Core records of Colonial WA set for digitisation

The SRO has commenced a project to digitise the Colonial Secretary’s Office records held in the State Archives collection. These records are considered the 'backbone' of WA Colonial history and record a wide range of activities about WA  in the 1800s, correspondence with Colonial settlers and matters to do with Aboriginal people (a conservative estimate is that at least 10,000 Aboriginal people are referenced in these records).

Within this collection, there are approximately 500,000 letters. Funding has kindly been provided by the Friends of Battye Library Inc, through the Sholl Bequest, for the SRO to employ a digitisation officer - Gabriel Maddock - to digitise the correspondence. Gabriel is currently engaged in digitising, from the original documents, up to the year 1850 as part of Stage 1 of this project. Ultimately, the SRO plans to digitise the full set of this correspondence up to 1883, although this will require further funding.