History
The foundation stone for a National Archives was laid by Edward, Prince of Wales in Canberra in 1920 but no building was constructed after the ceremony. The Federal Parliamentary Library (later the National Library of Australia) was responsible for collecting Commonwealth Government records after World War I.
Dr Theodore Schellenberg, Director of Archival Management at the National Archives in Washington DC, visited Australia in 1954 on a Fulbright Scholarship and advocated the separation of Australia's national archives from the National Library. In March 1961 the Commonwealth Archives Office was formally separated from the National Library of Australia with offices spread across several Canberra suburbs, including in Nissen huts. The organisation was renamed the Australian Archives in 1975.
The Archives Act 1983 gave legislative protection for Commonwealth archives for the first time and gave the Australian Archives a legislative mandate to preserve government records. The agency was renamed the National Archives of Australia in February 1998 and became an Executive Agency of the Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts on 28 February 2001. On 12 December 2011, it was transferred to the Department of Regional Australia, Local Government, Arts and Sport.
Read more about this topic: National Archives Of Australia
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