Archives for Everyone

Earlier this year we put the call out to local historical and community groups to collaborate with us to digitise and index Small Debts registers from the State Archives collection.

The Archives for Everyone project has seen us partner with 14 groups who have nominated Small Debts registers from Courts of petty sessions throughout NSW.

The registers were created by NSW courts of petty sessions. From 1846, these courts had the authority to recover small debts (defined as debts of up to £10). These records are all about people taking other people to court to recover debts.

The DigiVol platform is being used to index the volumes using images created internally or by the volunteer societies themselves who are digitising on site at the Western Sydney Records Centre

To date the project has seen over 150 volumes imaged and uploaded to DigiVol.

Over the coming months, as volumes are completed the index data and digital images, will be progressively added to the Small Debts Register index on the MHNSW website.

While this is a pilot project, it is hoped this could be a model that could be replicated in the future for other record sets within the State Archives Collection.