archival institutions as well as the Australian Council of Archives and the Records Management Association of Australia, have been brought together to consider the issues. This is known as the SPIRT (named after an Australian Research Council Grant - Strategic Partnership with Industry and Research and Training) Recordkeeping Metadata project. The main objective of the project is to develop a standardised set of metadata for recordkeeping.50 A draft prepared by the group for comment focuses on conceptual mapping and the 'extensive research on records management and archival standards and existing metadata sets in the records and archives sector nationally and internationally, as well as reference to evolving generic metadata sets such as the Dublin Core, and related sector specific sets such as the Australian Government Locator Service.'51 This research and mapping has resulted in a recordkeeping metadata scheme which includes generic elements which identify and describe features of the business contexts in which records are created, the people or agents involved, the records, and the relationships amongst and between these entities - and elements that relate specifically to recordkeeping processes'.52 Metadata elements that manage the metadata itself are also being developed. Researchers have provided some thought-provoking comments on the draft. Some conceptual confusion in the AGLS metadata set has been noted. It will be interesting to see where this heads, and the practical implications in the longer term of linking recordkeeping metadata elements back to business processes.

New Zealand public sector initiatives in information management and technology So what is the situation in New Zealand? In particular, what is the state sector doing to increase the accessibility of information resources? What metadata work has been undertaken and which agency is taking the lead? Is any work being carried out in relation to recordkeeping issues identified by the Ministry of Commerce in its electronic commerce report? One of Treasury's seven key principles for a well run government is to ensure the efficient use of information'.53 Chief executives have recognised this and developed the high level Policy Framework for Government Held Information partly in response. This defines information in its broadest sense and views information as a strategic resource that requires good management through the life cycle of design, creation, collection, processing, maintenance, distribution, retrieval, retention and disposal by the Crown on behalf of the people of New Zealand. Agencies are considered to be stewards' of government information, and as such are expected to implement responsible information management.54 In late 1998 and early 1999 the State Services Commission gave some thought to the development and implementation of a 'whole-of- government' information strategy. There appears to be recognition of some of the problems surrounding information silos, and of the need to share data, technology and services between agencies. Such sharing would have the advantage of capturing information once, but using it many times. This concept is still being developed but thinking foreshadows a desired set of standards for secure data exchange, recordkeeping, monitoring, intergrated service delivery, government intranet and extranet, enhanced New Zealand Government Online (NZGO), and government metadata.55 Other work is continuing and there appears to be support within government for the Officials Information Management Group, which is focusing upon a shared framework for developing metadata; for the work of the loose group of volunteers from the public and private sectors considering the development of a guide to the Australian Records Management Standard AS4390; and for the work being carried out by National Archives on managing electronic records. It is possible, of course, that there will be suspicion of these ideas, some of which could viewed as the 'thin end of the wedge', foreshadowing return to a sort of central control. In addition, those working on pilot projects associated with the Policy Framework for Government Held Information report some resistance to the concept of sharing resources across specific sectors, and outright resentment on the part of some agencies at being required to consider data beyond its immediate business use. Changing these views will be part of the challenge.

New Zealand Government Online (NZGO) Some of the work within the government sector is looking at enhancing the front end Internet gateway to the New Zealand Government. In many respects NZGO has the potential to become a fully fledged locator service linking to agency produced metadata sets. NZGO was formed from the amalgamation of two previous government sites and launched in 1997. Its purpose is to provide easy access by which the world can find out about New Zealand Government and its services'.56 NZGO, which is administered by the Department of Internal Affairs and is overseen by an Advisory Board with representatives from various agencies, acts as a gateway to over two hundred government web sites. It guides the user to a database containing departmental and agency details, services and keywords to the appropriate agency. NZGO also has a 'What's New Online?' section, a news announcements service and entries to indexes relating to consultation documents and public sector publications. It fields email inquiries either directly or by forwarding them to the appropriate agency. The main users of NZGO are from New Zealand, the United States and Australia, with the majority of email inquiries relating to student research, immigration, employment opportunities, legislation and contacts for Ministers.57 NZGO was relaunched in September 1999- The redeveloped site offers a referral service which includes a searchable database containing relevant agency details allowing the user to find the appropriate agency. Text-based searching is made possible using the Ultraseek Server search engine, which is able to index documents on all government web sites.58

Officials working group on metadata The arguments for metadata standards for accessing and managing government information are no different in New Zealand to those advanced in other countries. While government here is generally smaller, and there are fewer tiers than in many countries, there is still a vast array of resources which could be described. In 1999 officials from a number of government agencies met to discuss information management issues considered to be important from a whole-of- government perspective. Co-operation between agencies, and the exploration of options relating to generic aspects of managing information management, are the Officials Working Group's primary objectives. Metadata has been seen as a priority, with the Ministry of the Environment taking the facilitative role as a consequence of its contract relationship with the Crown Research Institute, Landcare New Zealand, the latter having been involved with the geospatial metadata standard ANZLIC.59 The working group has been influenced by developments in Australia, with AGLS as well as the Dublin Core, and has suggested that a metadata framework 'is needed that satisfies the core needs of three groups of users - agency staff, their clients and ultimately the public'A three-tier approach to metadata has been put forward, with the elements of each tier being a subset of those in the next lower tier. The group has recommended that internal systems be adapted by agencies to facilitate metadata collection, and that web-based systems be developed or enhanced for interagency metadata dissemination and use. The group has also suggested that a series of working parties be established to implement a whole-of-government infrastructure.60 The working group did not explicitly evaluate the systems currently in place within agencies. It nevertheless considered that the problems of implementing the proposed solutions were essentially organisational and cultural, and that the technical issues, although significant, were not insurmountable and did not require the allocation of considerable resources. The solution, in its simplest form, includes storing metadata records in each web page produced by agencies, setting up a computer with a central index for whole-of-government metadata, periodically sending out a robot that interprets the metadata in web pages, noting the results, and placing them in the central index. A web page would be provided with a form which would be used to search the metadata.61

National Archives and metadata work Unlike its Australian counterpart, National Archives has not been considered a major player in metadata research. This may be because National Archives is viewed, at best, as an institution primarily preserving archives for historical research or, at worst, a warehouse for old records no longer in current administrative use. National Archives needs to be able to have greater input into government information policy. Despite having an enormous stake in government information through its management of records and archives, National Archives was only able to contribute indirectly into the Policy Framework for Government Held Information. National Archives has more recently become involved in the Officials Working Group on Metadata, largely through its participation in the Government Information Systems Managers' Forum. In addition, the acting Director & Chief Archivist has prepared a brief paper entitled Seamless Access to Government Information, which was circulated by the Secretary for Internal Affairs amongst Chief Executives. This was followed by a similar paper on recordkeeping metadata which was forwarded to the State Services Commission.

The future and a way forward? While all of this activity is encouraging, there are still difficulties. Some of the experiences faced in the United States GILS implementation could well be replicated in the current New Zealand environment. These include ongoing restructuring of the public sector, attempts to implement significant technological change in a fiscally tight environment, and IT resources, at least in the last two years and for the immediate future, being tied up in Y2K compliance work. More fundamentally, unless government agencies are specifically resourced for the task of collecting metadata, and there is leadership and control from a central agency, they are unlikely to devote significant resources to such concepts. While the work of such groups as the Officials Working Party on Metadata and the committee considering a guide to AS4390 is commendable, neither is likely to progress far without funding, sponsorship and endorsement by core government agencies. While NZGO has been successful and the Department of Internal Affairs and NZGO's supporting board have demonstrated leadership in this area, there is further potential to develop this initiative beyond its current parameters. In the short term, however, while the development of a local metadata standard or one based on AGLS is being considered, and given the scale of New Zealand government and the limited resourcing available, the current service may be sufficient to meet user needs. There are other areas that could be investigated, including the use of thesauri. Like its Australian counterpart, National Archives has considerable experience in describing government records and agencies in its G AIMS system62, this finding aid providing access to information from all parts of government. In future, a specific set of recordkeeping metadata could also be examined, possibly by National Archives. In addition, once working parties have been set up to pursue the aims of a government metadata standard, a pilot project similar in style to the Canadian GILS effort could be established to test methodologies and refine the processes through direct agency experience. Because of its small size New Zealand has had a successful history of borrowing ideas, methodologies and strategies from the rest of the world, then adapting them, often with minimal resources, to the local environment. It may in the short term be worth investigating joining as a partner within the AGLS project. This would have benefits for New Zealand and could lead to an Australasian standard. Such an approach would be tempting from a cost perspective, and would avoid the need to reinvent the wheel, but funding for such an initiative would still be required. In the longer term, National Archives must seriously consider its own role in these developments. There are significant issues involving re- engineering processes in electronic environments, and the institution's relations with the full government sector must be reshaped if it is to move from being seen as a storehouse of old records. Resourcing remains an issue and National Archives' future in the cultural heritage sector is still uncertain.

