Document ID: chunk:federal_register_of_legislation:F2021L01306:reg:76:p1
Version: federal_register_of_legislation:F2021L01306
Segment Type: reg
Provision Reference: reg 76 (pt 1/2)
Character Range: 128376–131204

76   Minute, R.M. Taylor, Director of Works, Dept of Works and Housing to Secretary, Canberra Committee on Works Priorities, 'Institute of Anatomy – Modifications to house Department of Physiology of the Australian National University', 22 February 1952, CRS A431, item 59/450; Wurm, 'The Institute of Anatomy Ethnological Collections', p. 3, CRS A1658, item 151/1/7.

  During 1954-55, the Head of ANU's Department of Anthropology and Sociology, Professor Nadel, and his wife took a personal interest in the long neglected ethnographic material and began to unpack it and sort it out. They were given special permission to reorganise the northern museum to display some of this material. Unfortunately, this work was cut short with Professor Nadel's death in 1955. Eventually, however, the Institute's two display halls were reorganised such that the northern one came to house what was called the National Ethnographic Collection. The southern hall continued to exhibit anatomical specimens.77

  Throughout the 1950s and the first half of the 1960s, the main function of the Institute continued to be the conduct of a wide variety of nutrition studies and research into children's health and development. By 1958, a number of CSIRO scientists were also based at the Institute, carrying out research on the dung beetle. By this time, too, the former Director's residence had been divided into an upstairs and downstairs flat, both of which were occupied by professional staff members of the Institute. All the while, public interest in the Institute, as measured by the number of visitors, grew strongly. From an estimate of nearly 60,000 visitors per year at the end of the war, the number rose to an annual figure of approximately 300,000 in 1958. In 1961, the Institute's founder was honoured by the construction in the courtyard of a memorial pool, a gift of his widow.78

  The transfer of the Commonwealth Health Laboratories from the Institute to Canberra Hospital in 1966 marked the beginning of the final chapter in the Institute's history. Although the National Biological Standards Laboratory [NBSL] now moved into the building, the research into nutrition and child development which had flourished since the end of the war now declined. Indeed, Hipsley himself was transferred to the head office of the Department of Health and, after his retirement in 1975, he was not replaced as head of the Nutrition Research Section.

  2.11     National Film and Sound Archive
  The vacation of the building by the NBSL in early 1984 provided the government with an opportunity to find a new role for the building, even though some health research was still carried on there.

  In April 1984, the government announced the formation out of the National Library of an autonomous National Film and Sound Archive of Australia