The Archivist

There'd always been a history of collecting at RMIT and obviously, the Working Men's College, but there really hadn't been a purpose built facility to actually house the collection.

In 2009, this facility was created over at Bundoora West. It's hard to believe that there's actually two kilometres of hard copy records that are stored here.

It's state-of-the-art with climate control. We have fire prevention systems.

Even just in the pods where the records are actually housed we have several levels of security to even access them.

We work closely with security and property services to make sure that the facility stays secure and is well maintained.

Whether they're paper based, or slides, AV, we have a facility built in such a way that it's going to preserve them for as long as possible.

Having people connect with the collection, that's really one of the exciting things about our jobs as archivist is having the records actually used.

We work closely with researchers, both internal and external, to actually use the collection.

We also work closely with our RMIT staff in their jobs.

Definition of a record is a bit difficult to answer.

I always think of it as just evidence of a story, but a good record is authentic, it's reliable, and it's usable. It's something that you can access and make sense of. It's trustworthy.

That's really part of our job, along with the Information Management Team, to make sure that staff are creating those good records and if need be, they get archived.

One of the services that we offer to staff is to help with the appraisal and the disposal of records.

Basically, the what to keep and what to throw out? It can be complicated. There are standards that we have to comply with, but that's our job to make it as simple and as easy as possible.

The best way to get in contact with us if you have records that you're not sure what to do with is by email. We're at archives@rmit.edu.au.