Martin Hampton, member of the Friends of the National Archives of Malta

Can you introduce your organization ?
The Friends of the National Archives of Malta is a voluntary, non-governmental organization, created in 2000. Our aim is to support the National Archives and to raise public awareness of the importance of preserving documents.

What does your organization do?
The support we can give to the National Archives falls into two categories

• We organize events and use our contacts with private companies to raise funds.  This helps to fund preservation, digitization, and so on.
• We also give a very practical help by contributing to cataloging projects, proof reading, or this year, by helping in the CITRA organization.

It’s a really original way of interacting with the Archives
Yes, we weren’t fully aware of how original we are until now. I’ve gone and seen the web site of the friends of the UK National Archives and it’s difficult to see precisely what the practical interaction is. Here in Malta, the National Archives staff is small and there’s so much to do! Charles Farrugia can rely on us for some actions. For CITRA for example, there’s a need for staff, but at the same time, the Archives must stay open, so the volunteers are here to help. I’ve taken a week leave from my job – not in the archives field – to be here.

Who are the members ?
There are 8 members in the committee, the president being Max Farrugia, who is also a member of the National Council of Archives and has played a role in the new archives legislation. We’re a group of people from related fields, who studied archives or librarianship or History. Apart from the committee, the members are few, but we all are here to get the work done and preserve the documents and memory of Malta.

How is CITRA going for you? 
Well, it’s the first one I have attended, so I can make no comparisons, but I think it’s a great opportunity for archivists to meet and exchange ideas. For us in Malta, it’s interesting to see that the problems we thought were specific to us are in fact shared by all countries.