We greatly appreciate all transfers and donations of material that meets our collection objectives.
Once taken into our care the records will be:
• further appraised and unwanted material destroyed;
• arranged and described in our archives management software;
• placed into appropriate storage; and
• made available for research purposes, if you have authorised this.
In accordance with accepted archival practice, material once transferred to the archives remains part of the collection where every care is taken to ensure its preservation and availability. Items can, in some circumstances, be returned for short periods to the originating credit union or related organisation e.g. for display at an anniversary.
Depositors to the archives are requested to carry out some simple procedures and to complete documentation to formalise this transaction.
Your Chief Executive Officer or delegated officer will eventually sign off the transfer of these records. It is therefore vital that the consent of these senior officers is obtained prior to making arrangements with Australian Mutuals History to receive your records. We recommend that you contact us to discuss the records you wish to transfer prior to preparing them for transportation. In some circumstances we may send a representative to your office to assist with identifying archival records and/or preparing them for transfer.
Organisations transferring records must complete a Transfer Agreement form for each transfer of archives and an Access Agreement form each time a new series or record type is transferred. We will send you these form for completion as part of the transfer process.
Private donors include past or present directors, staff, members and clients who wish to donate material relevant to the financial mutual sector or credit union movement that is in their private possession. Private donations are accepted following appraisal by the archivist. It is therefore essential that intending private donors discuss the donation in some detail with the Archivist prior to making arrangements for their transfer to the archives.
Private donors must complete a Private Deposit Agreement as well as an Access Agreement form when they donate records to the archives. We will send you these form for completion as part of the donation process.
A Transfer form needs to be prepared for every transfer to the archives. This form identifies the organisation that arranged for this transaction, contains an authorisation of your CEO or delegate, and provides brief information about the records that you are transferring on a particular occasion. Accurate completion of the form ensures that both the transferor and archivist can confirm that all of the material sent to the archives has arrived. The form also enables the archives to permanently record the source of the material and thus to create a history of the individual record.
An access form should be completed each time a new series is transferred by your organisation. e.g. the first time you send us Board records you should send us an access form. On subsequent transfers of that series you do not have to complete an access form unless the access arrangements change.
In making an access determination you need to consider whether any legal, privacy, commercial-in-confidence or other considerations make restricted access for some time necessary. Access conditions can be altered at any time to reflect changing circumstances by completing a replacement access form.
When records are unavailable for general access the person who has made the access direction may waiver the arrangements in particular cases e.g. allowing access for an individual research project. This is termed “Special Access’. Your orgainisation will be contacted and you need to supply written permission . You may also give Australian Mutuals History consent to extract information e.g. the date that an individual became a member or a director - from a record that is generally unavailable. This eliminates the possibility of a researcher seeing information irrelevant to his/ her own purposes and causing harm by making the information known.
Access arrangements are inherited by successive CEOs. When a financial mutual merges, the continuing entity takes responsibility for the access to the records of acquired entities.
Every person making a donation of privately-owned records needs to complete a Private Deposit Agreement. This is a legal agreement in which the donor declares that the gift is unconditional, and in which copyright (where relevant) is transferred to Australian Mutuals History. The document also provides for sign-off by the archivist indicating that the records meet collection development policies.
Completed forms can be emailed to Australian Mutuals History .
Donations can be mailed to Australian Mutuals History, sent by Courier or delivered to our offices (please confirm with the office so an agreed delivery date can be arranged).
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