Conclusion Metadata and government information locator services can play an important role in expanding New Zealand's knowledge and technological capabilities. The use of metadata for managing information and making it available to the widest possible audience provides a rich opportunity for the nation to add value to current services and products. In addition, metadata and GILS can help to facilitate and enable business processes and service delivery over the Web. Evidence from overseas suggests, however, that these services need to be well articulated, planned, co-ordinated, unambiguously assigned to appropriate lead agencies, and managed with appropriate resourcing. The development of a recordkeeping metadata set will assist in resolving some of the issues which are currently seen as a barrier to the development of electronic commerce, particularly, in terms of records-related issues. New Zealand's relatively small size will always be a handicap. For the foreseeable future New Zealand should continue to view overseas developments, try when possible to participate in these, and when appropriate continue to adapt proven solutions to its own environment. In participating in the global digital economy we may see an indigenous solution evolving along these lines.

1 Ministry of Commerce, Impact 2001: How Information Technology Will Change New Zealand, Information Technology Advisory Group, 1996 (accessed 12 May 1999). Http://www.moc.govt.nz/itag/impact.html. 2 Ibid.

3 R. van den Burgh, New Zealand Rated Poorly Over Embracing Hi Tech Economy' The Dominion May 19, 1999, p23This article essentially relates to comments made by Professor Howard Frederick, Chair of Communications, Victoria University, Wellington, who will shortly be tabling a report to government on New Zealand's knowledge economy.

4 Figures from the New Zealand Internet Institute. Quoted in eCommerce in New Zealand, First Annual Study Results, Ernst and Young and The New Zealand Institute of Management, April 1999, p5.

5 Ministry of Research, Science and Technology, The Foresight Project: Building Tomorrows' Success, ongoing project commenced in 1996 (accessed 12 May 1999) http://www.morst.govt.nz/foresight . . . folders/project/success/framewhtm. 6 Ministry of Commerce, Electronic Commerce:The "Freezer Ship"of the 21st Century, November 1998 (accessed 12 May 1999).

http://www.morst.govt.nz/ran/itpg/ecommerce.ecomm.html. 7 The Foresight Project: Building Tomorrows' Success.

8 eCommerce in New Zealand, First Annual Study Results. Interestingly at the launch of this study it was reported that the very first question asked by a member of the audience was 'How can we compete in this environment?'

9 R. van den Burgh, op cit.

10 The Foresight Project: Building Tomorrow' Success.

11 Impact 2001: How Information Technology Will Change New Zealand.

12 R. van den Burgh, op cit.

13 M. Bradford, Minister For Enterprise and Commerce. Message Entitled 'The Electronic Edge' in eCommerce in New Zealand, First Annual Study Results and Bright Future: Making Ideas Work for New Zealand, Ministry of Commerce, Wellington, August, 1999. 14 Ministry of Commerce, The Knowledge Economy, Information Technology Advisory Group, August 1999 (accessed 4 October 1999). http://www.moc.govt.nz/pbt/ infotech/knowledge_economy/index.html.

15 Electronic Commerce: The "Freezer Ship" of the 21st Century.

16 eCommerce in New Zealand, First Annual Study Results.

17 State Services Commission, Vision Statement - Electronic Government in New Zealand (accessed 4 October 1999). http://www.ssc.govt.nz/documents/evision/.

18 R van den Burgh, op cit. 19 W. E. Moen and C. R. McClure An Evaluation Report of the Federal Government's Implementation of the Government Information locator Service, Final Report, Executive Summary, June 30 1997, (accessed 12 May 1999). http://www.unt.edu/slis/research/gilsseval/toc.htm.

20 W. E. Moen and C.R. McClure, Ibid, Final Report. Chapter 2. Overview and Background on GILS. 21 W.E. Moen and C. R. McClure op cit. 22 OMB Bulletin No

23 Ibid.

24 Ibid.

25 Ibid. 26 W.E. Moen and C. R. McClure, op cit, Final Report. Executive Summary.

27 W. E. Moen and C. R. McClure, op cit. There is an interesting literature review of the GILS project in this report. Moen and McClure note that nearly all writers concentrate on the access side of GILS and all but ignore the records management possibilities. 28 A. Cunningham,'The Australian Government Locator Service: Enabling Seamless Online Access to Government.' First presented to the Metadata Unravelled Seminar held at the National Library of Australia. August 1998. Available on the National Archives of Australia web site (accessed 16 May 1999). http://www.naa.gov.au/ govserv/agls/metadata_paper2september98.htm.

29 W.E. Moen. and C. R. McClure, op cit.

30 "What is GILS ?' and GILS Overview,' Government of Canada (accessed 9 May 1999).

http://gils.srv.gc. ca/english/gils_info/what_is_gils. cfm.

http://gils.srv.gc.ca/english/gils_overview/overview.cfm.

31 Global Information Locator Service (accessed 15 May 1999)· http://www.gils.net/ locator.html. This site was probably the best demonstration of a live GILS approach and led me to all sorts sites and links including a state based site: Find It ! Washington. A project of Washington State Government Information Locator Service which is maintained by the Washington State Library (accessed 15 May 1999) http:/ /find-it. state.wa.us/compas.

32 W Cathro, 'Metadata: An Overview' National Library of Australia. Paper to Standards - Australia Seminar Matching Discovery and Recovery. August 1997 (accessed 25 May 1999). http://www.nla.gov.au/nla/staffpaper.cathro3.html.

33 Office of Government Technology and National Archives of Australia, The Australian Government Locator Service (AGLS) Manual For Users, (accessed 8 March 1999).

http://www.naa.gov.au/govserv/agls/user_manual.htm. 34 What is GILS ? and GILS Overview, op cit.

35 What is GILS ? and GILS Overview, op cit and A Cunningham, op cit. 36 Global Information Locator Service, op cit. 37 W Cathro, op cit.

38 Ibid.

39 The Dublin Core Initiative,'The Dublin Core: A Simple Content Description Model For Resources' (accessed 8 March 1999). http://purl.oclc.org/metadata/dublin_core. 40 D. Bearman, G. Rust, S.Weibel, E. Miller, J. Trant, Ά Common Model to Support Interoperable Metadata.' 'Progress Report on Reconciling Metadata Requirements From the Dublin Core and INDECS/DOI Communities,' D-lib Magazine, vol. 5 no. 1, January 1999 (accessed 16 May 1999). http://www.dlib.org/dlib/january99/bearman/ 01bearman.html.

41 The Dublin Core Initiative, op cit.

42 A. Cunningham, op cit.

43 Ibid.

44 Australian Government Locator Service, op cit.

45 A. Cunningham, op cit.

46 Ibid.

47 M. Hoy, Understanding Official Government Terminology: National Language Searching and Government Thesauri, National Archives of Australia, 3 September 1998 (accessed 16 May 1999).

http://www.naa.gov.au/govserv/agls/papers/agift_3_september.htm.

48 Australian Government Locator Service Working Group Meeting. February 1999 Minutes (accessed 8 March 1999). http://www.naa.gov/agls/papers/ agls_workgroup_mins.htm. 49 C. Hurley, Seamless Access to Government Information, Memo to Chief Executive, Department of Internal Affairs, National Archives of New Zealand, 19 February 1999. 50 SPIRT Project Reports. Records Continuum Research Group. Monash University (accessed 15 May 1999). http://www.sims.monash.edu.au/rcrg/research/spirt/ spirtreports/ and S. McKemmish and G.Acland,'Accessing Essential Evidence on the Web:Towards An Australian Recordkeeping Metadata Standard', AUSWEB 99 (accessed 15 May 1999). http://ausweb.scu.edu.au/aw99/papers/mckemmish/

51 Ibid.

52 Ibid. 53 Quoted in A Schick, The Spirit of Reform: Managing the New Zealand State Sector in a Time of Change, A Report Prepared for the State Services Commission and The Treasury,Wellington, August 1996, pl8-19. 54 State Services Commission, Policy Framework For Government Held Information, Wellington, 1997. 55 State Services Commission, Leading the Public Sector Into the Information Age, Wellington, 1999 (accessed 4 October 1999). http://www.ssc.govt.nz/siteset.htm.

56 R. Blakeley, New Zealand Government Online (NZGO) - http://www.govt.nz, Presentation to Chief Executives' IT Conference, Government of New Zealand, February 1999.

57 Ibid. 58 NZGO relaunch leaflet dated 20 September 1999- 59 Draft Metadata Framework, Officials Working Group on Metadata, Government of New Zealand, March 1999. 60 Ibid.

