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Purpose -To review the challenges associated with ensuring the capture and preservation of and long-term access to government records and publications in the digital age and to describe how libraries and archives in Australia are responding to the challenge. Design/methodology/approach -Literature-and case-study-based conceptual analysis of what makes government online information so vulnerable and initiatives at the National Library of Australia and the National Archives of Australia. Findings -Democracy, governance, consultation and participation all depend on the availability of authentic and reliable information. Government agencies as well as educational and research institutions are producing increasingly large volumes of information in digital formats only. While Australia has done more than most countries to date to address the need to identify, collect, store and preserve government publications and public records in digital formats, large amounts of information are still at risk of loss. Research limitations/implications -Focuses on circumstances and initiatives in the Australian Government.Practical implications -Librarians and archivists need to become more proactive in influencing the behaviour of government agencies to ensure that important evidence of democratic governance is created and managed in ways that facilitate their accessibility and long-term preservation. Originality/value -Emphasises the vital role that information management agencies such as libraries and archives have to play in supporting transparent and accountable governance in the digital age, and explores innovative strategies for ensuring the long-term preservation of this important documentary heritage material for the use of future generations.

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During the 1960s Peter J Scott and colleagues at the then Commonwealth Archives Office (now National Archives of Australia) devised a new approach to archival intellectual control, which separated descriptive information about the creators of records from information about the records themselves. This approachwhich became known as the 'series' system'rejected the rigidities of the 'record group' approach to archival description, which required contextual information and information about records to be combined in single hierarchical descriptions. Scott and his colleagues argued that the record group method did not adequately reflect the realities of records creation and use in environments of complex administrative change, where multiple provenance is a common phenomenon. Scott's system has since been adopted by all public records institutions in Australia and New Zealand and by a number of other archival programs around the world. It has also fundamentally influenced the development and evolution of international archival descriptive standards.