By Saio Marrah
Joanes Caulker an Archivist at the Sierra Leone Public Archive Office (SLPAO), has called on the public to help salvage the dying status of information at the facility.
He made this call during an interview with Politico at their Fourah Bay College Office in Freetown on Thursday 28th July 2022, after making a press release on the said issue.
Describing archiving as the backbone of any nation for storing all records of the government, Caulker categorized information into three parts namely; current, semi-current, and noncurrent.
He said current are those used by various Ministries Department, and Agencies (MDAs).
"So the ones that are in use presently in the different MDAs are at risk because sometimes when you move along the corridors of the MDAs you will see boxes abandoned with so many documents. They are exposed to flooding, they are exposed to theft or whatever things,” she said.
He said a time will come when the information at the MDAs will no longer be of use and will have to be taken to the national record centre.
“Unfortunately, the national record centre is so choked now that it cannot accommodate any more records. At the national record centre you store them there for a long time, before reviewing them to ascertain which one of them has enduring value and importance for research purposes” he continued.
The move to digitize information, he said is indeed timely but that it does not mean they are to abandon the paper records.
He said in record management hybrids system means you work with the paper and the electronic simultaneously because what you have on the paper is what you migrate to electronic form. Getting the digital format of those records are very costly and highly expensive and added that they have been challenged with such a situation for quite a long time.
The Archivist said: “We have been asking for help to see that these heritages are preserved but it is rather unfortunate that we are yet to receive any support.”
He however acknowledged the one support they had received from the West African Heritage and Consultants in collaboration with their associates, for at least providing digital training and innovation to move from paper-based to digitalized archiving.
Caulker also pointed out that they hope to have their own building.
As of now, he said they only have two rooms at the University House at Fourah Bay College, another at the Kennedy Building in the same college, for national archiving, and the national record centre where they keep semi-current records, located at Tower hill, in Freetown.
He said the above locations are full and they do not have space to store more records from the MDAs.
The Sierra Leone Public archives Office (SLPAO) was created from the Public Archives Act No.44 of 1965. It has three functions which include selection, preservation and access.
