Welcome to the eRecords Project

Over 14,000 New South Wales parish maps are now electronically accessible via eRecords. Produced by the NSW Lands Department between approximately 1860 and 1990, parish maps contain details of land ownership in New South Wales and are a very useful resource for local historians and genealogists. You can find them by searching with the phrase Parish maps of New South Wales.

Some 400 of the parish maps are already available in digital form. Catalogue records contain links to the digital versions either at the State Library of NSW or at the National Library of Australia – for example, see  maps for Parish of Jugiong, county of Harden, 1906 and Parish of Wolgan, county of Cook, 1930.

Next up for the eRecords Maps team are 528 NSW county maps and 2300 town maps. The county maps show land holdings at a smaller scale than parish maps – a great tool for research into rural properties stretching back to the 1850s – whereas the town maps detail land ownership in town centres at a larger scale than that shown on parish maps.

The pitfalls awaiting library professionals when creating electronic records from old card catalogues were considered in the September 2011 issue of The Monthly by Australian author Robyn Annear.

The eRecords project is certainly the largest and most significant retrospective conversion of catalogue cards ever undertaken at the State Library of New South Wales. The old cards reside in 34 different catalogue runs, created at different times over the past 100 years. Staff on the eRecords project have likened the experience of interpreting the words and the intent of those who created the old cards to an archeological dig.

SLNSW clients can be confident that the Mitchell Library card catalogues remain valued as rich resources for clients and for staff, alongside the eRecords created from them - eRecords which are bringing information about the collections to the fingertips of anyone, anywhere in the world.