Enhancing the Use of Archival Services in South Africa: Investigating User Perceptions and Proposing Interventions

1. 1 Dr Isabel Schellnack-Kelly Unisa – Department of Information Science

2. The National Archives and Records Management Service of South Africa is the central repository in the Republic of South Africa. Together with the National Film, Video and Sound Archives, these two institutions are charged with preserving the national heritage for use by the government and its citizens. Currently, this service is under-utilised and this is evident from the dwindling number of users that come to conduct research at the archives. For the purpose of this paper, I have investigated the reasons behind the decrease in users and propose possible interventions aimed at improving the use of archives, in order to ensure that these archival services remain relevant and keep these records for posterity. 2

3. The dwindling numbers of researchers to archival institutions is also being experienced amongst members of the East and Southern African Branch of the International Council of Archives (Esarbica). This is a serious concern because information services justify their existence through use. The danger of services being under-utilised is that the government may feel that this service should cease to exist. Saurombe and Ngulube (2016) conducted an investigation looking at the role of the archivists in trying to address users’ needs and argued for a shift in the rigidity of the archivists in purely focusing on preservation and conservation rather than shifting their focus to facilitating access and use. 3

4. The SA National Archives and National Film, Video and Sound Archives are mandated to take custody of public records, arrange and describe them, preserve them and make these archives available to members of the public. These records help society to address economic, social and political matters but also contribute to the national heritage of the country. South Africa’s archival heritage spreads from the diaries of Jan van Riebeeck (housed in the Western Cape Archives) to oral history projects with communities in and around South Africa’s national game parks. All of these institutions rely on state funding to operate and justify their existence through user statistics in order to demonstrate their value in society by demonstrating the demand for their services. 4

5. National Archives annual reports for 2016, 2017 and 2018 should user statistics have declined year-on-year and there is an urgent need to explore the reasons why the situation is so dire and to identify possible solutions that could be considered to turn the situation around. Saurombe and Ngulube 92016) focussed on the perspective of the archivists, this paper focuses specifically on the experiences encountered by users at the public archival institutions. The users that are referred to in this paper are the researchers that frequent the reading room and online visitors to the websites and databases of the public archival institutions. 5

6. The National Archives and Records Service of South Africa and the National Film, Video and Sound Archives have a mandate to preserve South Africa’s national heritage experience and to make these available for use by the public. In order to achieve this objective, the archivists need to identify and predict instances where archival information can make a difference and proceed to provide access to such information. By doing so the archivists can ensure that they act not only as keepers and finders of information but, also as collaborators (McAvena 2017). McAvena proposes an appropriate approach to ensuring that archival institutions remain useful and relevant to society. The country’s public archival institutions find themselves struggling to justify and motivate for the budgets they need to function and the decline in archival users is a serious cause for concern (Saurombe and Ngulube 2016). The aim of this paper is to identify the main reasons for the decline in users of the archival facilities and propose a strategy to assist the public archival institutions in attracting more users to utilise their services. 6

7. Four objectives: Explore the perceptions and attitudes of the users Find out the experiences that influence users’ perceptions and attitudes; Assess the impact on users Explore possible interventions that could improve user satisfaction 7

8. Employed a combination of convenience sampling and purposive sampling. Research was limited to users who frequently visited the reading room. Regular users who are acquainted with the reading room were targeted. It was hoped that they would provide rich and meaningful insights to the discussion as opposed to new researchers who visit the archives less frequently. 8

9. Four overarching themes - Perceptions and attitudes of the users - Everyday experiences - Impact on users - Interventions 9

10. Users were of the view that services rendered to them were substandard compared to what they experienced a decade ago Users had a perception that the reading staff were not adequately trained and lacked necessary skills in assisting researchers. Identified the root problem as the high turnover of staff working in the reading rooms Users felt that insufficient time was given for staff to acquaint themselves with archival collections and to devlop the ability to resolve complex queries, without relying heavily on experienced staff. Users expressed concern on the frequent recurrence of missing files. They complained about files that had gone missing which had probably been misplaced somewhere in a strongroom. 10

