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In November 2002 the Commissioners Court approved the Harris County Archives as a component of the Records Managment Program. The first archivist was hired by the end of the month with a second archivist hired in February 2005. The archives officially opened to researchers in April 2005 with a Ribbon Cutting Ceremony presided over by Harris County Judge Robert Eckels.
The Harris County Archives is the first archives in Texas to be created specifically as a part of a Records Management program. As such the archives had to develop adminstrative, physical, and intellectual control over the permanent and historic records of Harris County.
First and foremost we needed to gain a hold over our space. This is the 12th floor, December 2002.
As we were developing a secure area (walls needed to built around staircases, construction materials removed, locks put in place), records began to arrive. The first accession was from the Assessor and Collector of Taxes, twenty-two pallets of records that were placed in the archives in December 2002. Ready or not, administrative and intellectual control over the records became a priority. Organization was accomplished with the help of volunteers and a crew of 20 community service workers over several months.
By the end of February 2003, a source of shelving was identified in a recently purchased county building. Working only on Saturdays, it took 2 years to complete the task of taking the shelving apart, cleaning it, transporting it to the archives, and reconfiguring it.
In the meantime, records began to come into the archives including over 1000 volumes and 20 cubic feet of records that had been stored in the Houston Metropolitan Research Center as a part of the Regional Historical Records Repository Program in the early 1980s.
2004 saw the build out of a reference area to accommodate researchers and more county records being arranged, entered into a database, and shelved.
By April 2005, the Harris County Archives was officially ready to serve the public with their research needs.
In May 2006, the archives received an NHPRC grant to hire a one-year project archivist to process 500 cubic feet of Juvenile Probation Records (1913 - 1989).
A finding aid for the completed project was cataloged by the Harris County Public Library system unto OCLC and is searchable in World Cat.
Another milestone was reached in December 2007 when the Records Management Program was transferred to the Information Technology Center. By this action, Harris County Commissioners Court have established the first phase of integrating both paper and digital records into a total information management approach.
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