Multicultural Documentary Heritage Project

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About the project

Chinese restaurant, Main Road, Ballarat, 1853

The National Library's Multicultural Documentary Heritage Project took place from July 2003 to June 2004. The project aimed to assist culturally and linguistically diverse community organisations (sometimes called ethnic organisations) to look after their documentary records, letters, diaries, photographs, electronic files and other unpublished material.

This material is a significant part of Australia’s heritage and is likely to be of interest to researchers of the Australian social and cultural history. However records of this type tend to deteriorate with time and may be in need of preservation treatment. Through this project ethnic organisations were provided with assistance in managing and preserving documentary records to ensure that they are available for future generations.

Aims of the project

• To help ethnic organisations look after their collections and make them easy to use by researchers.
• To identify archival materials held by ethnic organisations by surveying their collections.
• To help ethnic organisations to make their collections more accessible to the wider public by listing them in national directories.

Project activities

The major project activities were: conducting a survey of multicultural documentary heritage collections; organising workshops on collection management and preservation; developing a starter kit to help groups care for and make the most of their collections; the kit is freely available for downloading by following the link above.
	Bethany, a village of German settlers at the foot of the Barossa Hills, 1847

Why the National Library of Australia undertook this project

The project was initiated by the National Library of Australia in consultation with Sir James Gobbo, Chairman of the National Library’s Council.

The National Library's role is to share the stories of Australia and the Australian people by collecting and preserving the records which tell those stories. These records take many forms, both published and unpublished - they are held in books, photographs, pictures, manuscripts, maps, music and oral history recordings. Together, they form a national collection, one that is available to all Australians through the National Library in Canberra, through public libraries and, increasingly, through Internet-based services accessible on our website.

Japanese pearl divers [1912-1955]

The National Library and State/Territory Libraries have been collecting books and newspapers for a long time. However a lot of valuable unpublished materials, that tell more of our history, are held by ethnic groups around Australia. We would like to help such groups care for their unique documents so they can be shared with people of today and into the future.

Project collaborators

This project would not be possible without the support from, and collaboration with, a number of organisations, which we gratefully acknowledge:

• Council of Australian State Libraries
• National Archives of Australia
• Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts
• Federation of Ethnic Communities’ Councils of Australia
• Ethnic Community Councils or their equivalents in each State
• State Government departments for multicultural affairs