Student, Masters programme.
Faculty of Information Technology
Monash University
Caulfield East,
Victoria
Australia
Kirsten Thorpe will be presenting on Meeting the recordkeeping needs of Indigenous Australians: the Role of Education and Research on Tuesday
Kirsten Thorpe, the Archivist, Aboriginal Liaison, at State Records New South Wales, has recently been awarded a Monash Indigenous Archives Scholarship and has been nominated to fill the Monash University, RMAA-sponsored indigenous Australian student presenter position in the RMAA Wellington Convention programme.
She is undertaking the university’s Faculty of Information Technology (FIT) Masters programme She is a descendant of the Worimi people of Port Stephens, New South Wales and a member of the Australia Society of Archivists Indigenous Issues special interest group. She leads a team of people at State Records working on the NSW Aboriginal Trust Fund Repayment Scheme.
The Monash Indigenous Archives Scholarship with sponsorship from the National Archives of Australia, Public Record Office of Victoria, and the Australian Society of Archivists, was established in 2004 for people who identify as indigenous Australians or Torres Strait Islanders to undertake a masters degree or graduate diploma specialising in electronic recordkeeping and archives.
This initiative followed the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission’s “Bringing Them Home” report recommendation that Indigenous archivists be involved in archival projects enabling Indigenous people to locate records and that scholarships should be provided for Indigenous archivists who wish to gain professional qualifications.
The Scholarship is a full equity course for studies undertaken in the Caulfield School of Information Technology at the Caulfield Campus of Monash University. The degrees can be undertaken on campus or off and in full-time or part-time mode. Mentoring and internships are available for scholarship recipients.
The Monash University Trust and Technology: Building archival systems for Indigenous oral memory, is lead by Professor Lynette Russell, Director of the Centre for Australian Indigenous Studies, and Professor Sue McKemmish, Director of the Centre for Organisational and Social Informatics (COSI) and supported by the Public Record Office of Victoria, the Victorian Koorie Records Taskforce, the Koorie Heritage Trust and the ASA Indigenous Issues SIG.
Started in late 2003, the three-year Trust and Technology project has undertaken an extensive analysis of the archival needs of Indigenous Victorians in order to develop recommendations for archival frameworks and system specifications that address the needs of Koorie communities relating to the management of and access to archives, intellectual property and authenticity. Archival techniques and information technology are being used to specify an archival system to address Koorie requirements relating to annotating existing archival records, enabling community control of creation, preservation and access decisions.
COSI brings together researchers who work in knowledge management, information technology management, information systems development, archival systems, e-commerce and m-commerce, community networking, librarianship, and computing education and provides a focus for collaboration with national and international researchers, industry and community research partners and other stakeholders.
Kirsten Thorpe
Archivist - Aboriginal Liaison
State Records New South Wales
PO Box 516
Kingswood
NSW 2747
Australia
Telephone: +61 (0)2 9673 1788
Faculty of Information Technology
Monash University
Building H, 700 Dandenong Road
Caulfield East
Vic 3145
Australia
Telephone: +61 (0)3 9903 2037
