Section 11 of the State Records Act 1998 requires each public office to ensure the safe custody and proper preservation of the State’s records that it has control of. This means protecting, and thus preserving, the record through appropriate storage facilities and conditions, ensuring that the record is handled appropriately by staff, and protecting the records if a disaster should happen.
This guideline is designed to assist public offices implement the requirements in the Standard on the physical storage of State records.It suggests practical methods to guide public offices in decisions and actions for storing State records to ensure that:
- storage is cost-effective and efficient
- records are secure, protected and accessible for as long as they are required to meet business and accountability needs, and that
- records of continuing value which will be transferred to State Records' control and/or custody as State archives are stored in the best conditions possible.
This page of advice is designed for records managers to distribute to staff and other records users. The guidance pertains to the handling of records which have a physical format, for example paper files and documents, volumes and registers, maps, plans, charts, and drawings.
The page provides information and guidance to public offices in meeting their statutory obligations under the State Records Act 1998 for the ‘safe custody and proper preservation’ of State records when they are stored with service providers based outside of NSW.
This page gives advice on establishing agreements with commercial storage providers for the storage of physical State records. It does not provide advice on the storage of State archives.