RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077
22

A. I. DIAMOND

how information is obtained from them. The original registers, indexes and other finding aids of the office are ready-made instruments of information retrieval.

However, the original finding aids will answer only the questions they were designed to answer and frequently questions which the student wishes to ask of the records are quite different from those which the administrator had in mind. It therefore becomes part of the archivist's business to devise supplementary media in the form of guides, inventories, lists, calendars and select indexes to which the student can turn for further guidance.

Archives are highly significant resources and the most important of them are the archives of governments. Official archives constitute government's memory. They contain information on every aspect of its business, and this information increases in value and extent as archives are accumulated and preserved. "Public records define the relations of government to the governed. They are the immediate proof for all temporary property and financial rights that are derived from or are connected with a citizen's relations to a government, and are the ultimate proof for all permanent civic rights and privileges".

For these reasons if for no other, the proper management by a government of its current records and the conservation of its archives should be viewed by it not as a luxury or as a concession to academia, but as an essential object of national concern,

The last time I was asked to talk about the development of an archive office was in 1965 when I was in charge of the Central Archives of Fiji and the Western Pacific High Commission. It was comparatively easy because I then had nearly a decade of development to look back on. In this case it is more difficult because the Public Records Office, Hong Kong—hereafter referred to as P.R.O.—has been in existence here for less than eighteen months and we are standing a little too close to events to see what they really amount to in terms of progress.

The P.R.O. was established in July, 1972, and, as some of you will know, it forms at present a unit of the Colonial Secretariat under the general direction of the Home Affairs and Information Branch.

* Perotin, Yves, "A Manual of Tropical Archivology". (Mouton & Co., Paris) p. 20.
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2003
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390
225

OBITUARY

Ian Diamond, M.B.E., F.I.M., M.A., Hon. Fellow, HKBRAS (1924-2004)

Our former Hon. Secretary and Vice-President Ian Diamond, died recently at his home in Adelaide, aged 80. He was also an Hon. Fellow of our Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, an honour he greatly prized.

Ian was educated at St. Peter's College, Adelaide, and at the University of Adelaide (M.A.). After working as an archivist in Australia, he went to the then British Colony of Fiji where he served from 1958, establishing and running the Central Archives of Fiji and the Western Pacific High Commission until he transferred to Hong Kong in 1971 to set up the Public Records Office there.

Ian's service to the RAS was noteworthy. He was our Hon. Secretary 1974-78, Councillor 1978-82, and Vice-President 1983-85, when he retired from the service of the Hong Kong Government. He then returned to his native Australia, with his wife Ishbel, another fine contributor to the good of Hong Kong during their stay in the former Colony.

For much of Ian's time on the RAS Council, it used to meet in his office in the Public Records Office, then located on the first floor of the Murray Road Multi-storey Car Park at Lambeth Walk. This was but a stone's throw from the appropriately named Bull and Bear, which served as our meeting place when Ian was on overseas leave and his office temporarily unavailable to us.

Ian was determined to record the remaining old buildings in Hong Kong, before the developers moved in. Together, Tony Rydings (our Hon. Librarian), Rev. Carl Smith, Dr. Solomon Bard, and Ian completed a photographic survey of fast disappearing parts of the old urban area. Ian did the researching, surveying, and note-taking, and Tony was the main photographer, with timely help from the Photographic Group of the South China Athletic Association.

The recorded areas included the historic Western District of Hong Kong Island and (later) Yaumatei in Kowloon. Out of the over 2,000
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