MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE: COMMUNITY MEMORY IN THE LOCAL STUDIES COLLECTION.

Collections should not depend on the physical construction of an item before it is included, or physical location for people to access them. Their usefulness lies in the quality and timeliness of their information. The advantages of the speed, ease and cost of electronic formats points to the future of publication. Libraries need to embrace this future and act to create relevant collections. Rather than becoming a pseudo portal libraries can engage local communities by coordinating the capture of the new and disseminating it using the web. Edited version of a paper given at the NSW CPLA conference Cessnock 19 July 2000

In 1979 the postpunk rockband The Police first performed what was to become one of its biggest hits Message in a bottle. A while later it was recorded and finally made its way to Newcastle via Radio 2nx. I liked it so much I bought the album. At the time the song struck a chord with my thirteen year old self, not least for Andy Summers' virtuoso guitar but also because, as an adolescent, I thoroughly identified with the notion of isolation and loneliness. Rescue me before I fall into despair croons Sting.

The song, like all good songs, has a narrative. It is that of the isolated individual reaching out with hope, but feeling that he is bound to fail. A message in a bottle is, after all, the last desperate attempt at finding rescue by the marooned, and you can imagine the protagonist dying a lonely death on the verge of paradise. The song resolves in the final verse on a positive note `a year has passed since I wrote my note ... a hundred million bottles washed up on the shore'. Apparently he was not alone, after all, but one of many isolated individuals. So isolated in fact that the tree state of the world was obfuscated by his own perception, that the world was a vibrant space and he alone was suffering within it. Such realisations often come as a surprise. This is not least because of the sources of information open to us, the mass media primarily, portray a world of happy successful people engaged in sitcom lifestyles where getting up in the morning, ablutions, and going to work are not part of the scriptwriters' canon.

Community involvement

A recent Australian Bureau of Statistics publication Australian social trends confirms a growing trend away from community involvement. We watch more television and we watch it alone. According to research by Robert Putnam we participate less in the community, the number of people playing musical instruments is shrinking, we spend less time with our families around the meal table and we enjoy our work less. Membership of service clubs is on the wane, civic engagement is diminished and market researchers are saying that `people are now regrouping in new tribes based on common interests and values or location'.

Professional isolation

Librarians are apt to place ourselves in Sting's position, isolated from their potential audience. They are the handlers and keepers of memory, the community memory. To employ lung's famous concept, the guardians of the collection unconscious, the collectors of memory. However their collections are dominated by the fruits of commercial publication, mass marketed books, videos, and newspapers which tout a different species of memory and experience than that of the community around them which fires their collections and gives them ultimate meaning and purpose. Kate Darian-Smith in the introduction to Memory and history in twentieth century Australia says that

   Through their selection of items from the written, visual and material
   objects that circulate in our society, public collecting institutions award
   a social value to specific objects and thus prescribe our historical
   consciousness.[1]

The local community experience

The mass media view is only a small part of the community memory, often faulty and patchy. Through the world wide web, librarians are in a position to both facilitate and create the documentation of local community experience. They are able to collect in real time now, to gather the messages in bottles and create a more comprehensive record of ourselves and our community.

Proust's great work A la recherche du temps perdu or The remembrance of things passed explores, amongst other things, the relationship between memory and life. What we remember is not always what happened, and never the complete picture. Memory is a bit like that, elusive and subject to external influences which can actually change what we think we remember. Memory is not history. Pierre Nora, a French theorist describes history as the bark of the tree of memory and Vernon Scamelli said of the second world war `I realise that I do not remember it so clearly after all. History remembers it and I remember it as history.'

The central character of Proust's work is a sickly, hedonistic, hypochondriacal layabout, who comes to be transported back into a clear recollection of his memories through a synchronistic experience of taste and flavour.

Triggers of the subconscious 

It is well known that smell and taste are powerful triggers of the subconscious. Proust savours a Madeleine, which is the classic shell shaped French tea cookie. These delicate sponge cookies are made with a batter and poured into a special pan and cooked until they are brown and fluffy. After tasting one he is transported to a precise moment in his history. The events he then recalls are pivotal in his life but for one reason or another had escaped his conscious awareness and required the trigger of the flavour of the cake to exhume them from the stacks of his mind.

The translation of Proust has always been problematic. Such was his mastery of French that English does not do it justice. In early translations the work was known as The search for lost time which did not quite capture what Proust was about. It was not a search in the strict sense, and the time was not lost but recovered or regained.

