I am responsible for the Australian Paralympic history project. This is a wide-ranging project which seeks to capture, manage and preserve the history of the Paralympic movement in Australia. The attached document gives you an overview of what we are trying to do.
With very limited resources, we rely on partnerships with experts (such as the NLA) and volunteers (such as a group of Wikipedia editors). We are also lucky to be working with the Uni of Qld, which has received an ARC Linkage grant for the project.
However, the big challenge is to create a vehicle which will draw together all the elements of the project and make them available to anyone who wants to access them or who wants to contribute. We have a general concept of an online platform, or “e-history”, but at present these seem to be more limited in scope and don’t necessarily offer the capacity to access the detail we are assembling through our project.
I am sure that we would not be the only community organisation in such a position and looking to tell its story and preserve its history effectively, at a reasonable (haha – minimal) cost.
At the same time as our history is important the Australian Paralympic Committee, it intersects with the “bigger pictures” of Australian society and its history that are being painted by organisations such as the NLA.
