Welcome to our occasional newsletter, highlighting recent CHART activities and related news.
To receive notice of each new issue, send an email request to chartnews[at]timorarchives.info
Click here for previous issues of CHART News
——————–
CHART News – June 2015
Seeking your support for 2015/16
An indicative budget of $105,000 for CHART’s next financial year’s activities was adopted by the our Management Board on May 29.
The budget covers a range of CHART activities with collection preservation work in various States ($22,500), and digitisation of documents and audiovisual materials ($31,000) being the two major cost areas. Other areas include establishing an online digital library system for archives access and strengthening relationships with Australian and East Timorese archival institutions to further our preservation and access aims.
CHART will immediately embark on a round of applications to philanthropic bodies to meet our target. But if you or your organisation wishes to support our work in any way, no matter how small, we will be most grateful. Gifts or donations to our work in Australia are tax deductible.
Past grants and donations
Two significant grants in the past twelve months have enabled CHART to extend its main work on sorting, describing and digitising important collections.
We thank the Andrew McNaughtan Foundation, which generously donated $12,000 to continue digitisation work commenced under the 2013 Herb Feith Foundation Grant. The second grant of $47,000 came from the Government of Timor-Leste for ongoing collection description and digitisation work, with a particular focus on collections held in Australia by members of the Timorese diaspora community.
In addition to these grants, now fully expended, we are pleased to acknowledge vital in-kind support from a number of individuals and organisations. We are also grateful to the Victorian branch of the Australian Institute for International Affairs for donations to CHART through an August 2014 public lecture by outstanding human rights advocate and analyst of Indonesian affairs, Sidney Jones.
New administration assistant
CHART is delighted to announce that Christine Perkins has commenced work as our administration assistant. Christine began her Timor associations in 1980 through working on Timorese family reunion issues. In more recent years she was the Country Program Manager for Australian Volunteers International in Timor-Leste. She is currently the treasurer of Friends of Baucau and is on the Board of Alola Australia and supports East Timorese studying in Australia.
The administration assistant is a part-time position (2-3 days / week). Christine is responsible for conducting the day-to-day operations at CHART at our Melbourne office – especially when the archivist/manager undertakes interstate collection work.
Sydney Office established
Describing photographs at Sydney office.
Current and prospective archives work in NSW has driven the establishment of a CHART office in Sydney. From this base, CHART commenced work on the large and historically significant East Timor Relief Association (ETRA) collection in October 2014. We expect to extend our NSW work in 2016 with some processing work on the Australia East Timor Association archives and some initial assessment work on other privately-held collections in Sydney, including materials held by Timorese disapora community members.
Our office is located within the Edmund Rice Centre for Social Justice in Homebush West. Many thanks to long-time Timor advocate Sister Susan Connelly for connecting us to the ERC, and to its director Phil Glendenning and his colleagues for making us welcome there.
Visiting Timor-Leste
CHART archivist/manager John Waddingham visited Timor-Leste in March, to assess developments at, and to consolidate CHART links with, emerging archival institutions in Dili.
Visiting the Resistance Archive & Museum, Dili.
Highlights included seeing new developments at the National Archive and at the Max Stahl audiovisual archive. In addition to visiting the Timorese Resistance Archive and Museum (AMRT)’s showcase buildings, John met with AMRT staff to rekindle discussions on prospective joint projects with CHART, including transfer of CHART digital files for access in Timor.
A summary of CHART’s findings can be found here. Follow-up meetings will come in July when John attends the Timor-Leste Studies Association bi-annual conference in Dili to present a guide to primary source materials in Timor history.
Victoria University – CHART digitisation project
We are very pleased to see the completion of a high-value joint digitisation project with the Library of Victoria University (VU) in Melbourne. Arising from conversations in 2013 with University Librarian Ralph Kiel, VU agreed to arrange professional-standard digitising of Tapol Bulletin and Timor Link, two important UK-based Timor advocacy periodicals. The successful project came to fruition through collaboration between VU Library staff, CHART, and contacts at Tapol and Progressio in London.
As a result of the project, more than 160 Tapol issues published between 1973 and 2008, and 49 issues of Timor Link (1985-2002) were digitised and can be viewed through the VU Research Repository. Having online access to these items is much-valued by the original publishers of the journals and the Timor research community. For more information on this project and direct links to the digitised journals, see here.
There are opportunities for further joint work with VU, and good prospects for similar CHART partnerships with other Australian institutions such as the National Film and Sound Archive in Canberra.
Timor Archives 