ASAP Melbourne Office's New Home

After surviving in cramped conditions for many years, the space situation in Melbourne became critical in early 1995, with only two offices dedicated to the Project on campus, and our projected move to Queensberry Street shelved indefinitely. Our Director, Rod Home, donated the use of his office to Gavan McCarthy while he was overseas, which offered some relief from overcrowding. But just as Gavan's expectations of grandeur seemed to be dissolving into the harsh realities of a home office, the University of Melbourne offered ASAP some new accommodation off-campus.

ASAP Melbourne now lives in the old Boydex building at 203 Bouverie Street, Carlton. Despite being offered eight rooms, the space has already been filled by new staff. The opportunity for staff to be in close contact with each other has been invaluable. This space has been dedicated to ASAP for the next 12 months, after which we may again be looking for a home. Bouverie Street has become something of an ASAP precinct, with the Generation Victoria team occupying, to the great envy of the rest of the staff, 158 Bouverie Street, once the Pitman Books Building. This building has been leased for 2 years in order to house the Generation Victoria records in anticipation of their eventual dispersal.

The records of Generation Victoria have formed our largest project to date, with ASAP providing teams of archival staff to classify the records and determine the access needs of the new power generation entities. About 10% of the records have multiple owners in the new structure, and the project identified these and arranged for them to be digitally imaged by the Australian Securities Commission. Other power related projects include the records of Hazelwood Power Station, Morwell Mine, Southern Hydro and Yallourn Power Station. These projects are either carried out by ASAP staff or as consultancies in which businesses provide their own staff to work under the direction of ASAP archivists. Increasingly, we have been called upon to provide records management as well as archival services as businesses look for systems which can deal with all their organisational needs.

On the collections side of things, our new, double size, project whiteboard is already full, with staff engaged on personal collections, scientific societies and on-site work at institutions. Another major task has been the upgrading of our ADS (Archival Data System) to a Microsoft Access platform. The last six months have been incredibly productive, and if anything, the next look even busier...

- Lisa O'Sullivan, ASAP Melbourne.

New address:
ASAP Melbourne
203 Bouverie St,
Carlton 3053.
Ph: (03) 9344 9287
Fax: (03) 9349 4630

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