ACT Archives and Libraries Tackle Duplicate Image Crisis This Week

Territory archivists confirmed this week they are working through a backlog of duplicate digital images embedded in the ACT Government's public records systems — a problem that has quietly compounded since large-scale digitisation programs began across Canberra's agencies around 2018. The clean-up effort involves both the ACT Heritage Library on Mildura Walk in Civic and the broader ArchivesACT collections stored at the Mitchell repository off Mugga Lane in Symonston.

The issue matters now because the ACT Government committed in its 2025-26 budget to expanding public access to its digital archives by June 2027. Duplicate images — where the same photograph, map or document scan has been uploaded multiple times under different file names or reference codes — inflate collection counts, slow search times and, in some cases, direct researchers to degraded or lower-resolution versions of records rather than the best available copy. Fixing that before the expanded public portal launches is not optional; it is a prerequisite.

What the Duplication Problem Actually Looks Like

The scope of the issue became clearer this week when ArchivesACT staff began publishing internal audit findings through the territory's open data portal. Without citing a final figure — auditors say the review is ongoing — early indications point to tens of thousands of image records across multiple collections where at least one duplicate exists. Some collections, particularly those digitised under short-term contract arrangements between 2019 and 2022, show duplication rates significantly higher than collections managed in-house.

The ACT Heritage Library, which holds the Mildura Walk photographic collection covering Canberra's development from the early twentieth century through to the 1990s, is among the collections under active review. Researchers who use the library's reading room regularly — including postgraduate students from the Australian National University's School of History and the University of Canberra's Faculty of Arts and Design — have long reported encountering duplicate records when searching for historical images of suburbs like Gungahlin, Belconnen and the inner north. The experience is frustrating: a search returns the same image four times, each with a slightly different metadata tag, and the researcher cannot easily tell which version carries the highest resolution or the most accurate caption.

Resolving each duplicate is not as simple as deleting the extra files. Archivists must verify provenance, confirm which version holds the superior image quality, check whether any external citations point to the record being removed, and update the metadata on the surviving copy. For collections of any significant size, that is weeks of specialist work per collection.

What Happens Next for Canberra Researchers

The ACT Government's digital archives expansion is tied to a broader open-government platform refresh scheduled for completion in the second quarter of 2027. That timeline gives ArchivesACT roughly eight months to work through priority collections before the new public interface goes live. Staff are using automated deduplication tools — software that compares image files at a pixel level rather than relying on file names alone — to flag likely duplicates for human review, reducing the manual workload. The ACT Heritage Library has also begun coordinating with the National Library of Australia in Parkes, which digitised some overlapping Canberra collections through its Trove program and may hold master copies that resolve local disputes about which version of a record is authoritative.

For anyone actively researching in Canberra's digital archives right now, archivists are advising users to note the specific reference code of any image they rely on, and to flag suspected duplicates through the ArchivesACT online feedback form. That feedback is being fed directly into the audit database. Researchers working on planning history — particularly those tracing the development of growth corridors in Gungahlin and Belconnen for submissions related to the ongoing Light Rail Stage 2 corridor consultation — have been told their collections are among those scheduled for priority review before the end of August 2026.

The audit is expected to produce a public report by October 2026, at which point ArchivesACT intends to publish updated collection counts that reflect the cleaned-up holdings rather than the inflated totals that have sat on the agency's website for several years.