McKemmish, Susan (Sue)

Positions summary

Senior Lecturer and Associate Professor, Department of Librarianship, Archives and Records (later School of Information Management and Systems) 1990 – 2004. Inaugural Chair in Archival Systems (2004), Emerita Professor (2021).  Founding Director of the Centre for Organisational Social Informatics (COSI).

Biography

Susan (Sue) McKemmish was born in 1950. She received her Bachelor of Arts (Honours) from Monash University in 1972, followed by a Master of Arts from Monash University in 1977. In 1980 she completed a graduate diploma in librarianship from RMIT. 

Before joining Monash University, McKemmish worked at the University of Queensland, the Victorian Branch of the National Archives of Australia, and was Deputy Keeper at the Public Record Office Victoria from 1983-1990.

In 1990, McKemmish was appointed Senior Lecturer in the Department of Librarianship, Archives, and Records (later School of Information Management and Systems) to develop a curriculum for undergraduate and postgraduate recordkeeping courses alongside Frank Upward and Livia Iacovino. In 1999, McKemmish, Upward and Iacovino established the Records Continuum Research Group. In 2001, she was awarded her PhD with her thesis titled ‘Constantly evolving, ever mutating: an Australian contribution to the archival metatext’.

McKemmish held the position of Chair of Archival Systems from 2004-2021 and was the founding director of the Centre of Organisational and Societal Informatics (COSI). She was also Associate Dean, Graduate Research / Research Training from 2007-2016 in the Faculty of Information Technology. She became Emeritus Professor in October 2021.

McKemmish’s research has focused on four main areas throughout her career: records continuum theory where she made significant contributions to Frank Upward’s Records Continuum Model; indigenous and community archives frameworks and systems, including rights, human rights and social justice in records; recordkeeping metadata standards; and research design and methods.

Papers

Research, teaching and administrative records 1990-2021

• Records of research projects for which McKemmish was a chief investigator, including Recordkeeping Metadata (SPIRT) (1997-98), Breast Cancer Knowledge Online (2002-03), Create once, use many times: The clever use of metadata...(2003-05) and Trust and Technology: building archival systems for Indigenous oral memory (2003-05)
• Working papers arising from McKemmish's leadership roles within the Faculty of Information Technology
• Published conference papers of the Australian Society of Archivists.