The Provincial Archives is located in Edmonton in the same building as the Provincial Museum of Alberta at 12845-102 Avenue. Most of the Archives' collections are stored off-site in a warehouse in northwest Edmonton. The Archives has 17 full-time staff and 95 volunteers. The Archives' collections include 80,000 boxes of textual records, more than 2 million photographic images, and audio-visual footage that would take 2714 uninterrupted days to view. If stored on a single shelf, the Archives' holdings would stretch about 25 kilometres, the distance from Edmonton to Leduc.
Archival records require specialized storage conditions to ensure their long-term survival.
These include sensitive climate controls to keep light, temperature and humidity at appropriate levels. Transferring records from the warehouse to the reference room usually takes about one day. The Archives is used by genealogists, professors, students, lawyers, members of the media, and other interested Albertans for historical research.