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$1.83M ARCHIVES CENTRE TO BE OFFICIALLY OPENED

Thursday 16 June 2011

The new $1.83M Bendigo Regional Archives Centre will be officially opened on Friday June 17 by the Hon Damian Drum MLC and Greater Bendigo Mayor Cr Rod Fyffe.

Mayor Rod Fyffe said the opening will fulfil a long held community need for an archive storage facility.

“For over 20 years the community has identified a need to appropriately store historical and public records and it has finally become a reality.

“The Bendigo Regional Archives Centre is set to be home to public records including records created by government departments and authorities, courts, municipalities, public hospitals and other public offices.

“The new archives centre meets world document storage standards and has the capacity for 5km of shelving space.

“The facility will also store records of historical significance. These records will provide a vital community resource, that not only tells Central Victorians where they come from, but who they are now.

“Now that that we have this new facility, records of historical significance to our region can be cared for within the local community.

“An important part of the project has been the provision of a new workroom for the Bendigo Historical Society to manage their document collection – which is recognised as being of national significance.

“This is important because for many years the Bendigo Historical Society have been searching for a suitable document storage solution,” said Cr Fyffe.

He said an important part of the project was the opening of a public access/reading room at the Bendigo Library in 2009.

“The public reading room and storage space at the Bendigo Library is currently providing members of the public with access to a range of local government records from the central Victorian region. It is being used by, historians, students, researchers and genealogy groups and individuals.

“Records held at the new archives centre can be accessed through the public reading room at the Bendigo Library.

“The City of Greater Bendigo has worked closely with the Public Record Office and the Goldfield Library Corporation and is delighted that this project is now a reality which will provide the community with information that previously could not have been accessed in the local region,” said Cr Fyffe.

The archives centre was constructed with a $1.3 million grant from the State Government’s Regional Infrastructure Development Fund with $285,000 from the Public Record Office and $250,000 from the City of Greater Bendigo.