THE PRESS MONDAY, AUGUST 14, 1978. Keeping archives in good order

Press, 14 August 1978, Page 16

THE PRESS MONDAY, AUGUST 14, 1978. Keeping archives in good order

The report on the condition of archives in New Zealand that has been made by Dr W. I. Smith, Dominion Archivist of Canada, is of uncertain status. Dr Smith holds an official post and is highly regarded within his profession. But his report was prepared for, and presented to, the Archives and Records Association of New Zealand. It was not commissioned by the Government. The report is highly critical of the state of archives in this country and urges strongly that the Government spend much more money on establishing and maintaining archives. It also recommends that archivists themselves be accorded much higher standing, notably by giving the Chief Archivist direct access to the Minister of Internal Affairs and the right to report annually to Parliament. Because the Archives and Records Association includes among its members most of New Zealand’s professional archivists, and because a professional from overseas seems to be pushing the barrow of his fellow’s in New Zealand, the Government may be tempted to disregard the report as special pleading. This would be unfair to Dr Smith and, at best, short-sighted. Certainly the Government is entitled to weigh the importance of maintaining adequate archives against other demands on public funds, a duty from which Dr Smith and the members of the association are spared. But sound recordkeeping deserves a higher priority than it has received in New Zealand in the past.

That New Zealand has records worth calling archives at all has depended, in the instance of documents of national importance, on the dedication to be found in an understaffed, ill-

housed National Archives. Where there are adequate local archives, they are often the result of the amateur enthusiasm of private individuals or officers of local authorities or local libraries or museums. The country’s records cannot safely be left in this unsatisfactory state. The situation Dr Smith has described should be the standard against which improvement can be measured. The improvement may have to be slow, because of economic circumstances. But it must be perceptible. The Government and local authorities may need to be reminded that they can expect an economic return from any investment in upgrading the country’s archives. Containing the nation’s accumulated experience, archives are used not only by historians anxious to understand the past, but also by administrators as a guide to their actions. Intelligently organised archives enable administrators to retrieve information rapidly and therefore do their job more efficiently. With an archivist in charge of an organisation’s records there is less chance of vital documents being destroyed and less likelihood of many worthless documents, often expensive to store, being retained unnecessarily. Professional help for those government officials and others who at present act as “archivists” because there is noone else to do the job will prevent waste of time, effort, and money in recordkeeping itself and in more general administrative tasks. The Government should keep these benefits in mind when it receives from the Archives and Records Association specific recommendations arising from the Smith report.