Australia’s national library is urging Australians not to dump the T-shirts, posters, badges, fridge magnets and other campaign material they acquired during the Indigenous voice to parliament referendum campaign, and consider donating the items to the national archives instead.
The National Library of Australia is seeking material from both sides of the campaign, including examples of misinformation and images depicting the conflict in communities in the lead up to the 14 October poll.
“It will be a record of the debate and what happened, and it will offer historians and researchers of the future insights into the arguments put for and against,” the library’s director of curatorial and collection research, Libby Cass, told the Guardian.
“We will have archived websites, for example, that might have been pushing a narrative or reasons for a yes or no vote that might include misinformation, but that’s not a reason for us not to collect it … it is an example of the social and political context in which the debate took place.”
The National Library’s director general, Dr Marie-Louise Ayres, said in a statement the institution had collected a vast array of ephemera relating to many of the 44 proposals for constitutional change put to Australians since Federation.
But the 2023 question on whether the constitution should include recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and give them a voice to parliament will be the first collection of referendum memorabilia that will include social media.
Commencing this week, the library has so far archived 378 website snapshots on its online data base Trove, now available to the public.
Cass said the library had contacted a diverse range of First Nations voices, elected representatives at different levels of government, official campaign groups and other community groups representing a range of multicultural perspectives, seeking the stickers, badges, corflutes, T-shirts, posters and pamphlets they used to promote their stance on the campaign.
“We’ve approached prominent campaigners and advocates on both sides,” she said.
“We want to collect both sides of the debate without bias.”
A number of federal MPs and senators have already agreed to provide their correspondence and campaign documents to the library, Cass said.
Ayres said collecting political ephemera was a part of the library’s role in preserving and sharing the history of Australia.
‘Thanks to the Australian public, we’ve built the largest collection of political memorabilia in Australia,’” she said.
More information on how to donate to the National Library of Australia’s collection on the 2023 referendum can be found here.
