Banking Institution (2023)

Our client, and its predecessor organisations, have a long history of nearly 200 years delivering banking and financial services to the Australian community. With such a long running history, the client amassed an archive of around 3.5km holding a wide range of valuable records and artefacts, representing a rich legacy that requires expert archiving management. 

As part of a broader rationalisation of its property portfolio, the client needed to undertake planning for physical relocation of the archive. The client engaged the services of Recordkeeping Innovation (RKI) consulting to carry out this strategic archiving planning, and provide recommendations on: 

• Archives to be maintained and transferred to the new location 

• Materials that can be deaccessioned as part of efficient archiving practices. 

• Materials that would benefit from digitisation for easy access, and a digitisation brief and options 

• Materials outside of the collection scope that could potentially be transferred to other institutions, in line with best archiving practices. 

• Requirements and options for an archival facility, including purpose built, leased and off-site storage facilities and comparative costings 

• A comprehensive relocation strategy for the archive.  

To facilitate development of recommendations and project deliverables, RKI carried out: 

• Consolidation of Archival Series: RKI provided a centralised view of all information about series within the collection, including categorisation of series, included formats, high-value series, and recommendations related to digitisation and deaccessioning. 

• On-Site Archive Assessment: We conducted on-site visits to the archive to analyse its holdings and determine the collection volume, including a breakdown of different formats within the collection. 

• Vendor Liaison: RKI liaised with digitisation and offsite storage vendors to gather information on offerings, which informed our recommendations for digitisation and archive facility options. 

• Cost Research for Archival Facilities: RKI carried out research on commercial facility costings, including build/renovation costs, to provide approximate comparative costings across: 

• Purpose-built facilities 

• Retrofitted owned facilities 

• Retrofitted leased facilities 
• Third-party storage providers
• RKI worked closely with the client to ensure deliverables met business needs, and accurately reflected the current state of the archival holdings.