News from Brisbane
News from Brisbane - 23
Date Added:3 July 2012
RE-ESTABLISHING THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES OF VANUATU:
A Day in the life of the Assistant Archivist, Augustine Tevimule
Officially established on the occasion of Vanuatu’s Independence, 30 July 1980, the National Archives enjoyed some good years until 1997, when the staff of seven was slashed to only one, as part of the Government’s Comprehensive Reform Programme. Without sufficient human or material resources, the old, small Archives building fell into abandonment and archives work was neglected for over a decade.
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It was not until September 2007, over a year after the tragic burning down of the historic Supreme Courthouse, that the need to re-establish the National Archives in a brand new building and with professionally trained staff was recognized. The Minister for Internal Affairs, referring to the previously forgotten Archives Act of 1992, handed back responsibility for the National Archives to the Vanuatu National Cultural Council in order to achieve the security, preservation, maintenance and ongoing development of our historic records for the benefit of current and future generations. The task of retrieving documents, both from the burnt-out Supreme Court building and the old Archives building, proved to be a gigantic task but in 2010, with the appointment of a Chief Archivist and very generous funding from the Commonwealth of Australia for the construction of a new, two-storey National Library & National Archives building, the National Archives of Vanuatu were well on their way to being re-established. And this is where Augustine Tevimule appears on the scene.
Born and raised on the island of Pentecost, Augustine materialized in the National Archives one day in January 2010, offering to give unpaid volunteer assistance in cleaning, sorting and boxing the mountains of records retrieved from the old Archives building. Very bright, highly self-motivated and with a natural archivist’s passion for “Preserving the Memory of the Nation”, Augustine was soon taken on as a trainee; in August 2011, he was officially appointed as Assistant Archivist.
Augustine’s day is full, very full… In the past few months he has assisted in retrieving Government archives from four rooms in the Prime Minister’s Office and he is now engaged in the meticulous sorting and boxing of historic items, prior to their being listed and processed. He has assisted staff of the Civil Status Office, Lands Records and the Office of the President of the Republic of Vanuatu (State House) in cleaning and sorting their own records. On 13 March this year he assisted with a mini-workshop for Ministry of Infrastructure & Public Utilities staff on filing and recordkeeping generally, and the workshop participants were introduced to the PARBICA Recordkeeping for Good Governance Toolkit. On 17 April, Augustine gave a power point presentation on What are Archives? to recordkeeping staff of the Reserve Bank – a presentation which generated a great deal of interest: Augustine’s enthusiasm for his work is catching!
At the same time, Augustine is studying at tertiary level for the Diploma in Library and Information Studies (University of the South Pacific, Distance and Flexible Learning Mode), a qualification that he expects later to add to by turning it into an Archives degree.
Augustine is currently on a short-term attachment with the Preservation and Conservation Section of the National Archives of Fiji and we are looking forward to his return, with newly-honed skills in this area!