24
A. I. DIAMOND
hope adequate, library and reading room facilities. The repository will be specially air-conditioned to provide a filtered atmosphere and a temperature and relative humidity stabilised at the optimum levels. The records will be protected from fire by an automatic carbon dioxide extinguishing system.
But the Murray Road accommodation will also be temporary. If our present intake of permanent records is maintained we shall exhaust the storage space available there by the end of 1978. It is planned, therefore, that in 1979 we shall move for the second and last time to premises in Murray Building II, which is to be constructed on the site of the Garden Road Open-air Car Park.
In the Murray Building we shall have about 25,000 square feet of floor space, including accommodation for upward of 40,000 shelf-feet of records.
Even this will not meet our storage needs; but as we cannot continue to expand in the city centre our space requirements in excess of that allowed for in the Murray Building will be met by the provision of satellite accommodation in low-cost areas. These satellite repositories will be used for the storage of intermediate records and of permanent records which are not often consulted.
As the P.R.O. is the first Archives to have been established in Hong Kong it was no surprise to find that professionally trained staff were unobtainable here. What was less expected was the difficulty which we have had in recruiting suitable graduate staff even without archives training. In fact, after sixteen months I am still without any. Part of the reason for this is that the career prospects which we can offer at this early stage of our development are rather nebulous. As the scope and volume of the P.R.O.'s operations expand the avenues for advancement within the ranks of its graduate staff will presumably improve. In the meantime the problem is to find and keep staff with the interest and courage to take their chances in pioneering a new form of career.
The intention is that Assistant Archivists (graduates) should undergo a year's in-service training at the end of which time they will sit an examination designed to test their knowledge and proficiency. If they pass this, and are suitable in other respects, they will be eligible for diploma-course training abroad, probably in Malaysia or Australia.
Page 30
Page 31