Thea Exley  Thea Melvie Exley (2 September 1923 – 29 January 2007) was an Australian archivist and art historian, and the first woman to head a regional office of the Australian Commonwealth Archives Office (now the National Archives of Australia). She was also its first national Senior Archivist Reference and Access and the first Director Preservation at the Australian Archives (another predecessor of the National Archives). Exley was an inaugural member of the Australian Society of Archivists and served as a Councillor from 1977 to 1979. Thea Melvie Exley was born in Melbourne on 2 September 1923, the only child of Adelaide ("née" Walker) and Harold James Exley, who became Deputy Commonwealth Statistician, Tasmania. She was educated at Canberra Girls' Grammar School (then St Gabriel's School) and the Friends School, Hobart. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Tasmania. During the Second World War, Exley undertook library training at the Commonwealth National Library and, on returning to Hobart, worked at the Public Library there. After the war, she travelled overseas and worked for a time at the library of Australia House, London. On her return to Australia, Exley was invited by the Commonwealth National Librarian Harold White to join the staff of the Archives Division of the National Library. This led to her joining the Archives Division's Melbourne office as an Archives Officer Grade I on 26 February, 1953. In 1961, she became the first woman to head a state office of the Commonwealth Archives Office (the successor to the Archives Division). During her time in Melbourne, Exley was on the committee of the Archives Section of the Library Association of Australia (LAA), at that time the only Australian association that brought archivists together. She was interested in establishing proper training for archivists and served as an examiner for the LAA's paper in records management from 1963 to 1966. In 1970, she moved to Canberra as the first Senior Archivist, Reference and Access. Cabinet decisions under the Gorton Government (1970) and the McMahon Government (1972) created a new and quite complex access regime for Commonwealth records. Proactive examination of material created before 1945 was commenced at this time. Twenty access examiners were employed and Exley was responsible for guiding their discussions and for ensuring that the resulting decisions were collected into a substantial body of policy, precedent and procedure, which became the foundation of the later "Australian Archives Access Services Manual". Exley regarded her work striving for an accountable and fair access regime as her most important professional contribution.