61 Ibid. 62 GAIMS is broadly based on the CRS system of the National Archives of Australia. Comment Archives and Heritage

J.O.C. Phillips

Acting General Manager Heritage Group, Department of Internal Affairs

Since the April 1999 issue of Archifacts included three contributions attacking the present inclusion of the National Archives within the Heritage Group of the Department of Internal Affairs, readers might be interested in a rather different perspective. The editorial and the articles by J.E. Traue and the Hon Dr Michael Cullen varied in the details, but the burden of their case is not radically different from the arguments that have been rehearsed over the past 18 months and can be summarised as follows: the inclusion of the National Archives within the Heritage Group represents a distortion of the true function of the National Archives. The purpose of a National Archives is to keep governments accountable as democracy demands, arid the "fact that the National Archives also contains records of interest to a small minority of people called historians is a secondary consequence. A heritage focus will reinforce old-fashioned images of the National Archives as concerned with the 'dusty dead files', whereas in fact the energies of the institution should be directed at ensuring good recordkeeping in government as is consistent with the 'continuum model'. Two other points are made. First, that the motivation for the creation of the Heritage Group was, in Michael Cullen's words, to serve 'as the "white knight", providing protective cover for other more exposed outliers of the Internal Affairs empire', namely the Historical Branch and the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Second, that internationally no respectable National Archives is associated with heritage or cultural agencies, except for an experiment in the state of Victoria which is cited repeatedly as an example of the disastrous effects of such a linkage. Obviously I do not agree with this argument and I believe at the very least it should be tested. Let us begin with the view that a heritage focus will distort the National Archives' true function of providing accountability for government. In my view the alleged conflict between accountability and heritage is a false one. For a start, the democratic principle that governments should be accountable to those who elect them and that good records permit this to happen is itself part of our heritage - indeed it is at the very core of our history as a democratic society. Second, accountability means far more than simply checking up on the decisions and processes of ministers and officials; it is also about making this society accountable for the meanings and traditions which over time it has bestowed on its members. Here National Archives with its enormous range and quantity of sources has a central role. In this respect it is worth quoting Sue McKemmish in another article in the same issue. She defines the role of recordkeeping in relation to accountability as ' facilitating good governance' and underpinning accountability mechanisms'. That is as one would expect. But then she adds that accountability also involves 'constituting corporate, national and societal memory, constructing individual, community and national identity, providing authoritative sources of information.' In other words she defines accountability as encompassing 'historical and cultural accountability as they relate to memory and identity'. This is the sense in which the vast majority of users at National Archives are exercising accountability. If you go into the reading room at National Archives, you will find very few readers of documents who are in the act of facilitating good governance. There are few journalists or auditors or even lawyers exercising their democratic rights. The vast majority are historians, some of whom are working for example on Waitangi Tribunal cases and so in a very real sense are calling government to account. But far more are exploring the ways in which New Zealand society of the past in its collective assumptions and behaviours and institutional practices is called to account for the legacy, the long-term effects, the heritage no less, which has been bestowed on the society of today. There are people looking at what New Zealand society did to women in the past, or to Pacific Islanders, or to immigrants, or to those who were called to serve in war - all these researchers are calling our history to account. Looked at in this way I find it very hard to draw sharp distinctions between accountability and heritage. It is time to get real about who the users of National Archives actually are. The vast number of users are historians if we include family historians; and they are not a minority voice as Jim Traue would have us believe. They are working as the agents of the New Zealand people giving back to the people some accountability for the decisions of the past, and they are giving all of us a sense of identity and collective memory. Third, it is entirely fallacious to assume that those interested in heritage will not be interested in good recordkeeping in the present. Anyone who has worked researching in National Archives knows only too well that the time spent in trawling through files and finding aids bears fruit in relation to the quality of the initial recordkeeping. Records which are comprehensive, well organised and accurately described are a sheer joy to historians. The continuum model is not a reason to separate accountability and recordkeeping functions from heritage ones, but rather the reverse. The historical function requires really good recordkeeping from the moment of creation. Fourth, what ultimately distresses me about the strong distinction drawn between the accountability function and the heritage function is that it leads to an evident contempt for the historical service which National Archives provides and the historical treasures which it holds. In the eagerness to prove that National Archives has nothing to do with the dust heap' of history, that it is not a museum, critics of the Heritage Group have done a terrible disservice to the National Archives itself. For only narrow-minded philistines can possibly think of history as a dust heap'. The fact is that this generation of New Zealanders have begun to discover the extraordinary richness of their own history, and have begun to realise that you cannot understand yourself unless you understand your past. The search for personal or collective identity, whether iwi, group or national identity, has produced a growing fascination with our past. The wonderful response to Jamie Belich's television series on the New Zealand Wars, not to mention the spectacular sales of the New Zealand Historical Atlas, points to a nation which is discovering its past. In this awakening National Archives has a huge role to play. The fact is that the National Archives contains the most important collection of documents in the country, arguably more significant than those great collections of the Alexander Turnbull Library. It contains a huge and unique collection of maps and plans, over a thousand pieces of war art, an extensive holding of photographs and the most important historic collection of the nation's films. To underplay these holdings at this time of an awakening interest in our nation's heritage is both stupid and irresponsible. It is very hard to argue for example that the collection of National Film Studio titles needs to be urgently converted from nitrate stock to safety film on the grounds of accountability. How do these films make governments accountable in the narrow sense? They do not. But if you see your mission as preserving the nation's heritage, as enforcing a much wider sense of accountability, then it is easy to argue that those films should be saved because they are at the very core of national identity. The unfortunate effect of a deliberate choice to de-emphasise heritage is that New Zealanders will simply be deprived of access to these items which are so important to who we are as New Zealanders. There will be no energy put into making heritage available. The fact is that much urgently needs to be done in this respect. Not only do the films need converting to safety stock; it is almost impossible to use the photograph collection, most of which is neither on display nor catalogued. As for the documentary holdings, the finding aids have become over the years a scandal to those of us used to the digital services provided at libraries throughout New Zealand and at archives around the world. Here we come to the nub of the issue. Why are these treasures not easily accessible to the people of New Zealand? It is not because the staff are unwilling (they are unfailingly helpful and enthusiastic) but primarily because the National Archives has been historically underfunded. The institution has not had the resources which its status demands. When we established the Heritage Group there was an urgent need to do something about this situation; creating the Heritage Group was one way of doing so.The fact is that the major items of expenditure required at National Archives involved the protection and making accessible of its historical holdings. It is true that much would be gained by attracting additional resources for the statutory/regulatory group in its monitoring role of recordkeeping. But huge expenditure - of many millions - was called for to protect the holdings of Archives House from fire, earthquake risk and leaks. Almost as large sums were needed to preserve the historic films, to store and provide catalogues for the photograph collection and to provide users with finding aids. In my view there is much greater likelihood of public and political support for funding on this scale if it is seen as protecting the heritage of the country than if it is tied - in some cases by an obscure logic - to providing accountability for government. Over the past decade successive governments have shown a willingness to invest in enhancing a sense of heritage important to the nation's identity. The major investment in Te Papa is the best example of this; and indeed if we compare the financial support going to the National Archives with that going to the other national heritage institutions, the Alexander Turnbull Library and Te Papa, then there is no doubt that the Archives comes off worst despite the fact that its heritage assets are at least as important as the other two. Why is this - is it perhaps that the heritage argument has not been used effectively on behalf of National Archives? Further, over the past three years first the Coalition Government and now the National Government have explicitly argued for the importance of heritage goals. The Coalition Government claimed that one of its Strategic Result Areas was to develop programmes 'which stimulate and affirm New Zealand's evolving identity and cultural heritage', while today's government has as an overarching goal the statement, 'We are proud of our New Zealand identity and will celebrate, foster and protect our cultural, natural and historical heritage.' The urgent desire for a strategy which would attract funding to protect and make accessible the holdings of the National Archives was one major reason for the inclusion of the National Archives in the Heritage Group. Another was the hope that these goals would be facilitated through the synergies with the other heritage units of the Department. If the National Archives was to awaken a heightened public consciousness of its assets, then the particular experiences and talents of the Historical Branch and Dictionary staff could only be useful, while those units in turn would benefit from close relations with National Archives, its skilled archivists and its rich sources. Exhibitions, genealogical projects, publications, websites might be expected to follow. The argument, promoted by Michael Cullen, that the reason was to protect the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography and the Historical Branch is absurd. Both units are quite capable of rising or falling on their own records. Their achievements over the last decade are well known and they do not need protective help. If Treasury is looking for savings and wishes to recommend their cessation, it will not make the slightest difference in what group they are located. No, doing something to lift the profile and funding of National Archives and improve its services to customers were the major motives, and if the past 16 months of the group's existence is any indication, the strategy is working. In that time the Heritage Group has gained almost $2 million from the Department for a new roof, earthquake strengthening and fire protection in the National Archives in Wellington; it has obtained a further $3 million which will climate control one floor of records in the building and provide storage on another floor for the next twenty years; and it has won the first substantial investment of funding for the computerisation of finding aids. In addition the units of the group have combined in the production of a web-site, NZhistory.net, which draws upon the research and writings of the Dictionary and Historical Branch alongside National Archives' photos and paintings. In April of this year the site attracted over 200,000 hits. These successes have not been to the diminution of the important role of the National Archives in monitoring recordkeeping. Over that time a Local Government Schedule and a full appraisals review have been completed; and the Department has pushed consistently for the important place of the National Archives in regulating electronic records policies throughout Government. This has been articulated especially by Roger Blakeley at a Chief Executives' group developing IT policy for government. Finally, it is worth looking at the examples from overseas. Almost nowhere else, we are told, do respectable archives align themselves with heritage - other that is than in the disastrous example of Victoria, Australia. So I started looking at websites to see if this was true. I started at the Public Record Office, Victoria's archives, where so we are told, they have been taught the folly of their ways. Yet on opening the site in 1999 we find two strap-lines, Managing Victorian Government Documents' and 'Preserving Victoria's Heritage'. We go to the two neighbouring states - in South Australia, we open the page for the State Records of South Australia and immediately find the following strap- line, 'Welcome to State Records home of much of South Australia's rich and colourful heritage'. In New South Wales we learn that State Records operates as one of the State's cultural institutions within the Arts portfolio', alongside the art gallery, two museums, the state library, the opera house and the Historic Houses Trust. The agency defines its various roles as 'a co-ordinating agency of Government; a provider of services to the people and Government of New South Wales, and the protector and preserver of the State's archives as an irreplaceable part of our collective memory and cultural heritage.' So then I went further afield to Canada, where I found that the National Archives are part of Canadian Heritage and where its webpage introduces the institution in this way: 'The National Archives of Canada preserves Canada's archival heritage'.We take flight across the Atlantic and land first at the National Archives of Ireland which turns out to be part of the Department of Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands, and we finally land at the Public Record Office. In answer to the question, Why we are here' the answer is 'We are the Nation's memory, the national archives for England, Wales and the United Kingdom' and to the question Why we do this', the answer is 'The records provide information which is needed and used: • for historical and genealogical research; • to ensure government accountability to the people over time; • to help government in decision making; • as legal evidence'. So for the holiest of holies, the Public Record Office, historical and genealogical research is not a subsidiary part of their function. It is the first one they cite. The point is clear enough. It is simply untrue that overseas archival institutions do not regard their historical or heritage functions as subordinate or unimportant. They are all proud to claim their role in documenting the identities of their country or state. All that the Heritage Group is claiming is that the heritage and historical functions of our National Archives must also be recognised, promoted and properly funded because that institution holds so much of the key evidence of our national identity. This is not to say that the heritage function should be the only or even primary function of the New Zealand National Archives. In order for the record of government to be properly maintained there must be a strong institution to ensure that the records of government are managed from their moment of creation, and the logical institution to carry out this vital function is the National Archives. This role is especially pertinent at this moment when conventions about electronic records and their storage are being established. Because of this record management role I have always and consistently argued that the National Archives should be an independent Crown entity which is not part of a department. If the National Archives is to perform the audit role of overseeing government records then there is the danger of a conflict of interest if the Chief Archivist is also part of a department. To this extent I fully agree with the sentiments of the three articles in the April issue which advocated an independent status for the Archives. Roger Blakeley and the Department of Internal Affairs have also promoted this viewpoint and in its submission to the Historic Heritage Review the Department argued that the National Archives should become a Crown entity reporting to a Minister of Culture and Heritage. If Crown entity status does arrive, then I hope that it gives us a National Archives which has the funding and the status to carry out its twin functions. One will be as the record management authority for government, respected, influential and able to ensure that electronic records throughout government are securely protected in an orderly searchable form, so that there will be a seamless transition from departmental search engines to archival finding aids. The second function will be to display and make accessible its wonderful treasures from the past - so that whether it is through visits to the website or in queues of people at its exhibitions and displays of the Treaty, the National Archives is respected and well-known as one of the great storehouses of our national heritage. All New Zealanders coming to Wellington will be expected to visit the National Archives just as Americans know they must visit their own National Archives. These hopes for a proud and authoritative National Archives require in the end political decisions which politicians must take. At this point in time the National Archives remains within the Department of Internal Affairs, and while it does so I believe that it is appropriately sited within the Heritage Group. The results of that positioning over the past 16 months speak for themselves.

