The digitisation of the Barbados Archives Department is continuing apace.
Senator Dr Shantal Munro-Knight, the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office with Responsibility for Culture, recently told the Sunday Sun she was heartened by the progress.
“I am happy to say that we are near completion of our checklist following the auditors’ report that we would have had. Coming out of the fire, we hired independent auditors to be able to take a look and then also give us recommendations on what we need to do to be able to secure the archives.
“We’ve been working through that checklist of things, whether it’s the protocols, whether it’s upgrades, or the installation of the fire suppression system. So, all of that work at the archive space is ongoing until we are able to say that we have satisfied, if not all, then 90-something per cent of all of those various elements that are on that checklist,” she said.
In June last year, a lightning strike was thought to have caused a fire at the Archives, located in The Lazaretto, Black Rock, St Michael, which destroyed Block D and many valuable documents before firefighters brought it under control.
Since then, efforts have been under way to recover and digitise as much information as possible.
Munro-Knight said the authorities were still assessing how much information was permanently lost, explaining the process of recovery was a slow one. She said it involved freezing the damaged records for at least a month, with more damaged records requiring a longer freezing period, after which they would extract what they could for digitisation.
More difficult
“Some are going to take six months; some are going to take a year. After that, it becomes more difficult, but I would say that without that technology, without us having that on hand in the first place, the loss would have been tremendously greater. It’s been fantastic what they’ve been able to do,” she said.
The minister said genealogy was one of the most subscribed elements of the Archive Department, with interest
shown from locals, the region and beyond, so it was vital to get it back on track.
“Barbadians are always coming to be able to see the archives, to interact with the archives and the genealogy workshops. You would see them come out again around Independence. So, the work is still continuing when it comes to the archives.
“We have some other international people as well, who will be coming again to use the archives to trace their ancestry. That is part of what we are doing to intensify the attention and the utility of the archives and you will see again even a more heightened attention and scaling up of the work,” she said.
Munro-Knight said genealogy tours were conducted in Washington and Charleston in the United States, adding there was interest in travelling to Panama.
The minister also gave an update on the work on the Newton Slave Burial Ground, where a heritage site and national monument are being built. There were some public complaints regarding the preservation of the site, which Munro-Knight said they heard and were responding to.
“Coming out of some discussions with stakeholders, we established a joint committee with those same stakeholders in order to make sure that we continue to build out in a way that is sensitive to all of the history and the preservation of any kind of archaeological artefacts.
“That, in particular, is being led by the Barbados Museum and Historical Society,” she said, adding the work was scheduled to end early next year. (CA)
BRASSTACKS woke you up, eh.