Collective memories

   Memories link us to place, to time and to nation: they enable us to place
   value on our individual and social experiences and they enable us to
   inhabit our own country.[2]

This is the stuff of our community history--the who, the why, and the how, of what we are. And if, as Darian-Smith says, that it is through these `collective memories that we structure our world and understand our past' the historical view proffered by the mass media--where millennium specials are written around available film footage, where political issues are determined by tv news-savvy politicians who can abort reams of intelligent and considered debate with a catchy twelve word sound bite, where the Hollywood movie reinvents historical figures to better serve a storyline and the press is influenced by big business in its daily reportage of news--bends and distorts the community memory and can never truly represent the lived experience.

Cushing claims that `Everyone participates in the social production of memory, although unequally'[3] and that is reflected in library collections--small collections of oral history and the odd ancient diary or memoir notwithstanding. History is, or has been, written by the winners, or worse the cultural elite and the rich and powerful. Thanks in part to egalitarianism, and a change in historical research methodology, we now tend to get a more evenly balanced interpretation of the past. Yet those documents of community memory that survive in library collections are principally the views dictated by the `big end' of town, and not of the individual. While everyone helps to define the place and time they are in, not every experience survives past their lifetime.

This should concern librarians greatly. If the view of history we create today is contingent upon the material that was created or collected at the time long since passed, we have lost a valuable amount of the collective community memory and subsequent insights into our history. We focus on the published, secondary source material--the filtered, edited, rewritten, ghostwritten, manipulated. That which is easily collected, invoiced and received in familiar formats that sit well on the shelves.

Local studies collections

Just how much of our collective identity would be lost if the local studies collection vanished suddenly overnight? No more photographs, Maitland mercuries, news-clipping files, no coffee on Tuesday nights with Harry and Jack or collected published works? Often the answer to that question is, not much.

The survival of the artefact is only ever significant when it can be accessed by someone who can see meaning in it. The collection is in fact much more than the material sitting upon the shelves, it is access to it. Access which keeps it current in the community memory rather than as a separated, isolated adjunct. It is also the participation of the community in the creation of the collection, feeding it with its experience, reflections and memories. Yet for the great majority of people, the collection is vanished. They have no access to it, are not interested, and do not know it exists.

Collective memory loss

Librarians cringe at the idea of losing their collections because that is their nature, their education, their profession. They operate in the belief of preserving our heritage and losing such a large chunk of it is hard to bear. However the nature of ignorance of the collection does not worry them as greatly, yet the result is the same.

With each passing generation we lose more in terms of collective memory as the present goes undocumented. It goes further than what was in the newspapers last week. It is the enduring sense of place and community which becomes less clear as the experience and memories of individuals, their perspectives, are lost.

The assumption that material of historical importance is in itself old, defies the rapid movement of time. What happened yesterday is history, what happened this morning is history. If it is because of the superimposition of antique value that makes us concentrate our efforts upon historical material so that we pay homage, conserve it and bask in the status of significant collections, we are under a grave misconception. Age does not imbue an item with properties of significance, nor is the view described within an old newspaper any more likely to be a balanced and accurate account than those in today's paper. So not only can carefully acquired collections be nonexistent, they can also be irrelevant. Librarians revere the object, the artefact, often over its content.

One example

To illustrate this point, a number of recent media portrayals of public events could be used. The closure of the BHP works in Newcastle is one. Another interesting example is the shelling of Newcastle in 1942.

For those unversed in its local history, Newcastle and Darwin share the distinction of being the only places in mainland Australia to have been actively attacked by an enemy.

The bombing of Darwin, and the suppression of that event at the time in order to preserve public confidence, is well documented. Less known is that. Newcastle was also attacked by submarines on a dark night and Fort Scratchely returned fire. Subsequent to this attack two Japanese midget submarines were caught and destroyed in Sydney harbour. Seemingly the Newcastle target was the BHP or even the dockyards. Both were significant strategic targets, but the submarines missed and damaged a number of houses in the east end of Newcastle.

As a result of censorship at the time there are no newspaper reports or other accessible records of this event. Obviously newspaper headlines shouting 'You missed' could lead to further attacks. In 1999 a debate arose over the attack with one claim that Fort Scratchley did not return fire. The Newcastle Regional Library received a number of requests for copies of the newspaper reports to the confirm or deny the various arguments, one from a journalist. The reply that there are none was met variously with denial (you are joking), anger (can I speak to your superior) and grief (well, what can I do now?).

It got worse. One other theory posited that the attack was not undertaken by Japanese submarines at all, but by Australia's own navy with a view to encouraging the sale of war bonds which at the time were undersubscribed. Various allegations were made about the complicity of the gun crews at the fort. Many, now very old, men who had been there that night came `out of the woodwork' and attested to the events of that night. Others surfaced to deny it.