A Response to Dr Phillips: ARANZ/NZSG Joint Action Committee As might be expected from a principal architect of the proposal, Dr Phillips staunchly defends the Department of Internal Affairs' incorporation of National Archives within its Heritage Group. It is therefore regrettable that his defence is not based more firmly on evidence and reasoned argument. Dr Phillips challenges the notion that National Archives' primary roles are constitutional and administrative, the completeness and integrity of the public record thereby facilitating an ancillary role, the provision of information for wider (including cultural) research purposes. In his view, the National Archives is, in essence, One of the great storehouses of our national heritage', a resource awaiting the attention of historians. That the institution might be more properly regarded as, as Dr Michael Cullen has so cogently argued (Archifacts, April 1999), a firm historical, legal, institutional and constitutional rock to which the record of government and public affairs can be tethered' does not seem to be grasped. He also challenges commonly accepted public sector and archival concepts of what accountability means. For Dr Phillips, 'accountability means far more than simply checking up on the decisions and processes of ministers and officials; it is also about making this society accountable for the meanings and traditions which over time it has bestowed on its members'. By his yardstick, virtually any research use of National Archives, whether the topic be nineteenth century dog licenses or the incidence of deviant sexual practices, would be for accountability reasons. To attempt to invoke Sue McKemmish (Archifacts, April 1999) in support of such a definition is disingenuous, as readers of her paper will see for themselves. But then it was Dr Phillips who earlier maintained that the Historical Branch, through its production of commissioned histories, was unmistakably an instrument of accountability, a proposition also well and truly scotched by Dr Cullen in his 1998 ARANZ conference paper. Dr Phillips' candid observation that he finds it very hard to draw sharp distinctions between accountability and heritage' is startling. It might have been assumed that a senior member of the new public service would be familiar with the discussions of accountability by commentators such as Schick, Martin or Boston, or the multiplicity of relevant State Services Commission background papers. While Dr Phillips' concern for the interests of historians is perhaps understandable, and better access to the National Archives collections for historians would be generally supported, he seems unable to comprehend that history' and 'heritage' are not necessarily the same things. As Professor David Loewenthal, a distinguished heritagist and internationally respected historical scholar, has recently noted, 'history and heritage are not so much disparate species as opposite sexes'. Whereas history seeks to arrive at an approximation of the truth through the meticulous examination of evidence, heritage has very different objectives: Heritage is not history, even when it mimics history. It uses historical traces and tells historical tales, but these tales and traces are stitched into fables that are open neither to critical analysis nor to comparative scrutiny . . . Heritage exaggerates and omits, candidly invents and frankly forgets, and thrives on ignorance and error . . . Heritage is immune to critical reappraisal because it is not erudition but catechism. Under its governing legislation National Archives is required to collect and preserve evidence, evidence which may be used by historians (academic, public, family), but which may also be used by a wide range of other citizens. Its strength is as the impartial custodian. Should National Archives now be redirected to the support of national myth- making (whether or not dressed in the cloak of 'national identity')? Should its resources, as part of the Heritage Group, be increasingly diverted to the mounting of glitzy exhibitions, a programme of insubstantial publications, the production of entertainment videos and computer games? Should New Zealanders' pasts be sanitised, packaged and sold back to them as limited edition, special offer collectibles? Will Dr Phillips deny these are all scenarios forecast in the April 1997 business case prepared for the Heritage Group? A heritage identity for National Archives would be the antithesis of its impartial stewardship function. Heritage is frequently manipulative. It has been the resort of many a deeply unpopular administration and its officials, the impacts of an unsettled present and questionable future being theoretically lessened by the active promotion of an idealised past. In support of his personal view of National Archives' role, Dr Phillips enjoins critics to 'get real', asserting that 'the vast number of users...are historians'. Whether or not this is true, or matters, remains debatable. Just how Dr Phillips determines who is an historian, and who is not, is unclear. How many of those he labels 'historians' are actually consulting the collections for 'heritage' purposes? Dr Phillips appears to suggest, for example, that Waitangi claims researchers might come under the heritage umbrella. But is this correct? Whatever their disciplinary background or inclination, such researchers are seeking evidence to either support or rebut cases, in short are concerned with establishing rights. Further, by the term 'vast number', is Dr Phillips referring to the total number of researcher visits, or to the number of individual researchers visiting National Archives? Are repeated visits by a scholar researching a book or article inherently more important than one-off use by a citizen from the street seeking to verify rights - sighting personal naturalisation papers, checking a parent's transferred probate? For the great majority of New Zealanders personal recourse to the National Archives will always be infrequent. What is critical is that the relevant records exist and may be consulted if needed. That is no less than the citizen's right. Curiously, Dr Phillips completely ignores one of National Archives other major user groups - the departments and agencies that have transferred their non-current records to the institution's custody. He appears to equate use of the collections with reading room use and possibly written public enquiries. Possibly Dr Phillips' most incomprehensible claim is that critics of the Heritage Group concept have done National Archives a terrible disservice' by fostering an evident contempt for the historical service which ... (the institution) ... provides and the treasures which it holds'. The fostering of such an attitude by critics is a figment of Dr Phillips' imagination. Ironically, many of the current critics have been using, and appreciating, those services, and have been acutely conscious of the treasures' within the collections, for decades. More importantly, many have long promoted the institution, actively campaigned for its better support, often in the face of general scholarly indifference. Arguably, having no personal stakes in the success of the Heritage Group, the critics see the realities of the present situation with clearer eyes. What they have urged is proper respect for National Archives' legislated functions.Their position is summed up in an October 1998 submission by the Action Committee to the State Services Commission: To make a distinction . . . (between a national archival authority's constitutional, administrative and cultural roles)...is not to belittle or downgrade the cultural use of archives. Such use is highly significant, and most ARANZ and NZSG members fall into this user category. The point to be stressed is that it is wholly improper for an archival authority's primary roles (constitutional, administrative) to be obscured and/or distorted by an imposed secondary (cultural) focus. This would be analogous to the tail wagging the dog. It may well be that repeated dismissal of the concerns of committed long-term supporters of National Archives ultimately does the institution the greater disservice. As clarification, it was a recent Minister of Internal Affairs who conjured up the image of the 'dustheap'. One point upon which critics and Dr Phillips can agree is that National Archives has been historically underfunded'. Most who have had any meaningful association with the institution would concur that the habitual neglect, the reluctance of its parent department to spend money on caring for the collections or making them accessible, to even (until recently) make a convincing case to government for additional funding, has been scandalous'. Arguably, it took the public attention focused on the institution by the present controversy to convince Internal Affairs to try and do better. Where critics must disagree with Dr Phillips is on the proposed palliative. He would have it that much greater financial support is likely if National Archives assumes a heritage identity, placing