School of Information Studies

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I worked in libraries and related cultural institutions for over twenty years. From 1993 to early 2005 I worked in for the National Film and Sound Archive in Canberra, latterly as the manager of their Collection Development area.  During this time I taught on a casual basis at the University of Canberra and Canberra Institute of Technology. Since 2005 I have worked as a lecturer at CSU.

My research focus is on preservation in its broadest sense - from how to determine what will be selected for 'ever' and what falls by the wayside to technical aspects such as web archiving and managing digital repositories.  This started with my PhD work of 20 years ago looking at the preservation of Australian popular fiction to more recent work looking at web archiving and audio-visual materials with a focus on television broadcasting and the place of 'virtual' archives, created and maintained in the cloud, by the crowd where issues of significance, selection, and authenticity are bypassed.

I am particularly interested in the role of non-book materials - their acquisition, use and longer term preservation.  Currently I am part of a group investigating web archiving and am conducting research into the use of e-books, the preservation of broadcast television materials and the broader issue of digital preservation.

I teach in the areas of collection development, audiovisual archiving and digital preservation. I am also involved with some of the management subjects.

I am a member of the Australian Memory of the World Committee and also a member of the Community Advisory Group, the Department of Territory and Municipal Services, for ACT Libraries.

I am a co-organiser of the annual current awareness seminars conducted by CSU at the National Library of Australia.

I have worked on collaborative research projects with staff from the ACT Public Library Service, Wagga Wagga Public Library, the Australian Catholic University, the National Film and Sound Archive and the National Library.

• (2008) Empirical research methods reported in high-profile LIS journal literature. (with Philip Hider). Library & Information Science Research, v30 pp. 108-114
• (2007) User response to the introduction of e-books and e-audio in an Australian public library network. In the 7th LIDA (Libraries in the Digital Age) Conference, Dubrovnik, Croatia, May. Available at: http://www.nla.gov.au/initiatives/meetings/documents/pymm07.doc
• (2006) Preservation of audio-visual media - traditional to interactive formats. In Preservation Management in Libraries, Archives and Museums. London, Facet Publishing.
• (2006) Building collections for all time: the issue of significance. Australian Academic and Research Libraries, v37 n1, March.
• (2004) Satellite capture of broadcast materials: archiving radio and television in the 21st century. In the VALA (Victorian Association for Library Automation) Conference, Melbourne, February. Available at: http://www.vala.org.au/vala2004/2004pdfs/18Pymm.PDF