National Archives of Australia
Transferring records to the Archives
When records of archival value are no longer being actively used, Australian Government agencies can arrange to transfer them to the National Archives.
Note that if your records are required for government business, you can retrieve them through our Lending Service. Special conditions apply to records that are over 30 years old, in poor condition or located in other cities. The availability of appropriate space within the Archives may affect the timing of transfers from agencies, especially for classified records.
Contents
Overview of the process
Identify the records for transfer
You need to identify records in your agency for transfer to the National Archives. These will be records sentenced as 'retain as national archives' (RNA) which are no longer needed by your agency on a regular basis.
The National Archives will visit you to assess the transfer
Your next step is to contact the National Archives so we can arrange a visit.
During the visit, we will check the sentencing process and gather information about how to manage the records once they are in our custody. We will look at:
- storage requirements
- preservation requirements (especially for digital records)
- how often you will need to look at the records once they are in our custody.
Complete the transfer forms
The transfer forms then need to be completed and sent to the National Archives:
- Series Registration form (if this is a new series)
In this form, you will provide information about the record series, including its current and previous uses, the records' content, a physical description and relationships with other records.
In this form, you will provide information about the specific records being transferred.
If your agency is planning or carrying out a sentencing project, contact us as early as possible, so we can work with you to ensure that the item listing complies with our standards.
The Item listing template provides a standard form for the documentation that we need so that your records can be controlled and retrieved correctly. We need the data to be entered in a consistent way, so please contact us for guidance on its use. In particular, it is important that agencies fully expand any abbreviations or acronyms in record titles or other metadata, as the passage of time makes these almost impossible to interpret later. Sometimes one abbreviation has different meanings in different circumstances, even within the one agency.
- Manifest (for digital records only)
A manifest links the data objects (documents) to the item (file) to which they belong. It also contains a checksum for each data object so that any changes to the object can be detected.
Some digital records management systems software has the capability to generate a manifest in a suitable format. If yours doesn't, we can supply a tool called Manifest Maker, which generates a manifest from the data objects and organises them into manageable groups.
Pack the records
The records proposed for transfer should be arranged in a consignment, ie they should:
- belong to the same series
- have a consistent security classification
- be in control symbol order
- have consistent storage requirements (eg photographs have different storage requirements to paper files).
For the transfer of physical records, the boxes and the records proposed for transfer should be barcoded with container and item barcodes supplied by the National Archives.
Digital records should be copied to an agreed transfer media. The transfer media are simply carrying devices and will be returned to the agency when the records have been transferred to the Digital Archive for permanent storage. We will talk about the transfer media for your digital records when we visit you.
Send the paperwork to the National Archives and we will check through it.
Send the records to the National Archives
Once the paperwork is approved by the Archives and the records are packed you can send them to the National Archives according to an agreed timetable. See the list of addresses for our repositories.
Final check of the transfer
When the transfer arrives at the National Archives we will check it to make sure all of the records that are listed have been sent. We will then place the physical records in our repository or, for digital records, we will start the preservation process to include them in our digital archive.
Once the records are shelved, the National Archives will send a notification advising that the transfer has been completed and that the National Archives is now responsible for the records' ongoing maintenance and management. You should keep this receipt and the information about new barcodes, as you will need these details to retrieve the records.
Keeping in contact
Transferring records to the National Archives is a joint project. It only works if we keep in regular contact. Please contact us at any time during your transfer.