his faith in the (now defunct) Coalition Agreement and a somewhat vague statement of intent by the present government. As an example of what might be expected, he cites Te Papa. But is Te Papa an appropriate model for what New Zealand's National Archives should be? Equally thought provoking instances of the efforts of the new heritage policy-makers, and ones Dr Phillips chooses to gloss over, might include the recently gutted Historic Places Trust, or a National Library recklessly discarding collections (and staff) in order to fund a new computer system from within a static budget. Dr Phillips also ignores a well-documented worldwide trend: in adverse financial conditions overtly cultural institutions are amongst the first to feel the knife. They are viewed as optional expenditure. Dr Phillips is right to highlight the current lack of funds to convert nitrate film to safety stock, to organise photographs, to computerise the finding aids. But, in the light of his concern, it is surely bizarre that Internal Affairs should, and since the Heritage Group was mooted, opt to 'capitalise' the meagre monies set aside by National Archives for film conversion to help fund an imposed new layer of management. Dr Phillips' contention that a deepseated Internal Affairs desire to provide greater support for the institution 'was one major reason for the inclusion of National Archives in the Heritage Group' is unsustainable. Such motivation certainly does not emerge from the high level Heritage New Zealand business cases drawn up, with Dr Phillips' participation, in February and April 1997. In these documents the dominant themes are perceived threats of reduced funding for Internal Affairs and consequent needs to achieve efficiencies, promote synergies and increase third party revenue. In the light of recent newspaper controversy over Internal Affairs' 'Focus Change' programme, there is a particularly telling statement in the April 1997 change template' of the business case: DIA needs a visible win for the change process. Focus change started in the department in July 1996 and DIA has undertaken to achieve its Vision, Mission and Values by December 1997. Heritage New Zealand offers an opportunity to have the proposed changes in place. Throughout the documents the emphasis is on benefits for Internal Affairs as a whole, support for National Archives rating barely a mention. A respected independent management consultant, commissioned to provide a 'without prejudice' report on the business cases, subsequently concluded that 'DIA "needs a win" and this proposal is the way to get one, at the expense of National Archives, both organisationally and financially'. He went on:'I cannot accept...that changing aspects of the role, status and core functions of National Archives in order to show DIA in a more positive light can be justified'. He considered the arguments and financial data in the documents to be 'confusing, inconsistent and unconvincing'. The proposed 'synergies with other heritage units of the Department' are another matter. Dr Phillips' vehement dismissal ('the argument...is absurd') of Michael Cullen's proposition that affording protective cover for the Historical Branch and the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography was a driving force behind the proposed amalgamation also fails to stand up to closer scrutiny. Once more, the April 1997 change template' sheds potentially embarrassing light: The heritage units ... (within DIA) ... with the exception of National Archives are small, vulnerable business units. Heritage has in the past been seen as a low priority area and if an integrated approach to heritage is not established within DIA there is exposure to these either being moved out of DIA or being disbanded. The impact will be reduced DIA baselines. That these were considered serious threats is undoubted. Would Dr Phillips now seriously deny that when, in early 1996, Internal Affairs sought funding for new computer systems for ministerial offices, the Treasury's recommendations for compensatory savings included 'a structured withdrawal' from the production of commissioned histories and downsizing of the DNZB unit? Or that these recommendations, if temporarily resisted, remained very much in the minds of the department and the leaders of the 'small, vulnerable business units' when the Heritage Group scheme was devised? By selectively quoting from a random clutch of websites, Dr Phillips seeks to demonstrate - borrowing from an earlier affidavit to the High Court - that a heritage identity for National Archives would be following the latest developments overseas'. Utilising evidence drawn from a systematic survey of'home pages' posted by national archival authorities, backed by a cross-check of the archives legislation of 141 countries, this argument has already been effectively rebutted in a responding affidavit. Dr Phillips appears to have had difficulty distinguishing between electronic blurbs, intended for potential researchers, and the governance documents also frequently to be found on institutional websites. Some of his assertions are simply incorrect. The Public Archives of Canada is not part of Canadian Heritage, even if its Director-General currently reports to the Heritage Minister. Britain's Public Record Office does not consider the provision of historical and genealogical material to be its first priority. Phillips would know this if he had bothered to refer to the PRO's printed strategic plan and annual reports (held by several Wellington libraries). A little surprisingly, Dr Phillips makes no mention of a visit to NARA's website. But then Archivist of the United States John Carlin's statement that his institution's mission is to provide 'ready access to essential evidence...for the Citizen and the Public Servant, for the President and the Congress and the Courts' hardly supports Phillips' case. In Carlin's view, the National Archives enables people to inspect for themselves the record of what government has done'. Dr Phillips' attempt to refute the experience of Victoria's Public Record Office is pitifully weak. Rather than citing website strap-lines, he might gainfully have resorted to the 1996 report of the Victorian legislature's Public Accounts and Estimates Committee, which states that the imposition of a heritage focus on the institution 'dominated and swamped' the PRO'S proper role ... which is to guide, direct and assist other agencies in managing the maintenance, selection, disposal and availability . . . of the public records of the state' (our italics). Ultimately, Dr Phillips does concede the desirability of 'independent status for National Archives', pleading that this is a position he has 'always and consistently argued.While his evidence to the High Court might suggest otherwise, the concession is nevertheless to be welcomed. His hope that, if independent status comes, National Archives will be given the funding and status to carry out its functions is shared. However, his matching advocacy for the benefits of interim association with the Heritage Group ('the past 16 months speak for themselves) cannot pass unchallenged. Dr Phillips makes much of recent expenditure on the fabric of Archives House. What he does not reveal is that much of the present refurbishment is deferred maintenance and upgrading, depreciation funds accruing to National Archives in earlier years having been diverted to other Internal Affairs activities. He at least concedes the parlous state to which Internal Affairs had permitted the building to degenerate. Nor, while heralding 'the first substantial investment' in computerised finding aids, does he reveal the extent of that investment, or note that previous cases had been repeatedly turned down. Dr Phillips, of course, is not the first to make such claims. Several months ago the Secretary for Internal Affairs boasted in the press of National Archives' new and improved services' arising from the restructuring. Challenged to enumerate them, he has yet to reply. Dr Phillips chooses not to shed any light on the apparent contradiction between his avowed belief that National Archives 'should be an independent crown entity that is not part of a department', a view he claims to be supported by Secretary for Internal Affairs Dr Roger Blakeley, and the quite contrary stances adopted by both in the legal proceedings brought by stakeholders. If indeed Internal Affairs was actively promoting an alternative governance model to inclusion in the Heritage Group before even the High Court sat, and this fact was not disclosed, both the Crown and stakeholders have been put to needless trouble and expense. Such remissness, if substantiated, should surely be a matter meriting the close attention of control agencies and parliamentarians. Fortunately, in the long term interests of National Archives, future decisions as to the institution's focus, optimal structure and placement within the machinery of government are likely to be in other hands than those of Drs Blakeley and Phillips. Book Reviews

