On St. Eustatius last week 7 participants received a certificated after completion of the basics course Archive Management and preservation. This course was organized on all three islands of the Caribbean Netherlands and is meant to expand the basic knowledge and skills of the participants in the area of collection management and preservation. The participants from St. Eustatius work at various services and departments of the Public Entity including the museum, Cadaster Office, Department of Physical Planning and Maintenance, the office of the Island Registrar and the Department of Internal Affairs.

On the initiative of the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (OCW) National Archive carried out a fact finding mission on each island in 2016. This was to research what are the needs and wishes in the area of archive management and preservation. That resulted in a training plan for the islands with two courses: training archive preservation and one in archival science. During the first preservation training it regards the basic knowledge that is required for the physical management and preservation of archives. As final assignment participants had to set up a collection plan whereby they made use of methods dealt with during the training.

During the advance training, which follows later in the year, participants will learn archive preservation: ensuring the stabilization of damaged documents. The training archival science will be geared towards learning how to work a full-fledged sustainable archive method based on international standards.

An important spearhead of the five day training was also the development a new cooperation (network) among the Public Entities. This training was conducted by senior preservation advisors Gabrielle Beentjes and Gerrit de Bruin of the National Archive in The Netherlands on assignment of the Ministry of OCW.

Picture with caption:
The participants of the course in St. Eustatius after achieving their certificates