​Phyllis Mander-Jones (1896–1984) was employed by the NSW Library from 1925–60. During this time, she surveyed historical documents and established the foundations of Australia’s archival profession. Mander-Jones travelled the Pacific searching for relative materials during the 1930s and 1950s; yet her personal contributions from this time, and the records she created about these journeys, are underexamined.

Deborah Lee-Talbot is an academic and professional historian, who is fascinated by gender, religion, Oceania and archives. Following a Summer Scholarship at the National Library of Australia analysing the Australian Joint Copying Project in 2022, Deborah submitted for examination her PhD thesis Kaleidoscopic archives: a history about London Missionary Society records, 1813–2022. In 2023 she commenced a SLNSW Fellowship to investigate the archive of the archivist Phyllis Mander-Jones.