Michael Bassett

The State in New Zealand 1840-1984: Socialism Without Doctrines? Auckland, Auckland University Press, 1998. 445pp. $39.95. ISBN 1-86940-193-X. According to the author,'[t] his book originated in a chance conversation I had in 1993 with Roger Kerr, Executive Director of the New Zealand Business Roundtable. In response to a question about my writing, I told him that I intended to recount the story of the Fourth Labour Government after 1984, but that I first had to understand how it was that New Zealand had come to the stage where drastic restructuring had become a matter of urgency. Roger Kerr suggested that I might undertake that initial study; the Business Roundtable would pay some of the expenses involved in the researching such a big project.' Bassett's archival researches have been assiduous. At issue is what he did with what he found. He appears to espouse the methodology which Karl Popper describes as the bucket': pour all the available information into a bucket, leave it to ferment, and then distil some compelling theory. In contrast is the searchlight', where a hypothesis directs a beam into some murky corner of our understanding, and the resulting observation modifies the hypothesis and its underlying theory. For instance, in his recently published, Only Their Purpose is Mad, Bruce Jesson suggests that New Zealand was a state-created society in that the state did not emerge from some already-existing social order, some civil society, but instead created it.' (Let me not tease the reader by stopping there and failing to allow a fuller exploration of Jesson s thinking, but continue the quote, although it is not germane to this review. 'The state was responsible for creating the infrastructure of the country - a social infrastructure, as well as an economic infrastructure. And while this was unavoidable, it meant New Zealand was a society without texture. New Zealand might without exaggeration be thought of as a hollow society.') The point is that Jesson offers an analytical frame. He may be wrong (or, more likely, over-simple and incomplete), but the fields his hypothesis leads us through will undoubtedly be fertile. Bassett's approach is like that of a jackdaw collecting for its nest. All sorts of pretty baubles and curios are assembled, but the jackdaw has no sense of what is valuable or potentially interesting. This nest is hardly arranged at all - Bassett's chapters follow a chronology, broken into periods which reflect parliamentary terms rather than political economy, but within each chapter the focus lurches around. Because the jackdaw has no judgement, important issues are overlooked. Given the apparent focus of the book, on why the state became so powerful, numerous clues are missed. Throughout the nineteenth century the state kept supporting private enterprise, which might fail even with that state subsidy. For instance, the Midland line, between Christchurch and the West Coast, was initially a private enterprise activity, though cosetted by the state. It failed, and so the state took it over. But Bassett devotes only a paragraph to this story. The story repeats itself. Bassett has a long section on the founding in the early 1950s of the Tasman Pulp and Paper Mill (based on a thesis by Morris Guest), but fails to draw any conclusion from private capital's inability to fund it. Nor does he note the significance of it having to be a major exporter from day one. The same with the 'Think Big' projects, although the author sheds no light on why they needed so much government support (He does acknowledge that their fatal flaw was the substantial fall in the oil price in the mid-1980s). This was repeated in reverse after 1984, for when the government withdrew its support, business largely stopped investing in the export and import-substituting sectors. As the book, perhaps unintentionally, shows, for most of New Zealand's history the state has stepped in because private enterprise failed. Other key elements are completely ignored if they fail to attract the jackdaw's eye. For instance, the book correctly points out that both world wars resulted in the New Zealand government accumulating power, but the political impact of the nineteenth-century New Zealand wars on the state are ignored. Another lacuna is that the book gives no sense that the policies that New Zealand was introducing for most of the period were paralleled elsewhere (Hence the possibility of Pember Reeves writing State Experiments in Australia and New Zealand). Although this book is nominally about the state and the economy (there is little on other roles of the state, such as social control), there is an uncomfortable feeling that the writer has little grasp of the economic issues. For instance, Bassett reports that '[wjhile the country's total population grew by approximately 64 percent during [the Liberals'] years of office, the GNP rose 126 percent over the same period. Buoyant export markets meant that for all but 8 of the their 21 years in office the Liberals witnessed real economic growth.'Among the problems with this statement are that he appears to be using a total population excluding Maori (although given the infrequent reference to Maori in this book, it is perhaps appropriate); he does not explain whether the GNP is nominal or real (it is real); and that the real economic growth refers to per capita GNP growth (not total GNP growth, which occurred in 17 of the 21 years). Bassett also has a penchant for using out-of-date statistics. He refers to data provided by the 1950 ministerial committee on taxation, not reporting that these were explicitly stated to be estimates, and have long been superseded by Brent Lineham's work. He uses a graph from Colin Simkin's 1951 classic, The Instability of a Dependent Economy, apparently unaware it has been splendidly superseded in the 1990 New Zealand Official Yearbook. Indeed the book contains a number of graphs from odd sources. Their function seems to be illustrative, like the photos of the various political and public service actors, rather than to progress an argument. The jackdaw seems content to collect facts. However, the economic historian is interested in the relationship between them. Recall the above reference to buoyant export prices (presumably relative to import prices, that is the terms of trade) in the 1890s and 1900s. The implication in the text is that these drove the economic growth. Their importance in this period suggests that the terms of trade should have been monitored throughout the book. Instead there are but odd asides. The reader has no sense of what Bassett thinks generates economic growth or stagnation. Curiously for a book about the role of the state in the economy, there is little about fiscal stress. By 1841 the Crown was facing an overestimate of revenue, an underestimate of spending, and was privatising assets and issuing illegal bonds to cover the gap - a portent for the future. Indeed it might be argued that the economic governance of New Zealand could be summarised by the budget being in fiscal stress, severe fiscal stress, or intolerable fiscal stress ever since (That includes the Fourth Labour government). To give but one example, the reason why Harry Atkinson has been undervalued by subsequent generations is that for most of his premiership/treasurership fiscal stress was severe, limiting his creativity as a politician. As Bassett modestly acknowledges in his introduction, there are many mistakes in the study. I will not provide a list, although I protest at, 'Sinclair described Walter Nash's concept of socialism as being "applied Christianity," a term that was used occasionally in the late 1930s by Savage.'The term appears to have been coined by the mayor of Kaiapoi, Rev. W.H.A. Vickery. Not every great insight comes from historians and politicians. Savage used it On many occasions', according to Barry Gustafson. Probably there are even more errors of interpretation. For instance, the book fails to mention how erratically interventionist and anti- interventionist were the proposals in Roger Douglas's 1980 There's Got to Be a Better Way. Pertinent to the theme of the book, Douglas wrote (in the year in which the 'Think Big' debate began) '[p]utting Government money into Tasman Pulp and Paper Company and New Zealand Steel was right. New industries were started that might not have been, because the private sector would not, or could not, do it.' The book does recall Douglas's 1978 proposal for extending the carpet industry, although it glides over the intended state involvement. Another endemic problem is the author's employment of hindsight. Consider his description of the 1940s Secretary of Industries and Commerce, L.J. Schmitt, 'whose enthusiasm for the certainties which planning guaranteed to manufacturers would not have been out of place in a Soviet five-year planning exercise.' Leaving aside whether the Soviet planners were so enthusiastic, or even whether Schmitt was (there is reason to believe he was not), the statement is objectionable because it fails to acknowledge the widespread contemporary commitment to planning, by left and right. This reviewer, for instance, has had to struggle with the issue while working on Bernard Ashwin, the long-serving Secretary of the Treasury of the same period. Ashwin was undoubtedly a political conservative, but he was deeply involved in planning and micro-intervention. It would be as foolish to associate him with Soviet planning as it is for Schmitt. Rather the dominant economic paradigm of the day - in the United States and Britain - favoured economic planning. The neo-classical paradigm which replaced it did not become dominant overnight. Indeed the book seems bewildered at the persistence of the planning paradigm in economic policy - for example, the Planning Council went on for most of the term of the Fourth Labour Government. This is a pitfall the author should have been aware of. For instance, in his 1972 Budget speech, new MP Bassett advocated higher top income tax rates, supported additional government spending, and defended the principle of monopoly provision of telephone services 'enthusiastically'. A few months earlier, according to his book Third Labour Government, Bassett stated '[fjrankly, being wise after the event, I think we should have taken drastic measures to control land prices and building prices as soon as elected.'All of us are potential hostages to our younger views. Bassett is entitled to say that they were his sincerely held views, reflecting the conventional wisdom of the times, and that he changed his mind with experience, or as fashions changed. However, he needs to be just as generous and understanding to Schmitt, Ashwin, and others. An account of how he changed his mind would have been fascinating. The last two chapters of the book cover the period after 1975, but they are essentially a politician's narrative of the events of the day, and offer little insight. In any case, Bassett may not know. The admission in the statement with which this review opens is extraordinary. Almost a decade after he participated in the radical restructuring of the New Zealand economy, a senior Cabinet minister concedes he still lacked an understanding of why the policies he supported were necessary. The inevitable impression is that the writer was operating in a political and economic environment without much understanding of the forces shaping it. Whether he is now clearer about why he supported the economic policies of the Fourth Labour Government may be demonstrated in his next book. A useful starting point may be the inflation which confronted Muldoon through most of his tenure. National was elected in 1975 on the basis that the debauching of the currency, to quote Lenin, would destroy capitalism. Muldoon chose to tackle inflation with the sort of controls that the young Bassett favoured, mindful that the alternative of a rigorous monetary and fiscal squeeze would cause economic stagnation, rising unemployment, greater inequality, and social distress. Bassett's post-1984 report may shed light on whether the Labour Cabinet was unaware of this possibility (and the analysis it was based on, which has proven to be correct), or whether the government was aware, but willing to accept the consequences. As the book's subtitle, Socialism without Doctrines?', indicates, and the introduction states explicitly, a second objective was to explore the ideas that drove the New Zealand state The problem has been that we have tended to judge New Zealand by overseas - European or American - standards (the subtitle alludes to the Frenchman Andre Metin's judgment of 1901). Because New Zealand's political economy is so different, these foreign doctrines do not necessarily characterise the local experience very well. There is in fact a substantial sociological and political literature on the role and ideology of the state in New Zealand, although Bassett shows no awareness of it. Much policy was, as I argued in my Social Security in the Seventies, a pragmatic response to practical issues, with some - often growth-oriented or egalitarian - social objectives in mind. It will be interesting to see whether Bassett concludes that the Fourth Labour government broke from this tradition and applied 'capitalism with doctrines'. Certainly they and their National successor (in its first few years) were more doctrinaire than any government portrayed in this book. The difficulty we all face is that economic history and the history of ideas are probably the two most underdeveloped elements of the history discipline in New Zealand. Even had he been better equipped for the journey, Bassett would have been brave to have ventured this book. Writing an account of the state is a very different exercise from writing a biography. It is perhaps useful that he has raised the challenge of an historical account of the role of the state, to complement the extant sociological and political economic studies. Many scholars will, no doubt, use the copious endnotes of the book as a source to many useful archives (although I would recommend they check the originals, for the author's interpretation is not always reliable). To reiterate, the book is no more than a jackdaw's nest of interesting items from archival and other sources, with no underlying account to pull it together. If the reader is not looking for one, the book certainly reads well. As Frank Sargeson wrote, there is no talent so deceiving and dangerous as fluency.' Brian Easton Economic And Social Trust On New Zealand 18 Talavera Tee Wellington

