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SCMP Reporter

KEEN students of Hong Kong's heritage have long opposed the location of the territory's archive, the Public Records Office, in a car park building in Central. Now that it is being moved to an industrial building in the New Territories they are more frustrated than ever.

   Critics of the relocation to Tuen Mun agree historical records should be better housed and more accessible to the public, including the numerous overseas visitors who make use of them - some coming here solely for that purpose.

   An overwhelming vote last summer by the Legislative Councils' information policy panel against the move came to no avail. It is to take place in June, to make way for the Independent Commission Against Corruption's expansion.

   One of the main concerns expressed by people opposed to the move is the lack of public access.

   ''The removal of the PRO to a location of such difficult access . . . would be most detrimental to the principle of Hong Kong's records being open to the general public,'' wrote Dr Solomon Bard in the South China Morning Post's letters column.

    As a result of the adverse public response the Government has decided that a reading centre will be sited in Central - in a 190-square-metre room in the West Wing of the Central Government Offices on Lower Albert Road.

    According to Joseph Lee Chiu-ming, the Government Records Service Director, the centre will open in June and will contain historic records with a high recall rate.

   The records available will include those retrieved at least once a week; newspaper reports; information on companies; government releases; registers of baptism, marriage and burial; and wills registered with the judiciary. Other material from Tuen Mun will be available on request.

  ''It may take a day; we've got two vans,'' Mr Lee said. ''It all depends on the volume of requests. I can't give any assurance at this point.''    He says these arrangements are only temporary and a permanent, centralised archive has been planned. ''We're continuing our efforts to look for a permanent site in an accessible location,'' he said.

     But researchers are far from satisfied. ''When researchers work, they often don't start off knowing specifically which documents they want to see, they need to feel their way by scanning through large volumes of materials to start with,'' said Dr Elizabeth Sinn, Resources Officer at Hong Kong University's history department. ''I don't know how this would be managed under the proposed system.''     She is also worried about documents being made available on request, fearing the possibility of the valuable papers being lost or damaged on their way to Central, due to traffic accidents or rapid changes in temperature and humidity.

   Mr Lee dispelled such concerns, saying it was policy that only photocopies of requested archival material would be presented to users. Most archival material is stored on microfilm and can be easily copied. Only bulky material, such as maps, that could neither be stored on microfilm nor photocopied would be transported to Central.

    Dr Sinn belongs to the Royal Asiatic Society, a prestigious academic body and a long-time advocate of a formal archive for Hong Kong. ''It's good that they are looking for a permanent site,'' the society's president David Gilkes said. ''But they'll still have to wait for funding from the Legco Finance Committee. It'll be at least two years before we have a new archive, whether it be a new building or a conversion of an old building.

   ''A Public Records Office should be a place that the community takes a little bit of pride in.''     But Dr Sinn's concerns about the protection of valuable documents were echoed by SCMP readers. ''Industrial areas by their nature are more hazardous than urban locations as witnessed by several explosions,'' one reader wrote.

    Another said: ''Any possible damage would be a disaster and the costs cannot be measured in terms of money.''    The relocation will do nothing to boost the already low-key presence of the PRO, now tucked away on the lower two floors of Central's Murray Road multi-storey car park building, identified only by a sign next to the Transport Licence Office at ground level.

     Mr Lee agrees that more people would have gone to the office had it been better located. ''If it is a purpose-built archive that looks appealing, the community will be more attracted to it,'' he said.

    ''There has been a steady increase in the usage of our service over the years. People come in every day and we get inquiries from overseas as well.''    One example he cited was a British tourist who called to find out whether Paterson Street was named after someone in his family.

     Meanwhile in Tuen Mun, three floors in the Sun Yick Industrial Building are being turned into the main repository of historic documents, including private deposits by such bodies as the Anglican Diocese of Hong Kong and Macau, the Sino-British Club ofHong Kong, the Hong Kong Horticultural Society and the Royal Asiatic Society.

    Another PRO unit in Aberdeen will be combined with the one in Tuen Mun.

  Another eight floors in the Sun Yick building will be used for storing documents and files from other Government departments. With no historic value, 95 per cent of them will eventually be destroyed.

   The existing reference library, where up to 4,100 photographs dating back to the 1860s are kept, will be located in Central.

     There has been no lack of suggestions on an appropriate site for a centralised archive - places such as the former nurses home and mental hospital in Western district, the French Mission and the South Kowloon Magistracy have been mentioned more than once.

    Yet all have been rejected by the Government. ''They were rejected for various reasons, such as their costs, commercial values, structural design or floor loading capacity,'' Mr Lee said.

    His ideal is a building that is classical-looking on the outside but well-equipped and modern inside. ''Everyone's ideal is different,'' he said. ''But bear in mind we are using taxpayers' money. One has a right to demand a beautiful-looking archive, but it may be unfair to those who never use it to build a costly one with their money.''    Frequent users not only want an appropriately-built complex but more staff. ''If the Government is indeed committed to a policy of greater accessibility to records then it would follow that there should be more staff, and more importantly, more professional staff,'' Dr Sinn said.

   ''I don't know if it's a result of staff shortage, there should have been detailed lists of the stored records.''    With relocation, Mr Lee said he will redeploy his staff but not add any. Most of the 48 staff in Central will be transferred to Tuen Mun. Mr Lee will also need to fill a senior post which becomes vacant when Chief Archivist Dr Lau Yun-woo retires in September.

    Whatever its location or staff size, one aspect of the future archive is certain to be limited. ''Most of the pre-war records were destroyed during the Japanese occupation,'' assistant archivist Carmen Tsang Yuen-yan said.



The archive saga that will run and run