Foreword

Last year I dedicated my foreword to highlight the main strategies that will dictate our operations during the coming decade. I outlined three main strategic directions: re-engineering our infrastructure; upgrading the skill sets of our operators; and widening memory capture processes in terms of typology and media. In particular, 2020 was planned to be the year during which we progress substantially in the planning for the new National Archives hub at Ta’ Qali. At the heart of this process were our plans to have an international evaluation of our vision, processes and procedures aimed at feeding into the thinking for the design of the new building. Our plans had to realign to say the least.

Following the successful launching of my book ‘Maltese Archives … my choice’ in November 2019, I participated in a symposium on the publication hosted at the Historical Archives of the EU in Florence. This event, held on 24 February 2020, was the last one for me and for the institute before the Covid-19 pandemic reached Europe and we entered a phase of fear, disruption and uncertainty.

While the pandemic is far from over, it is with satisfaction that I can report that the National Archives of Malta did not close its services to the public for a single day. Good planning and impressive commitment from all our staff made it possible for the institution to face the situation with courage, a robust plan to mitigate disruption and a holistic effort to provide a level of continuity to our clients.

The detailed statistics we are sharing in this publication are also a reflection of this new reality. For the first time, online users have outnumbered the physical users. The extent and value of accessions was also impressive. During this year we did acquire for the nation a number of archival treasures, mainly in the domains of genealogy and photographic holdings.

Altough the dynamics on the Ta’ Qali project had to slow down, we still registered progress. We worked hand in hand with an ad hoc committee set up by our Ministry. We also continued with our pressure on the University of Malta to introduce training courses at higher levels and catering for new areas such as digital curation, information security and privacy, and the long-term preservation of audio-visuals. We do hope that as soon as the negative impacts of the pandemic subdues, we register progress also in these areas.

We are also optimistic that the coming year will make us realise our dream to share the wealth of …statistics we are the Memorja project with the public. sharing in this The launching of the project portal will be an important milestone publication are in our transition from a ‘public also a reflection records’ oriented organisation into a ‘public memory’ one. It will also of this new reality. For the first time, provide another building block in the National Audio-Visual Institute (NAVI) infrastructure that we are online users have developing. outnumbered the The cancellation of travel during physical users. 2020 did not result in any deficit in our international participation. To some extent, we intensified our online participation and a lot of groundwork was accomplished as part of our participation in the European Digital Treasures project. We look forward to the dissemination of the virtual training programmes the project developed and also the stateof-the-art exhibitions and merchandising that we will showcase during the coming two years. I take this opportunity to thank all our staff, volunteers and supporters for yet another year of commitment in favour of Maltese and European archival heritage.

National Archivist and CEO