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Information sheets

Donating Your Records to the Research Centre

• What is the Research Centre seeking?
• Other types of items
• Making a donation
• Legal issues: copyright
• Cultural Gifts Program

What is the Research Centre seeking?

The Memorial's Research Centre is the most important resource for researching Australia 's military history. Its collections are part of Australia 's national heritage It collects items that contribute to our knowledge of Australia 's military history or enhance our understanding of the impact of war on individuals, such as:

• official records (for example files, reports, directives)
• personal papers (for example diaries, letters, notebooks, narratives and theses).
• printed material (for example books, magazines, maps, leaflets, postcards, souvenirs, sheet music and philatelic material)

Other types of items

Please contact other sections of the Memorial if you have photographs, medals, objects, film or artwork you would like to donate?

• Art (02) 6243 4280
• Military Heraldry (02) 6243 4230
• Military Technology (02) 6243 4230
• Photographs (02) 6243 4593
• Sound and Film (02) 6243 4254
• Mixed Collections (more than one type of material) (02) 6243 4590

Making a donation

Please contact us either in writing, by telephone or e-mail if you have material you wish to donate. Please do not send material directly through the post.

Please provide us with

• your full name, postal address and contact number(s).
• a description of the material - what it is, how much there is, to whom it relates and what period it covers.

Having received your offer, our staff will check our acquisitions policy and our existing holdings to make sure the material is suitable for our collections.

We may request that you send the material for further assessment. Depending on the size of the prospective donation we will advise you on how to send or bring in the item. The Research Centre will cover the cost of courier pick up and delivery.

When the Research Centre receives the items ,

• we will send you an Interim Receipt
• fully assess your material,
• contact you to advise you of our acceptance of your donation.

If we do not accept your donation we will

• inform you
• suggest a more appropriate institution for your material and
• return it to you at no cost to you

If we accept your donation:

• it will be formally acknowledged as soon as possible.
• you will be told in which collection it has been placed, and its unique control number
• we may ask for more background information about the records
• you will usually need to complete a Transfer of Ownership form - you retain one copy of this form and return one copy to us.
• All our correspondence with you is placed on a 'donor file' that is created to document our dealings with you. These files are not open to the public.

You will need to decide whether

• we may make the donation available for consultation by researchers
• we have permission to copy the records for researchers,
• to transfer copyright to the Australian War Memorial.

Your donation

• will be catalogued and described, conserved if necessary and stored securely for long term preservation.
• books are usually placed directly on the shelves. Other items may be placed in protective acid-free folders or wallets before being placed on the shelves in archive boxes.

Legal issues: copyright

There is no system of registration or any formal procedure to obtain copyright on your own work. It is protected by the Copyright Act from the moment it is made. If you are the creator or author of a work, you may own the property and you may also own the copyright.

• When you donate material , it the item belongs to the Memorial as part of the national collection. The Memorial makes all further decisions about its management and treatment.
• You can sell, give away, bequeath or licence your copyright on your material. However, you need to make specific arrangements for doing any of these things. If you want to donate copyright to the Memorial you indicate this on the Transfer of Ownership form. It is not automatically donated.
• We prefer copyright to be donated to the Memorial whenever possible. Obviously you can only donate copyright which you hold.
• If you choose not to donate copyright to the Memorial we will ask you to keep us informed about your address and telephone number. This will enable us to assist researchers who need your permission to publish material in which you hold copyright.

It you require further explanation please contact the Research Centre.

Cultural Gifts Program

The Memorial welcomes donations from members of the public under the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program. The purpose of the Program is to encourage significant heritage items from private collections to public art galleries, museums and libraries by offering a 100% tax deduction. For further information contact:

For more information about donations see Donating items to the Australian War Memorial