Archives and Reform: Preparing for Tomorrow. Proceedings of the Australian Society of Archivists Conference, Adelaide 25-26July 1997. Canberra, Australian Society of Archivists Inc., 1998. 267pp. A$25. ISBN 0-947219-11-0. Place, Interface and Cyberspace:Archives at the Edge. Proceedings of the Australian Society of Archivists Conference, Fremantle 6-8 August 1998. Canberra, Australian Society of Archivists Inc., 1999. 236pp. ISBN 0-947219-3-7. We can usually beat the Australians at rugby, and, very occasionally, at cricket. When it comes to archives work, however, they consign us to the lower junior leagues. The Australian archives community are world leaders nowadays. Their professional journal, work done by their government archives institutions, and the research coming out of their universities are gaining increasing international attention. Much of this research and practical work is first presented at the Australian Society of Archivists' conferences. The proceedings of the 1997 and 1998 conferences are reviewed here. Particular attention is given to the papers of the various keynote speakers, along with others I found especially relevant to my own work as a collecting archivist. The 1997 Adelaide proceedings begin with the opening keynote address by Michael Sullivan, a South Australian academic prominent in the field of political studies and international affairs. That might seem an unusual choice of theme speaker, and the paper is marred somewhat by Sullivan's lack of familiarity with recent archives writings. However, he gives a provocative overview of the social and political changes reshaping the world in which we all work, one clearly intended by the organisers to prevent any complacency during the following sessions. To put it very simply, Sullivan argues that the role of the traditional archivist will be increasingly undermined in a world in which old certainties are being steadily demolished. In particular, he points to the decline of government funding and support; the globalisation of information, which may make any concept of history as preserved in traditional archives irrelevant to many; and the growth of new identity politics that will challenge concepts of what should be preserved. There is plenty of post-modernist language for those who like that sort of thing. The final summing-up paper, The Archival Institution of Tomorrow', by Sue McKemmish, comes back to these themes, in a playful description of what the role of a publicly funded archival institution might be in 2030. In line with the records-continuum, post-custodial approaches dominating Australian archival thought nowadays, this new institution concentrates on standard setting, metadata management, and research and development in these areas. All storage, management and preservation of the old paper collections of government and collecting archives have been outsourced. Digitisation technology can now be used to make large groups of these records available electronically. But there is a problem, says McKemmish. The concentration on current record- keeping means that historical record-keeping has been neglected, and there are 'consequent huge gaps and dysfunctionalism identified in the Commonweath's memory banks'. In 2030, therefore, there is a review to consider restoring an archival keeping role to the archives authority. It's a witty extrapolation of some of the key developments and debates going on amongst leading-edge archivists. In between, there is a range of good papers from archivists working in a variety of situations. Those not discussed here include interesting sessions on experiments with 'top down' functional appraisal, case studies from sole-charge archivists, an account of the Joseph Banks papers digitisation project at the Mitchell Library, a report from the Australian Science Archives Project on the work they are doing with new database technologies (the latter papers are best read in conjunction with the web sites of the two institutions), reports from Australian government archives on their responses to pressures for reform, and an appendix of papers relating to various aspects of Australia's archival history. Particularly interesting to me is a paper by Adrian Cunningham titled 'Collecting Archives in the Next Millennium'. This is the only place in the two volumes that the specific challenges facing such institutions are discussed, and Cunningham gives a very thoughtful analysis of what collecting archives need to do if they are to stay relevant in an age of electronic records, digitisation and Internet access. The paper is divided into sections about strategies for getting, organising, keeping and accessing. Of these it is getting that Cunningham sees as requiring the most reinvention of the way collecting archives do things. Here he develops arguments that he has made previously in the pages of Archives and Manuscripts for much more proactive involvement with the creators of electronic records. It is a convincing argument but one which has not been followed up by collecting archivists. Perhaps New Zealand collecting institutions could take a lead here. Not surprisingly in a conference looking at archival responses to reform, there was a New Zealand presence. We, after all, have had the misfortune of being the little country where many of the international New Right agendas driving the downsizing and restructuring of public institutions have been tried out first. Kathryn Patterson's paper is a very good summary of the reform of our National Archives in the mid-1990s. No doubt Patterson could not say all she wanted to, but this is still a very informative read for those wanting to know more about local developments. Michael Hoyle has also contributed a useful paper giving New Zealand examples of management practices seen as helping the archives institution develop the competitive edge' it needs if it is to be effective. The 1998 Fremantle conference had two keynote speakers: the American academic and electronic records pioneer, Margaret Hedstrom, and Marie Olivier, the South African national archivist. Hedstrom's paper, Interfaces with Time', is an exploration of the past and present social meaning of archives. It begins with a discussion of how social memory has been influenced over time by the mediums by which it is preserved and transmitted, from oral transmission through the increasingly sophisticated mediums of modernity to the introduction of digital memories embedded in computer systems. The digital age, Hedstrom suggests, offers archivists new, and as yet unexplored, opportunities to influence the interface between people and the past. She argues, however, that this archival responsibility brings with it the need for archivists to recognise that the presentation of this past is shaped by their appraisal decisions and descriptive priorities. She urges a new emphasis on documenting why archival decisions are made, so that users can utilise this contextual information 'to judge the authenticity, reliability, and weight of documentary evidence for themselves.This is a somewhat dense but very rewarding read. Oliviers paper is equally fascinating. In contrast to Hedstrom's, this is a very pragmatic account which describes the way the National Archives of South Africa has been reshaped to serve the needs of post- apartheid society. At the heart of Olivier's new role is the requirement that she be a shaper of social memory and a documenter of society, much more than a passive custodian. This role includes the collection of non-public records, particularly oral histories, that fill gaps in the documentary record of society. Other initiatives include an emphasis on aiding the work of the investigative Truth and Reconciliation Commission and on making land records accessible to the Commission on Restitution of Land Rights. Appraisal policies have been radically overhauled, access restrictions have been reduced, and there is a major initiative to make finding aids available electronically to all. The New Zealand connection is again present, this time through an account by John Roberts of the effect of charging on government records appraisal in New Zealand. In a well-argued paper he analyses the rationale behind the practice, the tendency for appraisal programmes to be shaped by the short-term needs of departments, and the difficulties this creates for any macro-functional approach to appraisal, or for proactive involvement with electronic records. One imagines the Australians were convinced that this is not a model for them to follow. Of particular interest to New Zealanders, given the limited training opportunities here, are the papers about new developments in Australian postgraduate education for archivists and records managers. The report from the forum of record-keeping educators gives a good overview of the state of archival education. Five courses continue to provide good quality postgraduate education, and the academic staff running them are producing significant research. Another paper discusses the advantages and disadvantages of the distance education being provided by several of these courses. Other papers from this conference include a useful introduction to metadata, papers on sound and film archives, the emerging legal framework for Internet transactions in Australia, and two papers debating the merits of the post-custodial care of archival records. To me Greg O'Shea wins the high ground in this debate, not just because of his arguments for post-custodialism, but because of his pragmatic recognition that different cases will require different strategies, that some records-creating institutions have always exercised custodial care, and that archives institutions may often have to take responsibility for legacy electronic systems. It was disappointing that collecting archives were so poorly represented in the papers at this conference. There were two informative presentations - a demonstration of a finding aid using the emerging Enhanced Archival Description (EAD) encoding standard, and joint papers on the John Curtin Prime Ministerial Library digitisation project - and nothing else. The impression is left that the conference organisers did not see collecting archives as particularly relevant to their archival future, apart from the work on digital access systems. Alternatively, perhaps it is Australian collecting archivists who do not see the issues debated by the leading archival thinkers as relevant to them. Both scenarios are depressing. Cunningham remains a lone voice in his attempts to bring collecting archives into the discussions about their place in an electronic future. However, I believe that the new thinking going on will filter into the work of my collecting archives colleagues, and that there will be more participation by them at future conferences. These and subsequent conference proceedings should be read by all New Zealand archivists. The Australians are at the forefront of international research and thinking about archives work and the practical applications of it. These papers provide ample evidence of that. David Colquhoun Alexander Turnbull Library

