The inscription of ten new collections of significant documentary heritage on the UNESCO Australian Memory of the World Register was celebrated in a ceremony on 27 March 2025, in the McDonald Room, R G Menzies Library, The Australian National University. The inscriptions can be found on the AMW website at www.amw.org.au/register

Before the certificates of inscription were presented to nominators of the collections, Melissa Liberatore, Acting Secretary-General of the Australian National Commission for UNESCO, and guest speaker, Roxanne Missingham, addressed the audience.

Roxanne Missingham has recently retired after spending the last 13 years as University Librarian at ANU where she was responsible for libraries and archives. Prior to this she was the Commonwealth Parliamentary Librarian, Associate Director General Resource Sharing at the National Library, Director Reader Services NLA and senior manager in CSIRO and other Commonwealth libraries. Her address, drawing on her experience of and passion for documentary heritage collections, was inspiring.
After these two addresses, the presentation of certificates of inscription took place.

The practice of the UNESCO Australian Memory of the World Committee is to add to our Register any inscription that has been inscribed on the International or Asia-Pacific (MOWCAP) Register. In 2024, a joint inscription from Australia and Tuvalu, Funafuti: The Edgeworth David 1897 Expedition, was added to the MOWCAP Register, and certificates of inscription for this were awarded, along with those for nine other collections of documentary heritage now inscribed on our Register. Those for 2025 were announced by Christine Yeats, Chair of the Assessment Sub-Committee, with guest speaker Roxanne Missingham handing over the certificates.

The UNESCO Australian Memory of the World Committee thanks the Australian National University Archives, especially Abbey Turrell and Kathryn Dan, for their assistance in organising the venue and making arrangements for the ceremony. Thanks also to Christine Yeats and all the assessors who have generously given their time and expertise to assess the nominations, and to Racheal Bruhn for her work in designing the certificates. Thanks also to our speakers Melissa Liberatore and Roxanne Missingham, for their much-appreciated insights. And thanks to all those who have worked so hard on the inscriptions that were added to the UNESCO Australian Memory of the World Register at the ceremony.

All images supplied by ANU Archives