AustLit

'This article examines a selection of archival records created and preserved in relation to the Aboriginal outlaw Jimmy Governor. It focuses in particular upon a special diary kept by the officers guarding him during his time in the condemned cell at Darlinghurst Gaol in 1900–01. The article considers these records and the various microfilm and digital surrogates used by scholars in terms of the affordances of their specific materiality. It advances an argument about how these particular archival records function as evidence of law, duty and public administration. Whereas in the past Jimmy Governor’s story has primarily been told in the genre of law-breaking, this article argues that these archival records instead reveal him as an agent of law-making. When examined as pages and as paper, the various documents that comprise the Jimmy Governor archive provide evidence of a commitment to the rule of law in a colonial society on the brink of Federation.' (Publication summary)

'This essay reviews the ways in which literary manuscripts may be considered to be archivally unique, as well as valuable in all senses of the word, and gives a cautious appraisal of their future in the next 10 to 20 years. It reviews the essential nature of literary manuscripts, and especially the ways in which they form ‘split collections’. This leads to an assessment of the work of the Diasporic Literary Archives network from 2012 to 2014, and some of the key findings. The essay closes with reflections on the future of literary manuscripts in the digital age – emerging trends, research findings, uncertainties and unknowns.' (Publication summary)