The occurrence of copies of a branch's minutes, correspondence and other record types in federal office records (and vice versa) is common. The technique of using such copies in the absence of originals is often successfully applied by researchers to fill the inevitable gaps.

The lack of an entry for a particular state branch suggests that it would be advisable to contact the relevant branch of the organisation directly to confirm whether archives are held at their offices and are available for research. Where Federal office or other state branch records (or both) are held in an institution, it would probably be sensible to contact that institution to see whether approaches have been made to the 'missing' branch. The same obviously applies for organisations which have no 'location of archives' entry. In the case of earlier defunct organisations, the records are probably lost.

Continual growth is part of the nature of archival institutions. The ongoing relationships between many industrial organisations and archival institutions means that records will usually continue to be transferred to the archives over time. Where an ongoing relationship is apparent (or even if it is not) researchers are advised to check with the relevant archives to determine if further transfers of records have come in since publication of this book.

NOTE

The alphabetical directory referred to in the paper based edition has been updated and replaced in the on-line edition. The new directory can be located via the Browse menu.

Australian Trade Union Archives Home Page