Upward, Franklyn (Frank) Herbert

Positions summary

Archivist, educator and recordkeeping theorist and founding member of Monash University’s recordkeeping teaching and research program. Lecturer and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Librarianship, Archives and Records (later the School of Information Management and Systems) 1988 – 2006.

Biography

Frank Upward was born in Melbourne on 2 February 1945. He completed his Bachelor of Arts majoring in History and English in 1965 at the University of Melbourne, followed by a Diploma of Education in 1966 and a Master of Arts in 1974.

Upward worked as a teacher from 1967-1971. Between 1967-1969 & 1971 he taught in Australia and in Papua New Guinea before joining the Victorian Branch of the Commonwealth Archives Office where he worked from 1975-1985. 

Upward worked as a Records Management Consultant from 1985-1989 during which he worked with Professor Jean White in Monash’s Graduate School of Librarianship to design Australia’s first masters level course in archives and records management in 1988. He taught the course from 1989-1991 and recruited Sue McKemmish and Livia Iacovino to develop further curriculum in the Department of Librarianship, Archives, and Records (later School of Information Management and Systems). In 1999, Upward, McKemmish and Iacovino established the Records Continuum Research Group. 

Upward retired from teaching in 2006, but after leaving Monash, he continued to have the status of Principal Researcher in the Centre of Organisational and Societal Informatics (COSI). He was also co-director of the Recordkeeping Institute, founded in 2000 by Barbara Reed. He completed his PhD in 2009 on archival continuum practices at Monash University.

Upward developed the Records Continuum Model in the 1990s with input from Sue McKemmish and Livia Iacovino.

Upward died in 2021.

Papers

Research and teaching records c.1970-2021

• Records of the development and delivery of Monash University's recordkeeping education programs from 1989 to c. 2006
• Research and drafts for Upward's 2009 PhD thesis, Managing the Flicker: Continuum Concepts and the Formation of Archives
• Records arising from Upward's employment as an archivist and records manager prior to his academic carerr, including roles at the Commonwealth Archives Office, as a Freedom of Information Officer in the Victorian public sector and as a records management consultant.