The active memory of this event is now hopelessly confused and the efforts by conspiracy theorist or other well intentioned individuals to arrive at some apparent truth of the event is irrelevant. There simply is no record to consult. The event was not captured as it occurred and memory has altered over time. No one can say how it felt to be in Newcastle as it was, or was not, fired upon. Any future analysis of the bombing will find a debate, fifty seven years after it occurred, to further muddy the waters. The record we now have, including the newspaper reports and radio interviews, are contaminated by the present. In this case the interested public's belief in the mass media as a reliable source of historical information is flawed.

Another example

An alternative example and one in which the library has been able to play a not inconsiderable role in documenting a disappearing aspect of Novacastrian experience, has been in conjunction with the PommyTown project undertaken by Newcastle University's Dr Helen MacCallan. Pommy Town was an area of Mayfield developed as housing for British immigrant steelworkers in the post first world war development of the Lysaghts plant. During her research Dr MacCallan unearthed a number of living treasures, and in one case she found a richly illustrated account of life in the area. Inspired by the find, the memoir is now on the verge of publication in a traditional format. This particular aspect of the development of the area has been secured for posterity. It was a near thing. The author is in his late 90s and since their first meeting his health has significantly worsened. The publication process has been long and expensive and it is credit to Dr MacCallan's drive and energy that it will see the light of day. The fact that the diary was written as it happened, and not with the benefit of hindsight, is extremely significant.

In Nancy Cushings' paper on the closure of the BHP plant in Locality she realises that `formal records of work experiences are lacking'. Despite a seemingly comprehensive collection of material from BHP Review, photographs and the massive corporate archives, actual expressions of what it was like to work there do not exist in the public domain. In fact the BHP Review taunts the researcher with lines such as `many amusing and interesting anecdotes of the daily working life in the plant were told' while failing to deliver any.

The rewriting of history

Hollywood has been criticised for rewriting history. The recent Mel Gibson film The patriot, has been criticised by Liverpudlians for the portrayal of Banastre Tarleton as a blood thirsty infanticide. Banastre is something of a hero in Liverpool and became a long standing member of parliament. Its citizens do not like the way he has been portrayed. Hollywood argues that it is a fictional account using some historical details. However it is felt that Hollywood is producing its own version of history. While this seems innocuous enough, if we extend that idea to other issues such as the holocaust and accept that the mass media have an unparalleled influence upon our perception of history and memory, it becomes more sinister.

Pursuing records

It is almost always harder and more expensive to find and maintain old stuff, tragic as it is. Much has been lost and we cannot do anything about it. What we should do is collect what we can now, with a view to giving voice to the traditionally mute producers of social history and in so doing enrich the historical record of tomorrow through our efforts today. Importantly, we must actively pursue records from outside of the media hegemony, because the economic imperatives of modern mass media clearly dictate the social debate seen in these outlets. Increasingly the media is concentrated into the hands of a small group of multibillionaires and conglomerates. Wire stories from abroad feature heavily in local and daily newspapers. Censorship is exercised on a daily basis, not just to protect perceived moral sensibilities but to facilitate financial transactions.

In the many libraries I have seen a number of innovative approaches taken to capturing the present in forms other than mainstream published material. These range from the dedicated collection of real estate marketing brochures, oral history programs, to photographic recording projects. Yet many of these initiatives are marooned tropical islands. What are libraries doing with this material? How are they providing access to it?

Technology

Collecting and publishing information has been an expensive business. It is this cost which has limited the variety of material which enters the library collection. Yet now, thanks to the pc, it is relatively easy and inexpensive to create and publish information previously ignored by the publishing industry. It is time to reinvent the publication process and empower the community in the recording of its own memories.

The web offers librarians greater freedom in the creation and dissemination of information. Its immediacy and relative simplicity invites contributions. As a profession motivated by ideals of accuracy of information and with its fingers on the pulse of what information the public wants, librarians be can well placed to develop content for the web and so broaden access to its collections and capture and publish alternative views on community life for posterity. The time of limited access to physical collections is over. Once librarians begin to think outside of the four walls of library buildings and come to finally appreciate the significance of their role as the keepers of the community memory, opportunities to create, promote and disseminate information abound.

The challenge

It is a role with which librarians may feel uncomfortable. Whether through fear or ennui the idea of creating content, or editing it, or publishing it for a client that may or may not have a library card, is alien. Recent reading, and attendances at conferences where senior members of the profession promulgate romantic notions of the bound book and other pseudo luddite sentimentalism are alarming. They are missing the point and appear blind to the enormous potential the profession has to offer the community at large.

