Country Report - REPORT ON THE PUBLIC REOCRDS OFFICE OF HONG KONG
Simon F K CHU, Archivist, Hong Kong Government Records Service
History and Background
The greater part of the Hong Kong Government's records was lost during the battle for Hong Kong and the Japanese occupation. The event, disastrous in itself, served also to delay the development later on of archival services in Hong Kong. In the absence of the very large masses of records created before 1941, the pressures to acquire archival services here were inevitably felt later in the post-war years than would otherwise have been the case.
Though archival services developed rapidly among colonial and ex-colonial territories in the first two decades after the war, they were not finally established in Hong Kong until 1972.
Organisation and Functions
The Public Records Office of Hong Kong (PRO Hong Kong), headed by an Archivist, is one of the two constituent parts of the Government Records Service (GRS), the other part being the Records Management Office (RMO). The Government Records Service Director is responsible to the Director of Administration of the Chief Secretary's Office.
Like other government archives, PRO Hong Kong is responsible for the appraisal, selection, custody, preservation and specialised reference of the historical records of the Government of Hong Kong.
Accommodation and Removal
Since its establishment in 1972, PRO and its main archives had been accommodated at a multi-storey carpark building in the central district of Hong Kong. The premises, though unsatisfactory as it was, had to be vacated in July this year to make space for the urgent operational requirements of the Independent Commission Against Corruption in the same building. The office of the Hong Kong archives was then reprovisioned to its present address at the notorious Tuen Mun in the New Territories, a new town described by some sociologists as the "dumping ground" of Hong Kong.
The relocation of PRO to Tuen Mun has instantly drawn strong criticism from the public, especially from the local academic circle. As a result, the Panel on Information Policy of the Legislative Council conducted several hearings on the issue, which eventually led to a recommendation by the Inhouse Committee of the Council that Government should find a permanent home for the PRO that would not only honour and preserve the local archival heritage, but would be readily accessible to users.
PRO's New House
The recommendation was accepted by the Administration, and subsequently a site at Kwun Tong (in the Kowloon Peninsula) was identified for the construction of the new hone of the local archives.
The Kwun Tong site is in fact far from satisfactory from the archives preservation point of view, however, it is the best we could get. The site measures some 730 square metres. Situated in a residential neighbourhood, it is within easy reach of the Kwun Tong MTR station (our local underground train system).
A project team comprising staff of the Architectural Services Department and PRO has been set up and tasked with the planning and design of the building. Following a study tour of a series of archival buildings and facilities in the United Kingdom and Sweden, the project team has now finalised the design for Hong Kong's first purpose-built archives.
The building itself will comprise eleven floors, yielding a total net floor area of some 3,200 square metres. The lowest three floors will house PRO's reference library and the public services areas featuring segregated search/reference facilities to cater to different categories of users with different interests, plus a lecture hall and an exhibition gallery.
The latter facilities have been specially added to tie in with PRO's plan to launch a cultural and educational programme to invoke the interest of the public in our local history, and also to promote awareness among those administrators of institutions which help shape the history of Hong Kong, the importance of their institutional archives, their preservation and uses.
The next two floors are to be fitted out as offices, whilst the 5th floor will house our conservation units. The repositories will be located on 6th to 10th floors of the building, with segregated facilities for the storage of different formats of records. Each repository will be compartmentalised to create the most ideal environment appropriate to the type of records it holds, and complete with acclimatisation facilities.
The top floor houses the fumigation chamber. Worth particular mentioning is that, unlike most of the fumigation processes which use toxic gas as the fumigation agent, ours will be non-toxic, nitrogen-based.
The building will be designed to meet the latest known international standards for archival repository. To accord maximum protection to the records, the entire building will be insulated from the external environment by way of a complex air conditioning and filtering system. A modern gas-based fire prevention system will also be installed.
The total project cost is estimated to be in the neighbourhood of 86 million Hong Kong dollars. By current planning, the building will be completed in mid 1997.