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National Library of Australia seeks stories from Indian diaspora
The library is inviting stories from people with Indian heritage to build a collection about their experiences, work, and organizations.
The National Library of Australia is gathering narratives from individuals with Indian heritage in Australia / Twitter/@nlagovau
The National Library of Australia has launched an initiative to showcase the experiences and voices of Australians with Indian heritage. As part of the project, the library has called on the Indian diaspora to share their stories with them.
A statement from the museum said that stories across multiple formats including recorded interviews, books, newsletters, newspapers, photographs, and personal archives would be accepted.
The Indian community in Australia has seen rapid growth over the years. It is the second-largest and fastest-growing community in the continent. According to the 2021 census, about 9,76,000 people in Australia trace their ancestry to India.
Indian students numbering 1,22,391 (as of September 2023) form the second-largest cohort of foreign-born students in Australia, as per data from High Commission of India in Canberra.
“We’re interested in getting to know communities. To learn about what’s important to them and to record their stories,”Nicki Mackay-Sim, director of National Library Curatorial and Collection Research, said. Sim added that the Indian diaspora can help the library build a collection of their lives and experiences, work, and organizations.
The project is also open to individuals who have migrated to Australia from countries like Singapore, Fiji, Malaysia, within Africa, or a range of other places, but their ancestry must be traced to India. Their stories will be a part of the library’s national collection and enable Australians to understand their diverse social, cultural, and intellectual histories, a statement noted.
A similar project was released by the library ahead of the International Women’s Day. It drew from the collections with a particular focus on the Oral History and Folklore collection project Trailblazing Women and the Law. The project included the oral histories of Australian women in the legal profession as interviewed by professor Kim Rubenstein and Dr Nikki Henningham.
The NLA was inaugurated on August 15, 1968 to ensure that documentary resources of national significance relating to Australia and the Australian people, as well as significant non-Australian library materials, are collected, preserved, and made accessible either through the library itself or through collaborative arrangements with other libraries and information providers.
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