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Wendy Smith: an Outstanding Contribution to Australian Library Preservation

Wendy Smith

We were greatly saddened to hear of the death of one of Australia’s leading shapers of library preservation, Wendy Smith, in Western Australia in early August 2006.

Wendy started work in the Conservation Section of the National Library of Australia in 1985, having graduated with a Master’s degree from the Canberra College of Advanced Education’s Conservation of Cultural Materials course. From that time on, Wendy made a lengthy and profound contribution to the development of library preservation in Australia, as a preservation manager, teacher and writer.

Wendy played a key role in implementing what was then a new approach to library conservation in this country, adapting the ideas of ‘preservation’ that were emerging, particularly in American library circles, and applying them to Australian conditions. This meant a new emphasis on collection management rather than a narrow focus on treatment of individual objects; it meant the development of library-wide policy rather than just treatment specifications; it meant enlisting the enthusiasm and care of staff throughout the library in looking after collections rather than looking to a small army of elite, white-coated specialists behind locked doors to do it all; it meant identifying priorities for a range of different approaches, based on a recognition that library collections required action if they were to serve their intended purpose.

Wendy contributed to the development of this new approach, which was being fostered by Ian Cook and Jan Lyall in the National Library of Australia. In order to better understand librarians’ needs and priorities, Wendy undertook further studies, and gained a Graduate Diploma in Librarianship. She became a tireless practitioner and advocate in her role as a manager in the Library, and in her subsequent roles as a conservation educator, consultant, writer and presenter.

Those roles took Wendy to some interesting places, reflecting both her quiet but determined drive, and the respect which her knowledge and experience justly earned.

In the early 1990s, Wendy pursued a new career in preservation education, leaving the Library to take up an appointment as lecturer in paper conservation and library and archives preservation at the University of Canberra. Wendy had already mapped out a comprehensive training course in library preservation, with special funding from the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA)—a course which really came to life with the possibility of online delivery through the World Wide Web. In 1997, Wendy worked with the University of New South Wales to adapt her IFLA-funded course into a new Preservation Administration course delivered through the University’s School of Information, Library and Archive Studies—sadly now just part of Australia’s library and archive education history.

Wendy also had a special interest in the problems of preserving library and archive materials in countries in the Asia and Pacific region. Wendy’s interest and skills as a teacher took her to the Pacific and a number of South East Asian countries in the mid-1990s and beyond, to present library preservation workshops.

Ever open-minded to change, Wendy returned to the Library in 1996 to lead the early establishment of an experimental Web archiving program, which would later become the PANDORA archive of Australian online publications—one of the Library’s great achievements in addressing the challenge of digital information content. Working with staff from IT, collecting, cataloguing, preservation and management areas of the Library, Wendy oversaw the development of business process models that have guided the development of the archive over the succeeding decade.

Wendy Smith left the National Library of Australia—for the second and last time—in the late 1990s. She remained an important influence in library preservation, working as a consultant to the Community Heritage Grants scheme (which provides funding to help preserve nationally significant collections in the care of small community organisations); preparing widely-used and cited information resources such as glossaries; and writing papers on subjects ranging from preservation of newspapers to the inadequacies of web archiving programs in capturing a full record of information from the Australian wine industry.

In her retirement, Wendy worked as a volunteer in the special problems of preservation in the Asia Pacific region. She spent two months at the National Library of Laos, and a month at the Jose Rizal Museum of the University of the Southern Philippines, as well as giving training courses in Samoa and the Cook Islands. In the first years of the new millennium, she enrolled as a doctoral candidate in the preservation of electronic information at Charles Sturt University under Ross Harvey. Wendy was nearing the completion of her PhD when she was diagnosed with kidney cancer just before Christmas 2005.

Wendy and her husband Mike moved to Western Australia shortly before Wendy’s death so they could be near other members of their family. Wendy’s battle with cancer was conducted with much of the quiet resoluteness—and good humour—that she brought to her professional life, and many former colleagues were surprised to learn that she had been so seriously ill.

Colin Webb
Collection Preservation Section