3 Archival Processing

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.

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.

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.

Bernard Schembri

Volunteer Martin Hampton working on the digitisation of the Chief Secretary to Government fond.

Volunteer Shevaun Rooney Volunteer Michael Borg

EDU01 - Ministry of Education EDU02 - Dept of Education CSG01 - Chief Secretary to the Government DOI - Dept of Information BN - Building Notices MIL - Military Personnel Records HOM02 - Petitions Tony Terribile - Santi GMR - General Misc. Reports SSM - School Registers PWD - Public Works Dept (Cleaning, Sorting) - 1932-1950

600 items 11000 items 35108 items 3000 items 8272 items 1100 items 550 items 355 items 200 items 110 volumes 625 items

MFA01 - Passport Applications (Cleaning) CSG01 (Re-Boxing) CSG81 (Pagination) 500 items 180 volumes 20 volumes

CSG81 (23 volumes) MFA 01 (1917, 1943, 1947) Building Notices 7955 images 1773 images 500 images

SoK student Michael Fenech SoK student Nikolai Metaraku

The only students that we hosted this year were mostly those carrying out their Systems of Knowledge project at the National Archives of Malta. The tasks carried out by these students varied in nature. This gave further exposure to the different facets of the work at the Archives.

Michael Malta Giovanni Curmi January and Cleaning and Digitisation Fenech Higher Sec June 2020 (MFA 01); GMR - labelling and cataloguing; Re-boxing and labelling of CSG 01

Danica Abela Malta Gian Frangisk Abela, Junior College

Malta Giovanni Curmi Higher Sec February 2020 Cleaning and Digitisation (MFA 01) - GMR databaseDigital images editing

Malta Giovanni Curmi Higher Sec September 2020 Pagination (CSG), MFA cleaning and digitisation

Kurt Vella Malta Giovanni Curmi Higher Sec January and February 2020 Cleaning and database MIL

November 2020 MFA - cleaning and digitisation

Nicholas Malta University of Galea Malta

Petra Frey Malta University of Malta September 2020 MEMORJA

September 2020 MEMORJA

Covid-19 Pandemic affected the operations in the Map Room. Visits ceased as from end of April 2020 and most work was carried out remotely. Digital copies of Plans and Photos from Map Room Collections can now be viewed at the Reading Room and copies may also be ordered online.

Scanning was not impacted, on the contrary over 900 images more than last year were digitised. The images were scanned inside the Map Room, whilst editing and inputting into the PDM Database was done from home.

Apart from the ongoing exercise of the scanning of the Record Plans from the Ordnance Department) other interesting collections were digitised, including: a) Gozo Aerial Photo Survey - 1943 at 600 dpi b) PHO Photo Collection - 1903,1904 at 1000 dpi c) Rabat St. Paul’s Archives (including Chapels, Law Courts, Hal Saflieni Hypogeum, Catholic Institute etc.) d) Paul Spiteri (Rabat) Collection

Plans scanned and inputted into PDM Database Scanned images (OPM, CSG, PWD, etc.) + scans for for National Archives’ staff

3010 images

125 images

Non PDM Collections in High Resolution (e.g. Rabat St. Paul’s Parish Archives) TOTAL 520 images

3655 images

1822 images

(2019 = 803 images, plus for Memorja) 125 images

2750 images

Visits to the Map Room by Researchers, Students, Gov. Entities, etc Digital Copies of Plans and/or Photos ordered during consultation 27 (till 30 April) 128

208 (from May onwards, orders are recorded at the Reading Room) 536

Reno Caruana