Hi All: Military personnel files of those who served in World War I but who remained in the Army after 1920 (from 1 January 1921) which were held at Trentham in the NZDF (New Zealand Defence Force) Personnel Archives are being transferred to Archives NZ. There are over 12,000 files, which should all be transferred by August 2014. See email from the NZDF Archives Registrar Christine Edney below. This will simplify searching for WWI files as they will all be held in one place. Note that while most of the WWI files are in Archives series 18805, some (officers, medical, medals) are in series 7291 (permanent forces) or series 22525 (other forces, nurses, V.A.Ds etc; though these are generally just corrrespondence, not full personnel files). Archives NZ were hoping to digitise by August 2014 (the centenary of WWI) all their "restricted" holdings of military personnel files on small strip microfilm which are "restricted (access) for preservation reasons" and this will increase the backlog of files to be digitised. If you have accessed digital files recently, you will have seen that newly digitised files are no longer available to download as a single PDF file, and each page must be downloaded separately. The PDF file for earlier scanned files is still available to download via the "Derivative Copy" option under "Preservation Master". Archives hold over 110,000 of these military personnel files. Some are paper files (officers, medals, medical) which can be seen at Archives NZ, Wellington. Yours, John Wilson I would like to ask you to please put on the list serve the following. NZDF Archives have been working alongside Archives New Zealand to transfer the WW1 files for those who served after 1920 and also those who continued to serve through to WW11. In the past six months NZDF Archives have transferred over 12,000 of these files to Archives New Zealand, who are working hard to scan as many as they can. The first port of call for any WW1/WW11 file is now Archives New Zealand who although not scanning straight away are putting the names up as soon as possible after a transfer is made. If a name is not on Archway then try again in a few weeks as these files are being transferred in small numbers and are not available while in transfer or being prepared for transfer We ask that people be patient while we work through this process. At this point I cannot give a date when we will be finished but we are looking towards August. If a name does not appear on Archway after this time then try NZDF Archives as there may still be the odd file caught up in the main filing system which we have not been able to identify. Regards Christine Edney Registrar NZDF Archives