Last weekend CAF team members, Jo Holder , Catriona Moore (who is also on DAAO Editorial Board) and I travelled in sunny crisp weather to Bathurst and Dubbo to continue our work with artist researchers and researcher communities in regional NSW as part of the Future Feminist Archive project. John Bayliss, Head, Macquarie Regional Library read Simone Taylor’s (Local Studies Officer, Dubbo Branch)  talk on archives and Pearl Gibbs. Eric Riddler, visual library archivist at AGNSW ( and another member of DAAO Editorial Board) also came to Western Plains Culture Centre in Dubbo to give a wonderful presentation  about resources available on local Dubbo artists, reminding us that Hera Roberts was another Dubbo legend https://www.daao.org.au/bio/hera-roberts/personal_details/? . Jessica Moore (WPCC Collections Officer) gave a fascinating talk on data management developments  and their implications at WPCC.

In Bathurst, FFA artist researcher Fiona MacDonald reported on her ongoing work on Vivienne Binn‘s Full Flight. Some of Fiona’s archival research is hanging on the wall behind the absorbed participants in the reading room at Bathurst Regional Art Gallery in the image below. We also had data pushes at both locations where we added new records for local artists and exhibitions. ( I’ll load all into a project folder soon ;-))

The FFA project presents lots of interesting new challenges for DAAO data schema. The FFA is documenting much innovative participatory art projects. For instance,  how can we as a database adequately capture the complexity of Binn’s ‘Full Flight’, a two year journey of travelling and engaging with local communities? In the image above, four posters contain unbroken lists of names of people involved in the project. We need to always be thinking about the role do we play as a digital content provider and metadata aggregator in supporting archival researchers – how do we enrich each other across digital analog platforms – how does the scrape of meta data work with material decay and loss let alone digital entropy? How can we ensure that our database practices don’t contribute to the erasure of some of the very complexity we are seeking to represent and distribute.

We do many things on a digital design level to distribute our data as freely as possible so it remains dynamic, open and free so that we can deliver an inclusive picture of that variable and various concept ‘Australian art and design’. But we also need that hands-on, face-to-face involvement with the curators, collections managers, archivists and researchers working with the communities whose incredible archives are largely unknown outside the area. We’ve been doing a lot of face to face this year and the feedback we’ve been get from so many different communities, groups, individual and institutions this year has been very gratifying. And all the user testing has been incredibly useful. (It’s on the list!) Thanks.

We have also acquired some new moderators for DAAO, Jessica Moore, Collections Officer, http://www.westernplainsculturalcentre.org”>WPCC and Fiona MacDonald FFA artist researcher of Bathurst Archives. BRAG among others. Welcome to DAAO! Moderators are our custodians and we very much appreciate the over 150 moderators on DAAO who each tender to their specific little gardens of interest. To find out more about moderators and how to become one: https://www.daao.org.au/about-daao-moderators/