The Australian War Memorial (AWM) is a shrine, a museum and an archive, committed to telling Australia’s continuing story of service, sacrifice and military history.
Within the archive, the audiovisual collection holds over one hundred thousand items, in all formats, that record the Australian experience of and connection to war and conflict throughout the 20th and 21st centuries – from pre-Federation colonial wars to ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East.
Since its inception in the middle of the First World War, the AWM has been collecting stories and recordings of war from front lines, war zones and military bases across the world, as well as from the Australian home front and community. Through a retrospective of the AWM collection and its acquisition and collection development history, this paper will explore the many different means of collecting before, during and after a conflict, and how this has changed over time.
It will also consider the practical and ethical considerations of collecting, working with, sharing and displaying such content, with particular focus on recent AWM exhibitions –
Operation Kudu: supporting Ukraine and Action! Film & War.
