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At the ABC Marjorie Wearne is considered a hero. For 33 years she has worked in the corporation's reference library, ferreting out facts and providing information to the program makers on radio and television -- the people who in turn inform the nation.

"She's always working late," says a colleague. "When I leave at night she's often here working unpaid overtime finding information for people."

She's a national treasure, nothing is too much trouble," says another.

Despite her long service Wearne, a librarian, is one of more than 30 staff from the ABC's archives and library division targeted on a list of people who are "not required" at the corporation.

The list, which was circulated to staff two weeks ago, is the result of a review that recommends the merging of the corporation's sound and TV archives with its reference and clippings libraries when the Sydney TV and radio operations co-locate over the next 12 months.

"How could anyone think of touching a hair on Marjorie's head?" asks Dr Jane Connors, the executive producer of the ABC's social history unit. Other staff, too, are ropeable about the cuts. Ignoring management warnings, several of Wearne's colleagues invited a photographer into the ABC's radio headquarters and agreed to be photographed as a show of support for her and the others on the hit list.

The person pushing for the cuts is the ABC's director of content rights management, Robyn Watts. She predicts 25 full-time positions will disappear over the next two years. Watts told Media: "We're ensuring the library is set-up as effectively and efficiently as possible for a converging media environment going forward."

According to the Community and Public Sector Union's ABC representative, Graeme Thomson, the list of those designated as "not required" is longer, and in terms of actual people (rather than full-time positions) he predicts numbers will fall from 105 to 67. "That's a cut of 36 per cent," he says.

Thomson believes Watts has restructured the department partly to pay for newly created senior executive positions in the content rights division and partly to bolster revenue raising opportunities. "She's got to find the money to pay for all those senior executive salaries. This restructure is just about making a quid," he says.

According to documents tabled by a Senate committee, ABC managing director Jonathan Shier gave the content rights management division an additional $1.8m this financial year -- at the same time as news and current affairs lost $3.4m.

"Rather than providing the library services for program makers to build their programs, it's being treated as an asset to be sold."

Not so, says Watts. "I think that's ill-informed. It is not a simple situation where we're reducing staff here and putting more staff on there. We're actually not putting more staff on in the sales area at all. It's quite a thorough review and restructure of the whole of the archive. It is a true review not just a case of slashing positions here or slashing positions there."

Watts says a key motivation is maximising the benefits of co-locating the radio and TV divisions at the ABC's Ultimo headquarters.

But Thomson disputes this. "It's got nothing to do with co-location. That's a smokescreen. There's nothing in the restructure plan that says that by co-locating there'll be greater efficiencies.

"It's an act of vandalism," he continues. "Program makers will lose the research and archives that they often rely on to make their programs. The archival catalogue is at threat as well, because without a dedicated team of preservers and cataloguers the catalogue will collapse."

Connors argues the work performed by the librarians and archivists is fundamental to the role of the national broadcaster. "The social history unit is appalled by the cuts," she says. "A member of our unit would be in archives every single day. The bulk of what we do draws on that outstanding collection."

Connors cites a couple of examples, including a recent series on Radio National about Australian prime ministers of the 1920s and 30s. "Thanks to an ABC archivist we found recordings of Joseph Lyons and Stanley Melbourne Bruce. People love to hear actual recordings, they give the program authenticity and a connection to the past."

Matthew Talintyre is an archivist -- or more technically a cataloguer -- in the ABC's sound library. He, too, has been classified as "not required" under the review. He says: "Sixty per cent of the cataloguing of the ABC radio material happens in the Sydney office. At present we've only got enough staff to catalogue 50 per cent of the material that comes in." Despite this he predicts that under the restructure, the sound library's staff will drop from 4.6 to two.

"The role we play in program preparation is crucial and to cut back in Sydney in this area affects production nationally," he says.

Watts says she's confident the restructure won't lead to a diminution of service. She says the cuts will come in two phases and can be achieved through voluntary redundancies. "I hope there won't be any forced redundancies," she says. "There will also be opportunities to redeploy staff."

Although Wearne has now reached retirement age she had not been planning to leave the ABC just yet. And now the decision to go or stay is complicated by the battle over her job. She feels obliged to stay to protect the position and feels she would be letting her ABC colleagues down by accepting a redundancy package.

"It makes it hard to say 'bye bye, I'm out of here. I'm alright Jack'," she says. "All of us are concerned, not just about our jobs but about what will happen if these positions go."

Ramona Koval, the presenter of Radio National's Books and Writing program and the deputy staff-elected director on the ABC board is a frequent user of Wearne's library skills. "She is one person I certainly do require," she says. "She's the researcher who compiles the information about international and Australian authors. She's the one who makes the interviews I do as good as they can be. Whenever I'm doing something tricky she's the one I call."

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