The business of information is evolving at a rapid pace and community awareness of these changes is higher than it has ever been. Surveys of web usage, and indeed library nonuser surveys, indicate that a growing number of people view the web as an appropriate source of information and will generally look there before leaving the comfort of their offices or homes to visit a library. This is also evidenced in the increasing availability of resources on the web such as the Encyclopedia Britannica to which it had become apparent that the web was having a considerable impact upon sales of bound sets, and so is attempting to address this through advertising revenue on its site. Television and radio stations are developing web delivery mechanisms. In some cases, television programs are aping the web design paradigm of scrolling texts and frames to show more information on their screens.

Even the pornographic magazine market has shrunk as its clientele shifts onto the internet. Many traditional publications, such as Playboy, are spending large sums of money establishing themselves electronically. They are not the only ones. Academic journals and many major publishing houses are experimenting with electronic information as a means of reducing the costs of distribution and to meet the needs of their readers.

It is easy to lament the quality of information on the web, the lack of authority, and to sit back with a diminishing sense of purpose. The alternative is to become proactive and actually `do a Brittanica' and deliver information in the same way. I am not heralding the end of the library or the death of the book, but the web offers libraries an opportunity to rescue memory before it becomes lost. Librarians should be doing more.

Tim Berners Lee, the inventor of what we now know as the www, visualised it as a community of information exchange. Dotcoms notwithstanding, the web still has the potential to fulfil this vision and with an active commitment from libraries coupled with revisualising their role of doorkeeper to doorcreator, collections can blossom forth, accessible and relevant to ever larger sections of the community. The impetus of publication on the web encourages a more active collection of material, current material in conjunction with the wider community.

Undoubtedly, the body of information now accessible is far larger than that of previous generations. We talk of information overload and may well baulk at the suggestion of creating and distributing still more information. However as access to information grows the web is increasingly becoming more focused. It is not easy finding some information on the internet, but then it was never that easy finding information in a library. The web is also complicated by being able to access text level keywords which greatly inflates searching results.

While it seems complex and confusing, methods to effectively describe information and different searching methodologies are developing. After ail, LCSH and Dewey were not invented in a day and libraries managed quite nicely before they came about. There will always be some degree of uncertainty but at least on the local level information can be contained and made accessible.

It is a scary step for some because it necessarily involves taking a risk and a change of mind set. Building collections of information that more accurately describe the community requires a more active approach to acquisition. In effect, librarians can be both writers and publishers of information. They also need to get out from behind their desks and pcs and encourage the community to participate. A library should be a community access point to information that transcends the usual mass media sources, both utilising them and contrasting them with individual experience, uniting the community in an effort to record the now, preserving the present.

It is important to separate the container and the thing contained. Collections should not, and indeed need not, be dependant upon the physical construction of an item before its inclusion. Nor should they need be dependant upon their physical location for people to access them. Their ultimate usefulness and relevance lies more in the quality and timeliness of the information held within, than of the way they are bound or the convenient location of a building. The advantages gained by publishing information in an electronic format--speed, ease and cost effectiveness--point to the future of publication. Librarians need to embrace this future and act to create relevant collections for their communities, local or distant.

We all have our singular experiences and perceptions of the world around us. This creates the present as we live it, in our community. Yet in the face of the forces of globalisation the sense of the local community is changing. The documentary remains of lives are increasingly distant and less indicative of the lived experience. To counter this librarians should become active within the community to document, publish, and create a focal point of community memory in a very real and meaningful way. To create what Nietzche called `history for life'.

Rather than becoming a pseudo portal, which refers seekers elsewhere, librarians should engage their local communities by coordinating the capture of the now in a variety of creative ways--and disseminate that information using the web.

Anything is possible, but if librarians sit on the beach contemplating rescue and make no attempt to reach out, they will entrap themselves in their profession.

References

[1] Darian-Smith, K and Hamilton, P Memory and history in twentieth century Australia Melbourne, OUP 1994 pi

[2] ibid

[3] Cushing, N Locality 10(1) p 22

Grant White BA(Hons) GradDip(LIS) is Local Studies Librarian, Newcastle Region Library, a position from which he has just resigned to pursue employment options in Europe. Previously he was the Multimedia and Special Collections Librarian at the Central Coast campus of the University of Newcastle. [e-mail]

Grant White Local Studies Librarian Newcastle Regional Library NSW Received July 2000