NSW State Archives Collection

This was mainly because the government of the day was fully focussed on the administration of the convict system, law and order, immigration and land settlement.

It was not until the late nineteenth century, with the approach of the Centenary of the Colony, that an awareness of the value of public archives as fundamental sources for Australian history was recorded.

[2] At the time the term 'archives' was used broadly to include manuscripts, pictorial material and maps from a wide range of private sources as well as to denote non-current official records.

A number of instructions were issued by both the Premier and the Public Service Board, advising departments to transfer non-current records considered to be of historical value, to the Mitchell Library.

In the 1980s, challenges facing the Archives Office were primarily related to the burgeoning interest in family history which reached a peak in 1988 and has never subsided.

At this time the reading room could accommodate up to fifty people and many of the key documents were available to users on microfilm, with the originals in storage at Globe Street, The Rocks.

Initially, the concept of Regional Repositories started as an "archives on loan" scheme to place records which had been created in country areas, close to the originating community.

The span of control of the act also brought local councils, universities and area health services under the umbrella of State Records which added significantly to the workload of the organisation.

Work on Photo Investigator, a related database commenced in the early 2000s and by 2006 a considerable number of photographs from the archives were available to users online.

[9] 2005 saw the opening of the Stage 6 Building at the Government Records Repository at Kingswood by The Hon Bob Debus, Attorney General and Minister for the Arts.

This building is equipped with geothermal air conditioning, high thermal mass insulation and an argon gas fire suppression system.