For the archivist charged with cataloguing the largest personal collection yet to be bequeathed to the University, opening every box was like a “treasure trove”.

Sorting through the papers of Stephen and Helen Wurm was surprising and fascinating work for Kerri Ward of the National Archives of Australia, who typically works on preparing government documents for archiving.

Ward spent three months in 2006 on a special project to serialise, catalogue and package the Wurm collection at the University Archives.

It was a big task. According to University Archivist Maggie Shapley, ANU staff took over a hundred boxes of personal and professional documents from the purpose-built extension at the Wurm’s home.
“There was industrial-type shelving installed in the room from floor to ceiling, and the shelves were double stacked. So we’d look at a shelf and think ‘that’s just books’, but when we pulled a book out we’d find that there were files, documents, diaries, all sorts of things, behind the first row of books,” Shapley says.

The Wurm collection is the largest personal holding in the University Archives. With the addition of material from the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, it is stored in 200 acid-free archives boxes that take up over 45 metres of shelf space. The collection contains everything from personal letters between Stephen and Helen to detailed notes on the linguistic intricacies of rare languages from around the world.

Stephen Wurm was a renowned linguist and the first professor of linguistics at ANU. As head of the Department of Linguistics from 1968 to 1987, he played a significant role in establishing and growing the Department and the field in Australia. He was an ongoing visitor to the Department until his death in 2001. He is thought to have been able to converse – either simply or fluently – in 50 languages.

Wurm is probably best known professionally for his contribution to the study of Papuan languages, the development of publisher Pacific Linguistics and his series of language atlases, according to his 2001 obituary by Tom Dutton for the Australian Academy of Humanities.
Stephen and Helen met at university in Vienna, where Helen was completing a PhD on social anthropology. She is respected for her book on Aboriginal bark painting and for her work for a number of museums including the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies (now the Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies) on their collections of artefacts.

When Helen died in 2005, the Wurm estate was bequeathed to ANU. The bequest included the Wurm’s extensive book collection, which now is held by the Menzies Library, and their papers.

The three-month secondment of Ward to the University Archives to arrange and catalogue the sizeable collection was funded by the Wurm bequest, to ensure that this important addition to the University Archives could be accessed and used for research.

The collection is eclectic, containing research materials on various common and rare languages, travel diaries, photographs, sound recordings, slides and film of research trips, as well as 1930s German movie star cards and scrapbooks collected by Helen, which are valuable in their own right.

“It was fascinating to work with such an interesting personal collection; not only of one person, but two, and to see the interaction between them,” Ward says.
But there were challenges for the archivist, particularly without a background in linguistics.
“It was difficult in some cases to determine whether the material was really valuable or not. Near the end of the project a visiting scholar began accessing the material. This was very useful to me as she told me what a lot of the notes and scribbles meant.”

That scholar was Åshild Næss from the University of Oslo. She studies a little-known language, Äiwoo, of the Reef Islands in the Santa Cruz archipelago, to the east of the Solomon Islands.

“These languages are interesting because they’ve hardly been studied. Wurm’s work is pretty much all there is and although he collected a fair amount of material he didn’t publish a great deal on them,” Næss says.

For example, Wurm’s papers include a preliminary computer printout of the first 1,200 tentative initial entries and English Index of a work-in-progress dictionary of the Äiwoo language, notes on morphology and nominal classification systems in Äiwoo, Äiwoo grammars and dictionary drafts, and correspondence between Wurm and collaborators in the Pacific on Äiwoo.

Næss accessed the collection to view Wurm’s primary materials from the remote region. She wanted to investigate whether it would shed more light on a controversy of the linguistics world, sparked by Wurm’s conclusion that the Reefs-Santa Cruz languages were of mixed Austroneasian and non-Austroneasian origins.

“Given the location of these languages, there shouldn’t really be non-Austroneasian languages that far to the east and south in the Pacific. This conclusion has repercussions not just for the discipline of linguistics but for archaeology and Pacific prehistory.

“Having all this material sitting safely in Canberra was a wonderful opportunity to get primary data for my studies. The primary linguistic materials are immensely valuable and it’s great that it’s being made available to researchers,” Dr Næss says.

Making the collection known to and accessible for academics is the main aim of the University Archives, particularly because of its wealth of primary material on languages including tapes of native speakers, notes on language, photographs and movie recordings. The University Archives also kept the Wurms’ movie projector in the event the movie recordings need to be replayed.

“The research and linguistic materials are certainly very important and we hope that we can get the word out there that the Wurms’ collection is available,” Shapley says.
“But it’s also an important collection from the point of view of the history of ANU. Stephen’s documents include communications on the administrative elements of the Linguistics Department, annual reports of the department and his contributions to internal reviews.
“Helen’s collection is also intriguing and valuable. There’s her own research materials and her recording of their field trips, photographs and diaries, and there’s also her beautiful scrapbooks of the theatre in Vienna in the 1940s.

“It really is a great collection that we’re gratified to have.”


^^

ANU Reporter 
Autumn 2007