Concern is constantly expressed about break-downs in the nation’s infrastructure. Previous long-term economic malaise led to wide-spread structural deterioration which is with us still. The seawall crumbles. The city and countless villages flood or go bone dry for lack of means to manage water. Everywhere, over-worked and underpaid workers race as hard as they can to repair or replace basic utilities but cannot maintain even the status quo for long.
In the middle of this congregation of problems it may seem impertinent to plead that more attention and money be focused on a different challenge. It is a challenge which may seem peripheral to our everyday practical lives but which in the longer run hugely appeals to our deeper lives as thinking and patriotic citizens. I refer to the store of written and other records in Guyana.
There are a number of threats to our written record. One is the common enemy of archivists everywhere in the world. It is the fragility of paper. Since about 1870 most paper has been made from wood pulp. An organic component of wood called lignin releases acid which breaks down paper’s cellulose fibres. Because of this, over time, paper yellows and disintegrates. Ways have been found to protect paper from this universal threat of deterioration and are being applied in the archives of many countries. Have we begun this process in Guyana? And, while I am on the subject, could I remind all those who wish to keep records for a little longer than the day after tomorrow that faxes fade almost as quickly as roses and that pictures in colour will never be seen by your great grand-children.
A terrible enemy of preserved records in Guyana has always been fire. Irreplaceable books, magazines, letters, almanacs, documents and films were lost in the great fires of 1945 and 1962. A large room full of material collected in Liverpool for the purpose of writing a history of Bookers in Guyana over a century and a half went up in flames in a German bombing raid in the Second World War. Records absolutely vital in the writing of our political history must have been lost in the fire that destroyed the PNC headquarters all those years ago. These days every time the fire-engine wails in tinder-dry Georgetown the dedicated historian’s heart must sink with fear.
But paper’s fragility, and even engulfing fire, are as nothing to the pure negligence of man as threats to the written record. Such negligence is of two kinds. One is private carelessness and the other is public disdain. Combined, these two are the arch enemies of that part of our national heritage enshrined in the written word.
Private carelessness is incredible. In households everywhere old books and old papers are the first things to go when there is a spring-cleaning or when there is a death in the family. People seem to have no sense of the importance of the past as recorded in old family papers, documents, photographs, collections of books and memorabilia. Officials in companies throw out records over five years old to make way for new files. Which Club in the country has minute books going back more than a few years? The histories of most Associations are as long as the current secretary’s memory. Does NCN have an archival policy which preserves old tapes? Do our newspapers make sure that their old issues and libraries of cuttings and pictures are protected and cared? Is film of local interest being kept for future record? I appeal to anyone who may be reading this to do what he or she can do – at home, in office, or in club – to ensure that old books and almanacs, magazines, diaries, letters, family documents, club records and pictures are not treated as so much waste fit only for the rubbish dump or incinerator.
However, in the end the greatest challenge is official inattention to the huge and necessary job that needs to be done if our national records are to be acquired, preserved, catalogued, protected, strengthened and expanded in an orderly and sufficient way.
The librarians, archivists and bibliophiles at the National Archives, the University and the National Library no doubt do their heroic best but the resources at their disposal are limited. The national, and municipal, archives need complete reappraisal, comprehensive cataloguing and careful securing as the national treasure they most certainly are. Foundation money and technical assistance must be found to supplement our own resources of dedicated people and meagre funds so that a massive programme or archival retrieval, protection, and expansion can be mounted.
I ended an address I gave at the UWI in Jamaica at a conference on the Caribbean in the 21st Century with the following plea.
“This conference is focused on how to master the extraordinary challenges of the future. It is right that it should. But, of course, always and soon the future becomes the past. Therefore I think this conference should find some time and some space in its proceedings to consider how the past is to be reflected as true and whole as possible in the annals we preserve for the generations coming on.”
It is a concern which needs constant attention. Archives are of infinite importance in linking the generations and creating that continuity and depth of historical insight which in the end makes a nation whole and proud of itself. Everyone knows how vital it is to repair the physical infrastructure of the nation. In the worry and expense of getting that job done let us not forget that the fabric which scholars need to construct our history properly also desperately needs attention. It is a serious economic mishap, and a dreadful inconvenience, when, say, a koker collapses or a harbour bridge rusts and threatens to sink. But in a much larger and more permanent sense it is a national tragedy when the bridge across the generations is allowed to rot.
