Pathways to memory

In Proceedings of AusWeb96 - The Second Australian World Wide Web Conference.

Archives preserve our public memory. They are a vital resource in understanding ourselves and our culture, but access to them can sometimes be difficult. The WWW offers great opportunities to develop new methods of accessing and interacting with the wealth of information contained within our country's archival repositories. What information can be made available and how? This paper summarises existing initiatives and suggests a few ways of proceeding. It argues that any national strategy needs to be inclusive, scalable, and open, but the most important thing is to get started! As the possibilities reveal themselves we can look to developing an on-line environment that gives archives back their context, creating an infinite number of pathways through our public memory.