Oxford Colonial Archives Project
Rhodes House Library, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3RG
Mailing address: Chinese Studies Centre
St Antony's College Oxford OX2 6JF
(0865) 59651 EXT. 275
Home telephone number: Abingdon (0235) 35728 5 January 1988
P G F Dalton Esq, CMG
Rotherdale Cottage
Fir Toll Road
Mayfield
Sussex
Dear Mr Dalton,
I hope you will be pleased to know that Rhodes House Library and the Chinese Studies Centre of Wolfson and St Antony's Colleges in Oxford have launched a Hong Kong Research and Archives Project.
Our dual objects are to secure research materials for and promote the study of Hong Kong in this country. As a first step we hope to collect private papers and record the oral reminiscences (which we shall transcribe and deposit at Rhodes House Library in due course) from distinguished civil servants and others who had contributed to the development of Hong Kong.
You have, needless to say, contributed significantly to Hong Kong's stability when you served as Political Adviser in an important period of the territory's history. Your knowledge of its government, its external relations, its place, and its people are of tremendous value. I sincerely hope that you will consider giving us and future students of Hong Kong studies the benefit of your invaluable experience in Hong Kong.
Please be assured that we will be very responsible and careful in looking after all interview tapes and papers we may collect. As you are no doubt aware, it has long been Rhodes House Library's policy to restrict access to material containing official or semi-official material which falls by date within the closure period prescribed by the Public Records Act, and documents so designated are kept in a specially-locked cage in our bookstack, which is itself not accessible to readers. The Library's restricted section also includes various documents which donors or depositors have asked to be closed for specific periods, often for reasons of personal or political sensitivity. This particularly applies to interview tapes and transcripts collected by the Colonial Records Project, where a restriction was often placed at the time of the interview, to last sometimes for thirty years from the date of the events or thirty years The Oxford Colonial Archives Project continues the work of the Oxford Colonial Records Project (1963-72) and the Oxford Development Records Project (1977-84). ¶Rhodes House Library is a denendent institution of the Bodleian Library. University of Oxford.
Page 30Page 31