Archives Department to expand its digitisation project

Cover records relating to genealogy

The Archives Department is hoping to expand its digitisation project, this time to allow for genealogical records to be digitised, so both locals and visitors can trace their family history and know more about their heritage.

Ingrid Thompson, Chief Archivist at the Archives Department revealed the above recently, even as the Department celebrated the successful completion of a digitisation project for the Barbados Mercury and Bridgetown Gazette newspapers, covering the period 1783 to 1848.

“What we are looking to do, is to expand in terms of digitising records relating to genealogy, because I am working with the Barbados Tourism Product Authority, in trying to help them promote genealogy tourism in Barbados and we are going to go that way, in terms of prioritising which records that we would need to do first, so as to encourage tourists and persons to come and do research at the Archives,” Thompson pointed out.

In terms of the expansion of the digitisation project, Thompson revealed that the Department has only scratched the surface, in terms of the volume of records presently contained there, that need to be converted to a digital format that can be easily accessed on a computer.

“I would say probably about half of a percent (of the records have been digitised), because we have thousands of records here at the Records Department. Our earliest record is 1637 and this is 2019 and we have these three buildings, two floors each, full of records. We are actually the only Archives in the Caribbean with the largest collection of historical records. So this is just a tiny, tiny bit. Obviously, we have to get funding, because the digitisation equipment is expensive. So we need to get some sort of funding to get this process done and this will help to tie in also with Government’s programme of digitising the public service, in terms of making things easier for persons to do business with agencies and so on,” she further explained.

Thompson meanwhile acknowledged that the interest sparked by via genealogy tourism, which has brought some attention to the island even as some celebrities trace their roots to Barbados, has also generated some interest on the local side, with Barbadians also coming forward to find out about their origins as well.

“It has sparked a lot of interest. We get a lot of queries every week, every month, in terms of Barbadians wanting to trace their family history. Then you have a lot of families starting now to do family reunions and so on. So you are going to hear a lot more about genealogy for our Vision 2020. We have great plans for next year 2020, in terms of encouraging Barbadians to do their family histories and so on,” the Chief archivist commented. (RSM)

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