The Australian Series System is an archival control or metadata system, used primarily to describe records in the custody of archival institutions.
[1][2][3] In 1966, Peter Scott of the Commonwealth Archives Office (predecessor to the National Archives of Australia) developed the system (in practice, referred to as the Commonwealth Records Series System by the National Archives)[4] in his paper "The Record Group Concept: A Case for Abandonment".
The new system recognises that creating agencies change names, split and dissolve over time and provides a flexible framework to arrange their records across the different agencies which all share the same organizational content.
These record series are relational in that they are linked to their historical creating agencies in their various forms to reflect changes in organizational structure over time.
[6] The system is noted for its separation of data about record-keeping and context,[7] by structuring an archive's organisation through individually describing separate "Context entities" for: In this the traditional Respect des fonds and original order are both incorporated and extended, particularly useful where an original function is maintained by differing agents through time.