News from the Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Library

New exhibition - Chris Hurford: Member for Adelaide, Agent for Change

The Chris Hurford: Member for Adelaide, Agent for Change exhibition features the career of Chris Hurford, the former Member for Adelaide (1969-1987) and Minister during the Hawke era. It includes items from Mr Hurford’s archival collection, including personal papers, photographs, and realia related to his early life, political career, and life after politics. The exhibition highlights his education at the London School of Economics, his Ministerial contributions to Housing and Construction, Community Services, and Immigration and Ethnic Affairs, as well as his views on constitutional change, and his involvement with Ausflag and the ongoing debate to change the national flag.

Staff at the Chris Hurford exhibition opening An opening was held on the 20th September to celebrate the exhibition, and was attended by Chris Hurford, Bob Hawke, Rosemary Crowley, UniSA Vice Chancellor Peter Hoj, and other invited guests.

The Chris Hurford Collection is maintained by the Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Library, and housed at the UniSA City West campus.

The exhibition will run from 19 August – 31 October 2011 at the Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Library.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard

The Rosemary Crowley collection contains a number of items relating to Julia Gillard, including photographs, press releases and her first speech as a Labor M.P. Please visit our Archival Database to search for these items.

Celebrating 80 Hawke Years

Archival Database screenshot [Image Source: UniSA Library] On 5 November 2009, a celebration was held to celebrate the 80th Birthday of The Hon Bob Hawke AC, launch The Hawke Legacy, as well as announce the new BHPML Archival Database. The event was hosted by The Hawke Centre, and attended by an array of former Hawke cabinet ministers and senators, as well as Premier Mike Rann and others.

University of South Australia VC Peter Hoj outlined the developments of the Archival Database (Audio file, opens in new window)

A recording of the event is now available (Audio file, opens in new window).

New display at the BHPML

BHPML display [Image Source: UniSA Library] To coincide with the launch of the new book, The Hawke Legacy: Towards a Sustainable Society, the Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Library has installed a new display in its cabinets. Using the theme, ‘Bob Hawke: The Great Australian Communicator and Mediator’, the BHPML has highlighted a number of speeches made by Hawke during his time as President of the ACTU, as well as his time as Prime Minister.

The display highlights the beginning of Hawke's career as a Rhodes Scholar, his role in the fight against apartheid, the origins of ATSIC, the founding of APEC, as well as his close relationship with Papua New Guinea. From his maiden speech to the House of Representatives, to the Prices and Incomes Accord, the display focuses on not only his ability to address the masses from behind a microphone, but his strengths at the negotiating table, and as a mediator in difficult affairs.

Mr Hawke visits the BHPML

Mr Hawke visits The Hawke Library [Image Source: UniSA Library] On 6th November Mr Hawke met with Library staff to discuss progress being made with revision of the BHPML web site and the new online archival repository. The web site now includes a wider range of his speeches made throughout his career, podcasts of interviews and talks and samples of the realia collection such as a model of the panther motorbike he once owned and campaign badges. Mr Hawke was given a demonstration of the new online archival repository, currently in prototype phase, which will allow for intuitive searching across the archival collections.

Staffing changes

Margaret Goedhart, Academic Librarian, BHPML Library [Image Source: UniSA image library] Margaret Goedhart joined the Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Library (BHPML) in March 2008 as the Academic Librarian in charge of its day-to-day operations. Margaret has worked as an Academic Librarian for the University of South Australia Library for ten years, within various portfolios including the Division of Education, Arts and Social Sciences and the Division of Health Sciences. Prior to that she was a Librarian at the University of Sydney, in the areas of education, health and mathematics, and was also in charge of a branch library. Her qualifications and background are in the humanities, with a major in Australian history.

The BHPML establishment phase, 1997-2007, was led by Jenni Jeremy. During that time Jenni developed a collection that reflects the social and political material from the Hawke era, forged relationships with key stakeholders and organised conferences, symposia and exhibitions that promoted the importance of archival records to scholarly pursuits. She also contributed to the planning and design of BHPML within the new Hawke Building. Jenni is now a member of the Academic Library Services team for the Division of Education, Arts and Social Sciences.

The key goals for the BHPML in 2008 are:

revising the BHPML website
selective digitisation of key documents
developing the framework for a digital archive of interactive searchable thematic guides, finding aids and indexes to support an enhanced range of information services, online exhibitions and educational resources to users and researchers.

The digital BHPML archive will be delivered through an open source framework to enable full access to a range of digitised materials in multiple formats for download or online browsing

Contact

Mrs Margaret Goedhart
Academic Librarian, The Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Library
University of South Australia, City West Campus
North Terrace, Adelaide, SA 5000

Ph +61 8 8302 0318, Fax +61 8 8302 0420
Email: Lby-Hawke Library

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