This archive was put together as a result of the expressed sentiments of many who met at the memorial services for Val Pyers in North Melbourne and Daylesford in 2006. At these services, many expressed a hope for some record or memorial to be made in recognition of the significant contributions made by Val to the choral life of Victoria.

Consequently in 2007 a number of individuals who had been members of choirs under Val's leadership met at Auburn Uniting Church to discuss how best to realise and present such a memorial and to enlist legal assistance from Mr John Evans with the intention of formalising a foundation in Val's honour and drawing up a trust document. This resulted in the formation of the Val J Pyers Foundation and a trust fund being created for donations. Those involved were Bruce Macrae (Chair), John Hamilton, Barry Clarke, Gordon Hawley, Joyce Edwards, Maria Radford, Kate White and Kristina Macrae.

The Val Pyers Collection builds upon a digital archive put together by Phillip Pope (with the assistance of Barry and Kay Clarke, Gordon and Carla Hawley) in 2007. Further material was added to this digital archive by Joyce Edwards, Margaret Hutson, Keith Brereton, John Hamilton, Bruce Macrae, Kristina Macrae and various others.

To make the collection useable and accessible, assistance was provided by Gavan McCarthy and Winsome Adam from the eScholarship Research Centre at The University of Melbourne. Under their guidance, records were collected, collated, documented and described, resulting in the production of this Finding Aid. This work was only possible through the tremendous voluntary assistance of Gordon Hawley, Barry Clarke, Kristina Macrae, Bruce Macrae, John Cleghorn and Ria Radford who worked on the collection from 2017 to 2018.

Major donors of material to this collection were: John Hamilton, Joyce Edwards, Anne Pyers, Bruce Macrae, Barry Clarke, Gordon Hawley, Maria Radford and Tony Radford.