Australian university archives and their prospects

Don Boadle
dboadle@csu.edu.au

The creation of a unified higher education system in Australia, and the determination of successive federal governments to increase competition among public and private providers within it, has led to significant reductions in recurrent funding, with serious consequences for university recordkeeping. This survey of the management of the institutional archival function in 39 universities is more wide-ranging than Nessy Allen's 1987 study, analysing archival discourse and practices, as well as the formal structures and resources which support them. Emphasising the diversity of organisational arrangements, it concludes that the most problematic component in the university recordkeeping landscape remains the group of 'separate archives units' with collecting and combined functions.