Quoting from http://naa.gov.au/collection/managing-collection/securing-national-archives-holdings/napf/index.aspx
Preserving Your History for the Future
The future of Australia's 40 million Commonwealth records has been assured with three major storage projects one of which has been completed, the second underway and a third awaiting further approvals. These combined projects will provide capacity to accept paper records until 2031.
Time-lapse slideshow of the building progress http://naa.gov.au/collection/managing-collection/securing-national-archives-holdings/napf/time-lapse.aspx
Canberra
Artist's impression of the building
The largest of the projects is the National Archives Preservation Facility which is a new purpose-built preservation and storage building designed to hold more than 25 per cent of the National Archives' current collection. It will consolidate the collections from the two existing Canberra repositories and provide contemporary preservation laboratories, records storage and management facilities.
The facility is scheduled for completion in February 2017 and will provide 104 shelf kilometres of paper storage, 9.4 shelf kilometres for audio visual records and a scalable digital archive.
'This is a major milestone for the Archives. This building will provide a contemporary, state of the art facility to keep the nation's memory alive for future generations. The preservation and accessibility of these government records underpins our democratic process and ensures public accountability’ said National Archives Director-General David Fricker.
Artist's impression of the building
Why is the National Archives building a new Preservation Facility?
Preservation and conservation
The records in our care come in many formats; some are quite fragile and prone to deterioration. Controlled environments are necessary to store them, and our professional archivists require specialised facilities to preserve them.
Value to the Australian public
The Archives’ collection preserves significant Australian government records that reflect our history and identity. The purpose of our work is to preserve, conserve, store and provide public access to this collection for the benefit of all Australians.
Environmentally sustainable
The preservation facility’s passive, green design will minimise energy and resource use, greenhouse gas emissions and its environmental footprint.
Digital transition
This is one of the last repositories to be built for the storage of paper; the facility provides for increased capacity to transfer and store digital archives held by government agencies, as they transition to digital records management.
Partnership
The National Archives and developer Doma Group’s partnership includes a 30-year lease of the new purpose-built, environmentally-designed building.
Sydney
The Archives has recently completed an upgrade of its Chester Hill repository – the largest of the Archives storage facilities.
The upgrade provides controlled temperature and humidity storage for 25 shelf kilometres of standard paper records and eight shelf kilometres of specialised low temperature cold storage, primarily for preservation of the audiovisual collection – motion picture film, video tape, audio tape and still image film-based formats. The Archives audio visual holdings represent some of the most at-risk records in our collection. The new specialised cold storage of 4 degrees and 35 per cent relative humidity has ensured that these formats will survive for a further 375 years.
Phase 3
Artist's impression of the building
The third and final phase of the Archives storage strategy will allow for the continuation of transfers of paper records of national significance until 2031. This phase involves the refurbishment of an existing repository in the ACT to enable the Archives to begin to deal with the estimated 254 shelf kilometres of records government departments plan to transfer into custody. This project remains subject to further approval processes.
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