Using history: historical research and publication by Australian librarians and archivists.

Library history has constituted a significant portion of the research articles published in the Australian Library Journal and in Australian Academic & Research Libraries. By contrast, archives history has attracted much less interest from researchers publishing in Archives and Manuscripts. The author uses these articles together with papers delivered at the seven Australian Library History Forums convened between 1984 and 1996 to provide snapshots of library and archives history producers and production in an attempt to explain this disparity. He demonstrates that research higher degrees have strongly driven the production of library (and, to a lesser extent, archives) history but suggests that archives and records professionals have been more ambivalent towards history and historical studies than their library counterparts. The roots of this ambivalence may lie in debates over library control of archives and the professional identity of archivists in the 1950s and 1960s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]