It is responsible for the collection and preservation of documents produced by the state government and its executives and an archive of materials ranging from the 18th century to the present day.
Only pencils, erasers, and loose sheets of paper, and personal computers are allowed in the consultation room (sala de consultas) for notation.
[2] Originally named the General Archive of the State (Arquivo Geral do Estado), it was under the jurisdiction of the Director of the Interior and of Justice and located in Niterói, Rio de Janeiro.
Among its responsibilities, it was to receive, classify, preserve, and organize the papers and books pertinent to the Secretary of the State of Rio de Janeiro.
The Public Archive installed itself in the building once belonging to the Auditors Court in Niterói in 1989 and, once there, united all of its activities with the institution and remained at the address for seven years.
On 6 January 2025, APERJ's director, Victor Travancas, announced to the press the closing of the institution's building in Botafogo due to "imminent risk of collapse and fire".
[4] Travancas had additionally identified 26 ghost employees, constituting about 70% of the institution's workforce, and had reported that to the Prosecutor's Office of Rio de Janeiro [pt].
[4] Two days later, on 8 January, the governor of Rio de Janeiro, Cláudio Castro, fired Travancas and most of the archive's employees without notice, and ordered it to be reopened.
[6] The archive contains documents of diverse themes and types, including: texts, audiovisual sources, maps, books, electronics, images, and other objects relevant to the study of the history of Rio de Janeiro state in the second half of the eighteenth century.
The materials contained in the APERJ cover a broad range of themes, including: agriculture, diplomacy, political campaigns, Communism, crime and punishment, education, slavery, espionage, indigenous peoples, industry and commerce, the military, social movements, public works, the police, health, land ownership, transportation, and taxes.