PACIFIC MANUSCRIPTS BUREAU Room 4201, Coombs Building Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200 Australia Telephone: (612) 6125 2521 Fax: (612) 6125 0198 E-mail:
[email protected] Web site: http://rspas.anu.edu.au/pambu PAMBU: 40 years of archival collaboration in the Pacific Islands. Paper for PARBICA, ARANZ, ASA Conference, Brisbane, 12-17 October 2009. This paper is given to celebrate the 40 years of Pacific Manuscripts Bureau operations. It coincides with a period of transition in the Bureau’s management. Prof Brij Lal, the chair of the Pacific Manuscripts Bureau Management Committee since 1994, is nearing retirement; I am in a transition to retirement; Kylie Moloney has been appointed as PMB archivist with a view to taking over the management of the Bureau. At the PMB management committee meeting in May 2009 member libraries asked the Bureau’s staff to conduct a survey of the existing PMB collections so they can make a more informed decisions about the future strategic direction of Pambu projects. Pambu resources are minimal – time is short and maintaining momentum has been a key factor in the Bureau’s survival – therefore, in order to economise, this paper combines celebration and review. A natural reference point for both celebration and review, and thus this paper, is Robert Langdon’s unpublished report, “Pacific Manuscripts Bureau: pros and cons of its continuance”, written as he was retiring from the Bureau in April 1986.1 Langdon’s style is blunt and focused on the question of whether the Bureau would be able to continue to operate after his departure.