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Project SPAASSM
Project SPAASSM (Special Project for Army Apprentice School
Special Material), currently led by Peter Thornton.
Project SPAASSM (Special Project for Army Apprentice School
Special Material) was instigated after members of the AAAA Inc.
discovered that the Army Museum at Bandiana (AMB) had a vast
quantity of historical material relating to the Army Apprentices
School, which was wasting away in an old warehouse and not
available for the general enjoyment of Apprentices far and wide.
The material was originally rescued by Lt Col Jim Hislop (Rtd),
from almost certain destruction after recovering it from an
industrial waste bin, at the closing of the AAS Bonegilla. Jim
then organised to have the material and a display set up at the
Army Museum Bandiana who are now the official owners and
custodians of our history.
The items include photographs, slides, negatives, video tapes,
movie films, journals, graduation booklets, standing orders,
handbooks and histories. There were approximately 16 boxes of
material (approx 600m x 500m x 400m) and 4 boxes half that size
stored on shelves in an old warehouse at the Army Museum. This
material was relocated from Bandiana to the Australian War
Memorial in Canberra.
After a detailed survey, the SPAASSM team has assessed that the
archive actually contains 7300 photos, 750 x 35 mm slides, 30
videos, 1 film, and approximately 10,000 pages of documents.
SPAASSM has achieved a significant
profile in government circles with a recent decision by the
National Archive of Australia to use our video collection as a
pilot to assess and forge a new preservation standard for
Australia! Work was done by Silvertrak
http://www.silvertrak.com.au/news/2008-sep-17.html
The longer term outcome and aim of this project is to make the
digitised material publicly available via the World Wide Web for
the general enjoyment of all ex-apprentices and visitors and to
eventually make more complete the catalogue record for each item
of the archive (a lot of photos have no context to them and we
will be calling upon the Apprentice fraternity to fill in the
gaps).
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Apprentice School Snapshots
from 1961 Promotional Film
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The aim and scope of the project:-
- Survey all Army Apprentice School written and
photographic material;
- Once surveyed, decide what material is worthy of
preserving, cataloguing and scanning;
- Catalogue material (both manually and electronically)
into a format acceptable for the longer term management of
the inventory (e.g. for Army Museum Bandiana and the AAAA’s
electronic storage repository / web site). It is important
to mention here that the activity be structured up front in
such a fashion as to reduce any double handing of
information e.g. Association electronic cataloguing records
are easily importable into AHRMS (Army History Records
Management System) for the benefit of Army Museum Bandiana.
- Further develop the Army Apprentices School Association
web site to enable interactive access for association
members to assist in material identification and to also
enhance Web Site administration through automated processes.
To contact the Project team:
Team Leader:
Peter Thornton (35th Intake) can be
contacted on:-
Ph: 02 6296 7003 - Mob: 0406 194 469
Email:
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