Government Initiatives to Safeguard Cultural Assets post-Department of Archives Fire: Plans for Document Relocation and Digitization Progress

The government is racing to recover and safeguard invaluable cultural assets following the catastrophic fire at the Department of Archives, with a planned full move of valuable documents to a disaster-resistant facility by November, according to the minister responsible for culture.

Senator Dr Shantal Munro-Knight has also ordered a full report on how the process of digitisation of vital records has been progressing.

Flanked by Chief Fire Officer Errol Maynard and Chief Archivist Ingrid Thompson on Friday, she told a news conference that efforts to protect the archives had been underway well before the incident, with plans to relocate important records to a “state-of-the-art” facility in Newton.

The new location has been vetted by the Barbados Fire Service, receiving a 4.5 out of five rating for fire suppression standards, the minister said.

The aim is to complete the transition by November.

“November was actually a sped-up time, even before the occurrence of the fire, so November is still the timing we are working with to be able to move,” Senator Munro-Knight said. “But we are continuing to make sure that we examine the buildings at the Archives but then we also have the satellite site where we will be moving other critical documents from the Archives to that location that has that 4.5 rating.”

The minister highlighted ongoing digitisation efforts which began in 2017, with approximately half a million files already preserved in digital formats.

“We have 120 persons that have been working since the end of last year at an off-site satellite, in order to be able to continue that digitisation process,” she explained. “We had already begun to move some of those records from the Archives Department in order to be secure and allow us to move ahead with the digitisation process.”

The minister in the Prime Minister’s Office with responsibility for culture said that critical players met hours after the fire which occurred early Tuesday to establish a plan for retrieving, salvaging and triaging recoverable documents. She expressed gratitude for community support, with historians, businesses and students volunteering to assist in the salvage efforts.

Pledging transparency in the recovery process, Senator Munro-Knight promised regular progress updates.

She also disclosed that she has ordered a comprehensive report on the fire details and the pace of digitisation.

“I want a full report on how the process of digitisation has occurred. What were any challenges and bottlenecks that would have prevented us from going as fast as we should have, and also a full and comprehensive report on the state of measures that would have been put in place in order to make sure that we could protect these cultural assets,” the culture minister said.

She added: “Even though we’ve done a tremendous amount of work and will continue to do a tremendous amount of work, the team working at the satellite location has been charged to make sure that they can upscale almost by ten times the rate of digitisation.”

The fire at the Barbados Archives Department, sparked by a lightning strike, destroyed Block D which housed records of the Vestry, the former local government system that dates back to the 17th century; the city council; records of the mental hospital and general hospital; historical court proceedings including the Court of Chancery; newspaper archives and other official documents.

Thompson had said on Tuesday that most of the documents were lost in the fire, and some of those were irreplaceable.

Senator Munro-Knight said on Friday: “We have been and will continue to do all that is necessary to make sure that we protect these cultural assets. The Government of Barbados launched the Reclaiming Our Atlantic Destiny project in December 2021, and that project was essentially about creating a pathway for us to be able to secure and protect these records.”

The fate of some of the most precious documents from the island’s 397-year-old past remains unknown. These include the landmark 1661 Slave Code, the proclamation of the abolition of slavery in 1834 and the royal warrant approving Barbados’ independence in 1966. The archives are also home to baptism, marriage and death records, deeds and wills.

shannamoore@barbadostoday.bb