Archives on the Edge

2015 Australian Society of Archivists 30th National Conference

This year’s Australian Society of Archivists National Conference will take place from 18 – 21 August 2015 at the Hotel Grand Chancellor in Hobart, Tasmania. In the ASA’s 40th year, Archives on the Edge is set to be a significant event, exploring pressing issues facing the archival profession today. We have local, national and international delegates registered, coming from Europe and Asia as well of course from across Australia and New Zealand travelling to an island on the edge of a continent for an archival tour of discovery.

How do archivists maintain a place on the cutting edge? Participants will share tools, techniques, research and other innovations to keep, protect, share and interpret records and archives in a rapidly evolving technology landscape.

The ASA is pleased to continue a long-standing relationship with principal sponsor Ancestry. David Broomfield, Conference Convener states, “we value our relationship with our principal conference sponsor Ancestry. Ancestry supports both the archival profession and the wider community by preserving family history and making it accessible online.”

Ben Mercer, Content, Australia and New Zealand said, “We are thrilled to be involved as a sponsor once again for this year’s Australian Society of Archivists National Conference. The event brings together archival-record communities from all over the country and the world, and provides a brilliant opportunity for these likeminded groups to share ideas, knowledge and thinking in this space.

In addition, at the conference we’re excited to share that we’ll be launching two important Tasmanian convict record sets – bringing to life some previously relatively unknown collections of convict and lower court material.”

Ancestry is the world’s largest online family history resource with more than 2 million paying subscribers across all its websites. More than 16 billion records have been added, and users have created more than 70 million family trees to the core Ancestry websites, including its flagship site www.ancestry.com and its affiliated international websites designed to empower people to discover, preserve and share their family history.

Conference Highlights

A range of activities will be offered across the full conference week. Special Interest Group meetings, the annual Loris Williams Memorial Lecture, and the Mander Jones Awards for outstanding archive publications will be held prior to the conference.

The Conference Welcome Reception is on Tuesday evening, and then follows two jam-packed days of conference sessions on Wednesday and Thursday. Keynote speakers are; Geoffrey Yeo, honorary researcher at University College London (UCL), Dr Hamish Maxwell-Stewart, academic expert on convict life in Australia who teaches History and Classics at the University of Tasmania and Dr Leif Hanlen, Director of the NICTA eHealth business team, responsible for developing new data analysis for national scale personalized health.

Following the conference a number of workshops and tours will be offered.

To learn more and register for this edgy and exciting conference visit our conference website: http://www.archivists.org.au/learning-publications/2015-conference/2015-conference.

Connect with the ASA on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Australian-Society-of-Archivists-Inc/263354157018725?ref=ts


Or on Twitter: @ausarchivists conference hashtag: #asaedge2015.
David Broomfield, Conference Convener