National Archives of Australia

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National Archives of Australia
National Archives of Australia
Agency overview
Formed March 1961
Preceding Agency Federal Parliamentary Library
Jurisdiction Government of Australia
Employees 437 (June 2007)
Annual Budget $86.98 million AUD (2007-08)
Agency Executive Ross Gibbs, Director-General
Parent agency Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet
Website
www.naa.gov.au

The National Archives of Australia is a body established by the Government of Australia for the purpose of preserving Commonwealth Government records. It is an Executive Agency of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet[1] and reports to the Cabinet Secretary, Senator John Faulkner.[2]

The national office is in Canberra with offices in each state capital and Darwin. As of June 2007, the National Archives had 437 staff, of which 246 (56.3%) are women.[3] The Archives' budget for 2007-2008 is $86.98 million, with $66.8 million provided by the Commonwealth government.[4] The chief executive officer is the Director-General. The agency is divided into five branches: National Coordination, Access and Communication, Archive Operations and Preservation, Government Information Management and Corporate, each headed by an Assistant Director-General.

In addition to caring for its collection, the National Archives develops and tour exhibitions, publishes books and guides to the collection and delivers educational programs. It also advises other government departments and agencies on records management.

Contents

[edit] History

The National Archives of Australia national office on Queen Victoria Terrace in Canberra, May 2007.
The National Archives of Australia national office on Queen Victoria Terrace in Canberra, May 2007.

The foundation stone for a National Archives was laid by the Edward, Prince of Wales in Canberra in 1920 but no building was constructed after the ceremony. The Federal Parliamentary Library (later the National Library) began collecting records after World War I, but it was not until the early 1950s that the National Archives received its own identity and had its own buildings.

Dr Theodore Schellenberg, Director of Archival Management at the National Archives in Washington DC, visited Australia in 1954 on a Fulbright Scholarship and advocated the separation of Australia's national archives from the National Library.[5] In March 1961 the Commonwealth Archives Office was formally separated from the National Library of Australia with offices spread across several Canberra suburbs, including in Nissen huts. The organisation was renamed the Australian Archives in 1975.

The Archives Act 1983 gave legislative protection for Commonwealth archives for the first time and gave the Australian Archives a legislative mandate to preserve government records. The agency was renamed the National Archives of Australia in February 1998 and became an Executive Agency of the Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts on February 28, 2001.[6] On May 1, 2008 it was transferred to the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.[1]

[edit] Collections

The National Archives' collection covers Federation, Governors-General, Prime Ministers, Cabinet and Ministers and most of the activities with which the government has been involved. The Archives' repositories are "closed access" so the public cannot browse its 300,000m of shelves, but items can be requested for viewing in the reading rooms or copies made. Most records over 30 years old are released for public access, while a small proportion are released with some exempt information deleted. Exempt information includes documents relating to defence and security (such as the design and construction of weapons and records of Australian intelligence agencies) and private information (including medical records and raw census data). Cabinet notebooks are released after 50 years. Access to items of cultural sensitivity to Indigenous Australians may also be restricted.

Several collections, including all Australian military service records from the Second Boer War to the Vietnam War, have been made available online and are popular with researchers. On November 6, 2002 the Archives placed World War II service records online.[7] Migrant selection documents and naturalisation papers more than 30 years old were made available in 2005.[8] On April 11, 2007 the Archives placed 376,000 World War I service records online. Digitising of files is an ongoing process, and new images are being added to the web site on a regular basis. The public can also request particular files to be digitised,for a fee.

[edit] Notable collections

William James (Jack) Mildenhall photographed in 1927
William James (Jack) Mildenhall photographed in 1927

There are several notable collections held by the National Archives of Australia. These include:

  • the Griffin drawings - Walter and Marion Griffin's winning entry for Australia's Federal Capital
  • the Mildenhall photographs - taken by government photographer Jack Mildenhall, these pictures document the building of Canberra during the 1920s and 1930s

[edit] Facilities

Document repositories were opened in the Canberra suburbs of Mitchell in 1981 and Greenway in 1989. In 1998 the reading room, galleries and public areas of National Archives moved into a heritage listed building in the Parliamentary Triangle. The building is the former East Block of the Provisional Parliament House and also served as Canberra's first Post Office and telephone exchange.

[edit] Publications

The NAA produces a free publication Memento (ISSN 1327-4155).

[edit] Commonwealth Record Series (CRS) System

In the inside cover of the editions of Memento there is a section which explains the means by which the magazine describes identification of images, and as a consequence is part of the CRS system - agencies (government departments, and statutory authorities) who create series (that is groups of related records created by the agency) and which is made up of items (records of any sort).[9]

[edit] National directors

  • 1944–1968 - Ian MacLean, Chief Archivist
  • 1968–1970 - Keith Penny, Chief Archivist
  • 1970–1971 - Keith Person, Director, Commonwealth Archives Office
  • 1971–1975 - John Dunner, Director, Commonwealth Archives Office
  • 1975–1984 - Robert Neale, Director-General, Australian Archives
  • 1984–1989 - Brian Cox, Director-General, Australian Archives
  • 1990–2000 - George Nichols, Director-General, Australian Archives/National Archives of Australia
  • 2000–2003 - Anne-Marie Schwirtlich, acting Director-General, National Archives of Australia
  • 2003–current - Ross Gibbs, Director-General, National Archives of Australia

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b Consolidated Administrative Arrangements Order made on 25 January 2008 and amended 1 May 2008. Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. Retrieved on 2008-05-01.
  2. ^ Order to identify the Cabinet Secretary as the Minister responsible for the National Archives of Australia (2008-05-01). Retrieved on 2008-05-13.
  3. ^ National Archives of Australia, Annual Report 2006-2007.
  4. ^ Portfolio Budget Statements 2007–08: NAA. Retrieved on 2007-08-08.
  5. ^ Piggott, Michael (1989), The Visit of Dr TR Schellenberg to Australia 1954: A Study of Its Origins and Some Repercussions on Archival Development in Australia, University of New South Wales 
  6. ^ National Archives of Australia, Annual Report 2000-2001.
  7. ^ "Service records of Aussies who served in WWII go online", Sydney Morning Herald, 2002-11-06. Retrieved on 2007-08-07. 
  8. ^ "National archives makes migration records available", Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 2005-02-09. Retrieved on 2007-08-07. 
  9. ^ Memento - all editions - usually page two or lower left inside cover - and the memento method of using series and item numbers

[edit] External links


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