Australian Society of Archivists, Diverse Worlds, Annual Conference

摘要

Associations organise themselves around common goals. Their membership contributes to those goals through fees, volunteer labour, setting and upholding standards of practice, educating and advocating, among other things. A healthy association has robust, respectful debate that ensures all of those activities remain relevant in contemporary society. So it's interesting that the opening and closing keynote speakers of the 2017 ASA conference, Diverse Worlds, had both recently rejected their professional associations and withdrawn their membership. Yet, here they were, centre stage, bookending the discourse of an annual archival conference. The tension between their obvious personal passion for the potential of good archival practice and their frustration with the structures of professional practice and discourse was evident.