17 Apr 99
4th SEAPAVAA CONFERENCE &
GENERAL ASSEMBLY,
19 TO 24 APRIL 1999, KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA
Symposium on "Working Together" : Session 1
– Case Studies In Cooperation
Presentation by Irene Lim Lei Lian, Assistant Director, National
Archives of Singapore on :
ASEAN-Committee on Culture & Information (COCI) Project on:
- Senior ASEAN Statesmen
- Searching History
ASEAN – COCI PROJECT ON SENIOR ASEAN STATESMEN
A. Background
ASEAN celebrated its 25th anniversary in 1992. To commemorate this occasion, the first joint ASEAN oral history project was proposed to collect & preserve for posterity, information on the first 25 years of ASEAN’s development through oral history interviews with the organisation’s government leaders & administrators.
The participating countries in this project were Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia, Malaysia, The Philippines, Singapore & Thailand. Singapore was the coordinating country.
The project took on two phases: Phase 1 involved the recording of the oral history interviews & the dispatch of the cassette tapes from Singapore to all the participating countries. Phase 2 involved the publication of a catalogue of interview synopses. The project started in 1993 & was completed in 1998.
B. Approach
The approach of the project was in-depth oral history interviews structured on a thematic basis which included a list of ASEAN issues/areas which had common significance for all the member nations. The list formed the backbone of the oral history interview questions & they were meant to guide the interviewers who could customise them to suit the experiences of each Interviewee. The oral history interview structure provided a basis for standardisation of the interviews.
The language of ASEAN, English, was used as far as possible in the project.
The subsequent tasks were for the participating countries to recruit their respective teams of specialist interviewers & to compile lists of potential interviewees from the areas of Foreign Affairs, Trade & Culture, & long-standing officials from various ASEAN committees.
C. Results
The project yielded 92 hours of recordings by 46 interviewees. Synopses of the interviews were done in English. On this aspect, some of the participating countries made special efforts to write their synopses in English, although the language was not the lingua franca in many ASEAN countries. As a result, the published catalogue is accessible to a wider international audience.
Singapore coordinated the publication of the catalogue which contains the synopses, together with relevant details about the interviews & an introduction on the history of ASEAN. Under the classification system of the Oral History Centre at the National Archives of Singapore, the coordinating agency on the Singapore side, all the interviews have been assigned a "B" classification. Thus while researchers can listen to these interviews, no quotation is allowed without the written permission of the interviewees themselves.
With the completion of this project, we have not only preserved for posterity the memories of long-standing ASEAN figures but have also in the process created a valuable historical record of significant developments & milestone events in the history of ASEAN, the Southeast Asian region & ASEAN in the context of international relations.
A. Background
To fill the gaps in the holdings of the National Archives of Singapore, we have an active overseas acquisition programme to acquire materials, usually by purchase, in all categories – documents, photographs, maps, moving images, sound recordings, oral history interviews etc – from sources outside Singapore.
Some of the major institutions we have approached include the Public Records Office/Imperial War Museum/Reuters Television/British Pathe, British Movietone/National Film & Television Archive of the United Kingdom, Australia’s National Film & Sound Archive/Australian Broadcasting Corporation/National Archives of Australia/National Library of Australia/Australia War Memorial, National Archives of Canada, National Archives & Records Administration of the United States, First Historical Archives of China, National Defence Institute of Japan etc.
Besides organisations, we have also approached private individuals who used to reside in Singapore & who have materials we are looking for.
B. Approach
NAS employs various strategies when sourcing for Singapore materials overseas. One method is to engage the local researchers there to identify & list relevant materials without the need for us to send our own staff there which can be comparatively more costly.
On our own, we consult membership directories of international/regional organisations & correspond directly with them if they are deemed to have materials relating to Singapore. As an example, the "Guide To AudioVisual Archives" published yearly by the International Federation of Television Archives (FIAT/IFTA) gives useful information on how to contact an archive & under what conditions, who is in charge of an archive, a summary of the holdings, including even information on hardware & software. Sometimes by approaching one organisation, we are led to others with materials we are looking for. For example, in 1998, we approached the National Film & Television Archive (NFTVA) for materials produced by the Colonial Film Unit which was set up in 1939 by the Ministry of Information to make films for audiences in the British colonies then. NFTVA was able to advise us that the materials of the Colonial Film Unit are now held by Overseas Film & Television & provided the contact details. We eventually acquired several Singapore titles from them.
Journals, publications, newsletters, on-line catalogues on the internet of international/regional associations sometimes highlight interesting holdings which may contain materials we are looking for. For example, an issue of the National Film & Sound Archive’s (NFSA) newsletters mentioned a collection of generic World War 2 footage which may contain materials on Singapore.
Projects such as NFSA’s "The Last Film Search", a concerted effort to discover & preserve what remains of Australia’s early film history, inspire us to be creative when sourcing for materials.
Last but not least, professional contacts whom we establish in the course of our work or when we attend international/regional meetings also help to facilitate our acquisition work.
C. Materials Acquired
The materials we have found under our overseas acquisition programme cover a range of subjects. Some examples are transcripts of diaries kept by Australian soldiers (Australian War Memorial), maps of Singapore/oral history interviews on the Christmas Island Project, photographs of Singapore dockyards/documents on the Royal Navy & the planning & execution of naval operations in the Far East during World War 2 (Public Records Office/UK), footage of places in Singapore like Raffles Place/Singapore Harbour/Kallang Airport/Changi (British Airways Film & Video Archives), footage of Singapore in the aftermath of World War 2/political events in Singapore in the 1950s (British Pathe News), footage of social & cultural happenings & industrialisation efforts in Singapore in the 1950s & 1960s (UCLA Film & Television Archive), water colour sketches of POWs interned in Changi during the Japanese Occupation of Singapore (from the widow of an ex-POW, Mr. W R M Haxworth), photographs/pamphlets/tickets etc on Singapore’s buses & railway (from a private individual Mr. F W York).
These materials shed light on many aspects of our history, enrich our holdings considerably & provide a rich reference source for our researchers.
D. Working With SEAPAVAA
As the umbrella organisation for audio visual archives in this region, SEAPAVAA could look into assisting its member countries in their efforts to search for materials held in other countries in several ways:
These are just some suggestions from Singapore. The SEAPAVAA membership would no doubt have many more interesting ideas on how we may cooperate to acquire materials relevant to our respective countries but held elsewhere.
Thank you.