Archives Outside

Quick poll: do your readers use gloves when accessing archives

Posted on November 9, 2009 by Anthea Brown

On the whole the preferred choice of glove is nitrile. I’m curious to know whether your readers have a ‘glove preference’ when accessing your archives? Or if readers are required to wear them?

A Day in the Life of a State Archive (part 4)

Posted on September 10, 2009 by Ann Item

The viewing! It’s 9am and our savvy web surfer is here. In fact, he arrived a bit earlier than the opening time and has been patiently waiting in the reader’s lounge with a cup of tea.

A Day in the Life of a State Archive (part 3)

Posted on September 9, 2009 by Ann Item

OK, it’s retrieval time; OMG, how exciting! The clerk on retrieval duty is on her way to collect me. Boy, does she have a long way to walk. The retrieval staff at State Records NSW walk, on average, 10-12km a day. According to her GCC pedometer she has already walked 15,564 steps.

A Day in the Life of a State Archive (part 2)

Posted on September 8, 2009 by Ann Item

- from request to delivery
[or: The Amazing Adventures of Dame Nellie Melba's Probate Packet]

Well, it’s ‘tomorrow’ and the pre-order is under way. Our savvy web surfer submitted the pre-order form yesterday and the archivist on ‘pre-order duty’ has received my details.

A Day in the Life of a State Archive (part 1)

Posted on September 7, 2009 by Ann Item

- from request to delivery
[or: The Amazing Adventures of Dame Nellie Melba's Probate Packet]
Someone just found me on the internet! I’m listed in a database called Archives Investigator – the online archival catalogue at State Records NSW. Not all of the 7+ million items stored here have been listed in the system so I feel [...]

Watch this space for…A Day in the Life of a State Archive

Posted on September 4, 2009 by Anthea Brown

It is a light-hearted look at some of the procedures and policies we have in place to make State archives accessible in the reading room at Western Sydney.

Prioritising digitisation for preservation and access

Posted on July 2, 2009 by Anthea Brown

At State Records we have a small Digitisation Program. Budget constraints, staff resources and an archival collection significant in both historical value and size means we can’t digitise everything. Sound familiar? Small as it may be, the program has an important function within our organisation for it assists in the preservation of records and increases [...]