Mitteilungen des Österreichischen Staatsarchivs 39. (1986)
Archive Buildings and the Conservation of Archival Material. An Expert Meeting, held in Vienna, Austria October 30 - November 1, 1985 - STEWART, William J.: Summary of Discussions
254 William J. Stewart Papers by Buchmann and Yao Yu-Cheng see pp. 202—220. Intervention *) by Ms Kamb a: The National Archives building in Zimbabwe is now twenty-three years old. For a time, stack space was adequate for the storage of every kind of archival material. However, once a wing of the building was turned over to record center activities we faced enormous space problems. At the present time, in order to accommodate certain holdings we are renting commercial warehouse space, in an area totally unsuitable for archives. Fortunately, the National Archives has at last received authority and funding to construct a separate record center facility which will abut the main building. I was interested particularly in the points raised regarding the selection of an architect. Bundesarchiv officials obviously had a great deal of leeway in this matter. Not all archivists enjoy the right to select the architect. For our new record center we were directed to work with an architect assigned by the Ministry of Construction, or more accurately, an architect employed by that ministry. It will be up to the archivists to transmit their needs very clearly to the architect. Dr Buchmann also mentioned that in their case the archivists were invited to present their requirements in detail before administrative authorities drew up a budget for the new building. Again, this is not always the case in other countries. For our projected records center there was no occasion to justify our needs in any detail. Treasury officials merely estimated the cost of such a facility and the architect worked within the context of that allocation. Within the target amount, however, we archivists were permitted every opportunity to define our requirements. Intervention by Ms Nor: May I join my colleagues in congratulating Dr Buchmann for his excellent paper. I have several comments to offer in respect to the Malaysian experience in raising archive buildings. The Malaysian National Archives, established over twenty-eight years ago, has two structures to house its records. One, a records center, was built in 1965 and the other, the main archives, was completed in 1982. Our symposium chairman, Mr Duchein, served as consultant on the archives building. After three years of occupancy we can report the building to be generally adequate. There are several problems and I should like to refer to them, albeit briefly. First we made a serious error in projecting the amount of space needed for staff operations. Simply put, in the ten years from the start of planning to the completion of construction, the staff increased far beyond our planning expectations. This unforseen growth is attributable to recent rising public appreciation of the Malaysian archives and its programs. The new archives building, even during the construction phase, generated an increased visibility that brought us additional projects which meant a bigger workload which, in turn, meant taking on more people. *) All formal interventions were submitted in written form before the beginning of the discussions.
