State Library of New South Wales Indigenous Services Visit to Tasmania, 3-5 April

From 3-5 April 2017 Kirsten Thorpe and Rebe Taylor met with Tasmanian Aboriginal community members in Launceston and Hobart to begin building relationships and to discuss the management of the collections in the Library significant that are significant to the Tasmanian Aborigines’ history and culture.

A key focus of the meetings was the Library’s plan to digitise the journals and papers of George Augustus Robinson in 2018-2019, a collection of considerable cultural and historical significance to the Tasmanian Aboriginal community.

The overall response from the Aboriginal people we met was that their community should have an initial and largely exclusive role in determining the protocols and release of collections significant to their history and culture. They agreed a community reference group should be charged with this responsibility. While they varied on how that reference group should be comprised, this report recommends some solutions in its final section.