The future of the 40 million Commonwealth records held by the National Archives has been bolstered through three major projects: the upgrade of the Chester Hill repository in Sydney completed in late 2015; the National Archives Preservation Facility (NAPF) in Canberra, which is well underway; and a third that is subject to further approval processes. The combined capacity will enable us to accept records until 2031.
The relocation of records to the NAPF in Canberra is an exciting evolution for the Archives. The architecturally designed, environmentally sustainable building has storage for approximately 25 per cent of our extensive collection. It will house 104 kilometres of paper records, more than nine kilometres of audio-visual records and a digital archive, ensuring the preservation and conservation of our irreplaceable collection continues into the future.
There will be disruption to access to the Canberra-based collection from 30 October 2016 to 1 July 2017, as we relocate 15 million records from multiple repositories and rehouse them in the NAPF.