Gregory S. Hunter Developing and Maintaining Practical Archives. How-To-Do-It Manuals for Librarians, no. 71. New York, Neil-Schuman Publishers, 1997. 283pp. US$45. ISBN 1-55570-212-0. Gregory Hunter has provided a useful guide that summarises some of the best thinking on archives and combines this with practical advice and examples. Hunter has a PhD in history and is a certified archivist and records manager. He was an associate professor at the Palmer School of Library and Information Science Long Island and the manager of Corporate Records at ITT Corporation, and he has written three other books as well as being involved in various professional organisations. The author has written this book as part of a series of manuals for librarians, and therefore it is pitched at readers with some academic and practical experience. Although it is an American manual it would be a useful reference work for New Zealand librarians and archivists. Hunter begins by providing some context for understanding the development of archive theory and practice. He summarises archival history, principles and objectives and describes the essential difference between library and archive terms and understandings. He covers all the subjects that you would expect to find in an instruction manual of this kind, and refers to the leading thinkers and practitioners who influenced the development of the archive profession, from Schellenberg to Bearman. Hunter makes considerable use of a simple table format to show information clearly and concisely. This provides the reader with a quick reference tool for dipping into from time to time. There are ten chapters covering archival history, beginning an archives progamme, selection and appraisal, accessioning, arrangement and description, preservation, security and disaster planning. The book progresses from the basics to outreach and finally deals with the problem of electronic archives. The details on each of these subjects are well covered. The layout of each chapter is clear and helpful, and they are supported by useful notes and references. The book concludes with an extensive and useful bibliography. However (this is my only criticism), it unfortunately has a rather brief index. For example, if the reader was looking for a reference to metadata, this term is not included in the index - yet there is a fine definition of it on p.217. One of the first things I noted when browsing through this book was that it was not filled with the kind of human interest stories that are found occasionally in American publications on records and archives. There are no cute tales about the librarian who found herself in charge of a large basement filled with old files, and after using the techniques prescribed by the author now runs the company. Hunter uses interesting quotes from newspapers (mainly referring to events that are internationally known) to illustrate the point that, at times, archives play a significant role in dramatic and important events. Usually the first subject that I read in any records or archive management manual is the section on electronic records. This is the most difficult area to deal with, and Hunter covers it well. He considers that electronic records are very different to paper records: Electronic records are more than information on a new medium - they are not the same old product in a "new and improved" package. Rather they are dramatic shifts in the nature of the records themselves [p. 205].' Hunter describes problems that most readers will be familiar with, and suggests that potential solutions rest in formulating policy and identifying system design requirements. Hunter makes many references to the work of David Bearman. He refers to Bearman's electronic policy issues and functional requirements for evidence, and provides other policy sources to be found on the Internet. Hunter points out that one thing these policies have in common is a requirement to use national and international standards as part of electronic records systems, and refers to some of the current internationally used electronic standard terms such as ASCII and JPEG. Readers should note that this is a guide to an ideal system, and that to implement all of the procedures described would require more than the usual funding; most of us would have difficulty reconciling the book's ideal with the reality of limited resources. In summary, this book achieves a good balance between theory and the ideal practice. It is a good read and would meet the needs of librarians and others interested in an archive reference book. The author clearly enjoys working in the archive profession, and this is reflected in the manual. Further information about the author is available at . At this site he mentions that Neil-Schuman will soon publish his fourth book, Preserving Digital Information. I will be looking out for it. Pauline Porteous Records and Archives Corporate Strategy WestpacTrust

Guidelines for Preservation Microfilming in Australia & New Zealand Canberra, National Library of Australia, 1998. 120 pp. A$30 from Sales and Distribution, National Library of Australia, Canberra ACT 2600, Australia. ISBN 0-642-10691-6. These guidelines have been prepared by Lawrie Salter, Manager of the Preservation Reformatting Unit at the National Library of Australia. Salter's extensive experience in microfilming has made him competent to prepare this compact set of guidelines in a form that is easily understandable despite the technical nature of microfilming. The underlying need for 'preservation microfilming' has been emphasised by the presentation of these words in bold type on the front cover. Preservation microfilming is the term applied to the methods of microfilming which meet the highest standard of recording information for long-term preservation, with a life expectancy of 500 years. These guidelines contain all the information necessary to ensure that microfilming, whether done in-house or contracted to a bureau, reaches the standards required to meet preservation needs. The guidelines can be used as a checklist by anyone managing or requesting microfilming to ensure that it is being undertaken correctly. The information and principles have been presented in a manner that will enable those less experienced in microfilming to gain a competent understanding of how preservation microfilming can be achieved. For readers wishing to delve further and read in more detail, a useful bibliography of leading texts is listed. The guidelines lead the reader through all the requirements needed to meet the goal of preservation microfilming: • Understanding film and generations of film; • Establishing a filming programme; • Selecting and preparing material; • Inspection programmes; • Managing a microfilm collection. Without going into unnecessary detail, a more than adequate level of information about the characteristics of microfilm, the common types used, and a description of the purposes of each 'generation' of film is provided. The chapter on establishing a filming programme covers what needs to be considered when choosing a filming bureau, proposals, tenders, and filming agreement procedures. The selection and preparation of material for filming is discussed in regard to conservation treatments, technical specifications and filming standards. All the related standards are listed in the appendices, but it would have been useful to highlight the most essential standards for easy reference during a filming programme.The technical requirements of microfilming are described clearly, and this chapter covers reduction ratios, resolution, film density, targets and target sequences. These are all explained in a manner which will allow even the inexperienced to gain a good understanding of the importance of ensuring quality filming. The chapter on inspection programmes mentions the requirements and responsibilities filming bureaux are required to meet, and the information that should be provided to demonstrate their ability to meet preservation microfilming criteria. I would have liked more emphasis on the responsibility of institutions to ensure that their filming programmes are meeting preservation objectives, as often there will be no opportunity to go back and film again later. Some good points are made in regard to the requirements of preparation and fuming to meet the future needs of digitising microfilm, which is already under way in many access programmes around the world. These requirements are not costly and will allow more effective digitisation in the future. The layout of the guidelines would have benefited from some form of visual design, a few diagrams to illustrate technical information, and the addition of a glossary of terms. Reference to cataloguing instructions and copyright refer to Australian practice only. Despite the title, New Zealand content or references is lacking. This publication is a compact and economical set of guidelines for understanding all aspects of microfilming and meeting the important goal of preservation microfilming, which is still a relevant and critical component of information management for retaining our documentary heritage. Any institution currently managing or considering embarking on a microfilming programme has no excuse for not having these guidelines close at hand to enable reference to them on a regular basis. David Adams Team Leader Copying Services National Library of New Zealand

Diane Vogt-O'Connor (guest editor) Archives at the Millennium. CRM, vol. 22, no. 2, 1999. US Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Cultural Resources, 1849 C Street, NW, Suite 350NC, Washington, DC 20240, 52pp. ISSN 1068-4999. Experience in the heritage sector has taught me that many practitioners find it difficult to draw the connection between archives and the heritage fabric of structures and buildings. Typically they regard archives as something to consult before starting work on a place, then to forget until the next job comes along. In fact, however, many historic buildings contain archives, and the connection between buildings, collection items (chattels) and archives is typically closer than many think; indeed, in cases such as the New Zealand Historic Places Trust's Thames School of Mines, archives form a key part of the place itself. The Cultural Resources section of the National Park Service publishes CRM [Cultural Resource Management] for 'parks, federal agencies, Indian tribes, states, local governments, and the private sector that promotes and maintains high standards for preserving and managing cultural resources [p.2]'.The glossy 48-page journal is aimed at a broad range of heritage practitioners and administrators and typically features about 16-20 two-or-three-page-long articles. Diane Vogt-O'Connor, the Parks Service's Chief Archivist, has guest- edited the second issue of Volume 22,1999, under the banner'Archives at the Millennium'. In keeping with its entry-level target audience, shaded panels and break-outs give basic guides to archival terminology, physical media and storage standards, funding sources for archives and a user's courtesy guide. Several articles tell how parks are managing their archives. The San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park, probably familiar to many holidaying New Zealanders, is one of the larger park archives, employing three archivists and two photographers, and managing the internal records of the park while actively acquiring records for a centre that intends to document the maritime heritage of the Pacific Coast. Lynn Marie Mitchell tells how the 38 collections in the Little Bighorn Battlefield archives were reorganised in 1997/98 using the Automated National Catalog System+ (ANCS+). The most unsettling article is Vogt-O'Connor's 'Is the Record of the 20,h Century at Risk?' We may paradoxically be both the best documented era in history and the least understood', she cautions,'as much of our documentation will be lost'. Warning against a digital dark age' characterised by ballooning information traffic, fragile digital media, declining institutional memory and flat or shrinking archival budgets, Vogt-O'Connor suggests a multi-pronged strategy: working closely with records creators and users to improve content and software and hardware; intervening and statistically sampling the digital realm to provide an episodic non-editorial sketch of the whole; and intervening and selecting items on the basis of traditional archival selection criteria such as institutional mission, audience, usage level and risk of loss. The magnitude of the challenge is, of course, enormous, but Vogt- O'Connor points to some surprising allies. These include the edutainment community', new uses such as the Geographic Information System (GIS) which place a very high value on record-keeping, affiliated user communities such as the burgeoning Civil War re-enactors and railroad and historic preservationists, information brokers such as media and corporate researchers, and private foundations. Interesting, too, is the Parks Service's use of the Affiliated Archives Program of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). Provision 44 of USC 2107 permits the Archivist of the United States to authorise affiliated archives, which range from federal agencies through to private institutions. All have to meet NARA standards and be open to the public in order to achieve affiliation status, which lets them keep physical custody of the records while NARA takes legal custody and shares ultimate responsibility for them. Affiliates such as Yellowstone National Park Archives supplement NARA's thirteen regional archives, offering users the advantage of proximity to the physical setting in which they were created as well as the on-the-spot knowledge of park staff. Somewhat disappointingly, the issue of the physical storage of archives in historic buildings rates barely a mention, even though the tension between the needs of the historic fabric and reuse of a building and that of paper and fabric is one of the most recurring in this sector. All the buildings photographed in this issue of CRM are large masonry structures, bigger and grander than many of our timber ones. CRM is available free of charge, and an electronic version can be accessed through the CRM homepage at . Gavin McLean Wellington

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