ARCHIVAL PROCESSING
3.1
Introduction
After the arrival of records of national significance and enduring historical value at the National Archives, the Archives Processing Unit ensures that these are described, preserved and made accessible to all those who seek to use them in their research. Eventually, all records transferred to the National Archives during 2020, as indicated in the previous Chapter, will be sorted and catalogued.
3.2
Cataloguing
This year, in the absence of students particularly international internships due to Covid-19, but also thanks to the measures taken by the Archives to promote teleworking for most of the staff and volunteers, the majority of the Archival Processes focused on cataloguing. In fact, three main projects have been earmarked for 2020 and the coming years: the Educational Department files, the Building Notices and the Chief Secretary to Government.
Bernard Schembri
The Chief Secretary to Government (CSG) fonds is one of our largest collections and covers the whole British period 1800-1964 and has been constantly the most researched collection throughout the years. Thus we decided to embark on an ambitious project, namely to catalogue one of the series, the Departmental Correspondence (CSG 01) within this fonds at item level using the Indexes. However, various tasks had to be performed before the actual cataloguing could begin. After identifying the series, an evaluation by our Conservators was carried out to establish which of the documents required conservation work. After that, the volumes were paginated and the next task was the digitisation of these indexes. Having a digital copy of the Indexes enabled us to use teleworking for this project; thus our staff was able to keep on carrying out productive work during Covid-19.
Volunteer Martin Hampton working on the digitisation of the Chief Secretary to Government fond.
Annual Report 2020
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