Archives asks again for a building

As Times of Malta reported, the strategy describes a problem that is plain enough without embellishment: “unsuitable buildings, limited storage capacity, environmental risks, and the increasing volume of public records remained persistent challenges.” The document adds that these shortcomings affect access, arrangement, conservation and disaster preparedness. That is the language of administration, but it points to something stubbornly physical. Records need premises that preserve them and allow them to be used.

The Archives is mainly housed at Santu Spiritu in Rabat, with collections also stored at other locations. The institution’s new strategy was unveiled alongside a new identity, The Woven Tapestry, a fitting enough name for an organisation charged with keeping the country’s documentary memory intact. Still, institutions in Malta often receive their poetry before they receive their square metres.

The most revealing detail here is not in the branding but in the land register. In 2019, the Archives was allocated a site at Ta’ Qali for a centralised facility. That plan was later abandoned, and the site was used for the concert venue instead. Times of Malta notes that MaltaToday had previously reported the proposed complex would have brought archival services together in a purpose-built repository and was also intended to house the National Audio-Visual Institute, with its design developed in collaboration with the French National Archives.

That is a public choice, not an accident of weather. Space was found. It was simply found for something else.

In August, Doris Zammit, a spokesperson for the Friends of the National Archives of Malta, said successive governments had raised expectations about a modern archives building without delivering one. Her complaint was not especially theatrical. That may be why it rings true. Archives rarely compete well in a political culture that prefers projects which can be opened loudly.

In 2024, then culture minister Owen Bonnici said in reply to a parliamentary question that the Ta’ Qali site had been withdrawn in 2021 because of environmental and operational considerations linked to Ta’ Qali National Park. He said the decision did not diminish the need for a new National Archives building and that alternative locations were being evaluated. More than two years later, Times of Malta reports, no alternative site has been publicly identified.

The strategy also lists digitisation, digital preservation, new technologies and improved access to research and educational resources among its priorities. Fair enough. But even in the digital age, an archive is not an abstraction. It still depends on rooms, conditions, shelving, planning and the unglamorous foresight to protect records before their loss becomes noticeable. Malta has managed the language of preservation for years. The harder part appears to be giving it an address.