Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office with responsibility for Culture, Senator Dr. Shantal Munro-Knight, is pleased with the salvaging efforts by the teams assembled to restore several pages of historic records damaged during a recent fire at the Department of Archives.
Speaking during a walk-through of an offsite facility on Monday, Senator Munro-Knight noted that the salvage and triaging teams assembled to preserve and restore the documents were able to restore and recover “what we thought was lost”.
She proffered that the teams assembled of over 20 persons are doing everything “they possibly can” to salvage and repair the material.
“I am really grateful to the team and [Ann Bancroft] for being able to recover the document. As you can see, this is meticulous work as it relates to how you open up the documents and treat them and these folks are working around the clock to make it happen,” Senator Minister Munro-Knight assured.
Though buoyed by the level of support from the public, she said the outpouring of support did not come as a surprise since more Barbadians were more knowledgeable and interested in learning more about their history.
“If you look at the amount of visitors that the Archives Department was having this year alone, we understood that there was a renewed interest post-COVID by Barbadians to understand and connect, so it is not necessarily surprising, but we are definitely grateful for it,” she stated.
Senator Munro-Knight stressed that there were daily debriefing meetings and gave the assurance that whatever materials or equipment needs would be addressed by the government given the importance of the records to the country.
“This is a whole of government approach, and we’re 100 per cent committed to seeing that the effort, where there’s a possibility for restoration, that it happens.”
Meanwhile, Head of Conservation and Collection Care at the Barbados Museum, Ann Bancroft, said the salvage teams were recovering hundreds of volumes on a daily basis at the Department of Archives’ site, which was now secured.
She pointed out that it was a national response which was supported by national repositories and sister institutions who were “rallying around our comrades at the Archives”.
“This is a lot of work going forward. This is not a sprint…this is a marathon…While we can’t control what happened, we can control how we respond to it and everything that can be done, I really feel is being done,” Ms. Bancroft underlined.
Heritage Consultant at the Department of Archives, Anisha Wood, gave an insight into the process that includes, but is not limited to, air drying the objects using various techniques before they are digitised. (PR/GIS)