11. Users were asked to relate their everyday experiences when utilising the reading room. Users related incidents that led them to develop negative attitudes towards the reading room staff. A well-respected professor was made to wait an hour and a half for the archives to be delivered to his table. Another user complained that she would send her requests via e- mail the day before only to find that the material was not available when she arrived. Other respondents were extremely concerned that there are archives in the strongrooms that have not been documented and placed into inventories for access. Many of these are archival groups that relate to land use and traditional leadership. 11

12. Another respondent related experiences in requesting cartographic material, which was denied due to the fragile condition of the maps. The researcher was told that the maps had been sent to a conservation lab in 1997 but, the map collection is still out of bounds to researchers. Paper-based inventories are not up to date. These inventories are incomplete and the shelves on which they are arranged are in disarray. Another complain was that the respective finding aids are only available in Afrikaans. Archival collections are not easily accessible to users unfamiliar with South Africa’s many languages. At the National Film, Video and Sound Archives many collections are inaccessible to the average user due to language constraints and the availability of playback equipment that is faulty. 12

13. Many elements in society will be affected when the access to archival records is denied to address economic, social and political matters (Saurombe and Ngulube 2016). Both the National Archives and the National Film, Video and Sound Archives hold many unique archival collections of cultural, social and religious backgrounds. It would be a tragic loss if such valuable artefacts could no longer be cared for if the National Archives could no longer continue to be operational and it is imperative that this eventuality be avoided at all costs. Many of the users that visit the reading room are researchers commissioned to do work on behalf of other people and organisations. The closure of the reading room would leave such researchers out of work. 13

14. The promulgation and implementation of acts, such as the Promotion of Access to Information Act, no. 2 of 2000, shows just how important it is in South Africa for its citizens to firmly exercise their rights to accessing information. The risk of the reading room being dysfunctional and having their services discontinued would infringe on the constitutional rights of having access to information. The information contained at the National Archives and National Film, Video and Sound Archives helps citizens establish their citizenship, claim property and inherit estates as well as undo past injustices. 14

15. Users highlighted the critical issue of staff retention, such as the reading room staff. Users indicated that they would like to see the reading room staff stay at the National Archives for at least ten years or more. Users complained about the standard of the finding aids, which hamper their abilities to find correct references to archives held within the institution. Users emphasized that paper-based inventories are largely incomplete, outdated and some have gone missing. There is a feeling that the online finding aids (NAAIRS and AtoM) are not user- friendly. 15

16. Users were aware of the budget constraints applied to the National Archives and National Film, Video and Sound Archives – should investigate accessing funds and other resources through public private partnerships. Users were also of the opinion that efforts should be made to allow many collections to be available on-line. 16

17. Many archival institutions around the world enable researchers to access archival collections from their personal computers. Both the National Archives and National Film, Video and Sound Archives have many wonderful collections that would receive more attention if the collections were available electronically. Many archival institutions have active social media pages in which they inform interested person on interesting projects that are being undertaken by the archival institutions. Such initiatives should be considered by South Africa’ public archival institutions which would increase the number of users visiting and consulting different archival collections. 17

18. Several recommendations were proposed: - Both institutions need to investigate, design and implement a strong knowledge management strategy. - Marketing and outreach strategy need to be overhauled. - Strong focus should be on attracting academia as these are the researchers that do more intensive research and are likely to visit the reading room more often. - Archivists need to have a comprehensive background in history to that they can assist users with their respective queries. 18

19. Users recommended that all archival collections stored in the strongrooms should be captured in finding aids in order to facilitate access. The finding aids would also dispel the myths that the archival institutions are deliberately hiding records from users. Archivists also need to have a broad understanding of many South African languages so that archivists can assist users with the large volumes of collections that are not available in English. Language skills will go a long way in opening up collections and attracting more users. 19

20. More efforts need to be made to open up archival collections to current and new users. The oral history projects undertaken by the National Film, Video and Sound Archives are to be commended as they capture narratives from communities that were side-lined by the colonial and apartheid dispensations. However, such collections are only available at the premises of the National Film, Video and Sound Archives. None of these have been digitised. More needs to be done to promote the use and further undertakings to accumulate such collections and to ensure that they are preserved so that current and future users can access the information. 20

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