The paper “Digital Preservation of Cultural Heritage” examines the current state of digitalisation in Australian archives and libraries, comparing it with global trends. It highlights how technological advancements and globalisation allow us to rethink how we preserve cultural heritage, especially in relation to migration. Migrant histories, scattered across borders, require global partnerships to digitally reconnect and preserve them. The chapter also discusses the digitalisation of archives in Australia, particularly focusing on the National Archives of Australia (NAA) and its efforts to make historical documents accessible online. Key challenges include budget constraints and the need for collaboration to create “archives without walls.”
Notable initiatives in Australia include partnerships with companies like Ancestry.com to digitise passenger arrival records and a service called “digitisation on demand” which allows users to request specific records. However, the chapter points out that compared to Europe, where projects like the Archives Portal Europe have made significant progress, Australia’s digitisation efforts are still developing. The paper concludes that digitalisation is transforming how cultural institutions preserve collections and suggests that more systematic work is needed to fully realise its potential in preserving both individual and collective memories.
