A new archive room at the Port Fairy Museum and Archives building in Gipps Street is now finished and being filled.

The new archive room will be home to newspapers, minute books and other historical documents dating back to the 1850s.

The building of the new room came at a cost of $49,000.

Funding for the project came from Moyne Shire Council, Pacific Hydro, the Public Record Office Victoria, the Uebergang Foundation and Port Fairy and District Community Bank.

Professional services were also donated by Port Fairy's Martina Murrihy and Ron Cashmore.

Port Fairy Historical Society collection manager Lynda Tieman said the new archive room would prove an invaluable resource.

"We have some very old and very delicate items from the town's history that will be housed in the new room," Ms Tieman said.

"This new room is long awaited, it is something we have needed.

"The room will have favourable conditions for the storage of historic material.

"The other thing about the new room is it will allow us to move a lot of stuff we have had in the main part of the building.

"This was taking up a lot of our day-to-day work space, so to have a place with room to put all our archive items will make the whole place more functional."

Historical society members are busy stocking the new archive room, following on from a hectic period last weekend.

The society launched its Port Fairy in the Fifties exhibition last week to coincide with the Port Fairy Heritage Weekend.

The exhibition includes fashions, photos, activities and newspapers of the day.

Ms Tieman said the exhibition would remain on show until January.

The historical society also held a book sale last weekend, which Ms Tieman said was a successful venture.

"The sale went really well, we sold a lot of local history books," she said.

"It was certainly a busy weekend for us."

The historical society will also host a launch on October 25 of a new book by author Richard Patterson about life in Port Fairy during the Third Boer War, World War I and World War II.