National Archives of Australia | |
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Agency overview | |
Formed | March 1961 |
Preceding agency | National Library of Australia |
Jurisdiction | Government of Australia |
Employees | 437 (June 2007) |
Annual budget | A$86.98 million (2007-08) |
Agency executive | Stephen Ellis, Director-General (acting) |
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. The organisation sits within the Department of Regional Australia, Local Government, Arts and Sport portfolio, reporting to the Hon Simon Crean MP, Minister for the Arts. 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%) were women.[1] The Archives' budget for 2007-2008 was $86.98 million, with $66.8 million provided by the Commonwealth government.[2] 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 |
The foundation stone for a National Archives was laid by Edward, Prince of Wales in Canberra in 1920 but no building was constructed after the ceremony. The Federal Parliamentary Library (later the National Library of Australia) was responsible for collecting Commonwealth Government records after World War I.
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.[3] 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 28 February 2001.[4] On 1 May 2008 it was transferred to the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.[5]
The National Archives' collection covers public records pertaining to 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 6 November 2002 the Archives placed World War II service records online.[6] Migrant selection documents and naturalisation papers more than 30 years old were made available in 2005.[7] On 11 April 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.
There are several notable collections held by the National Archives of Australia. These include:
Document repositories were opened in the Canberra suburbs of Mitchell in 1981 and Greenway in 1989. In 1998 the Canberra 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, one of the national capital's original office buildings, located next door to the Provisional Parliament House. East Block held various government departments and served as Canberra's first Post Office and telephone exchange before it became the head office of the National Archives of Australia.
Reading rooms, repositories and offices for the National Archives are also located in each State capital and in Darwin.
In November 2009, it was announced by the Director-General Ross Gibbs that the National Archives offices in Hobart, Adelaide and Darwin would close over the succeeding two years. Gibbs blamed Government budget cuts for the closures.[8] The National Archives continues to fund research grants of up to $45,000.00 annually,[9] and contributes an unknown amount towards the National Library of Australia administered Community Heritage Grants, with the NLA reporting grants of $383,852.00 in 2009.[10]
The National Archives of Australia publishes a free magazine, Memento (ISSN 1327-4155) twice a year. It also publishes books, research guides to the collection, exhibition catalogues and a range of other publications.
The Commonwealth Record Series (CRS) is the system used to organise and describe records held in the National Archives of Australia. It was developed in the 1960s based on an idea of an archives staff member, Peter Scott. Under the CRS system, agencies (government departments, and statutory authorities) create series (that is groups of related records created by the agency) which are made up of items (records of any sort).[11]
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