National Archives goes online

You can now access our National Archives of Fiji records online. The website was launched during the National Archives Open Day in Suva yesterday. The launch coincides with the celebration of the International Archives Day which was celebrated on June 9.

National Archives of Fiji director Opeta Alefaio said the idea of establishing a new website was because of the need to have a greater presence in terms of digital accessibility.

“Fiji’s history has a lot to teach. It’s a big source of information, it’s powerful. So we’re trying to help people realise and make use of that,” Mr Alefaio said.

“The job of the archives is to collect, preserve and make records accessible,” he said. “We worked with the great team at Greenhouse Studios to develop what we hope is an inviting website that can inspire Fijians to explore their archives.” The newly-launched website can be accessed on www. archivesfiji.org

It has research guidelines key word search engines for accessing records and a guide to conduct genealogical and biographical research.

“It’s still just a baby website at this point, but it gives us a great framework, a logical template to help us generate content for users,” he said. Members of the public were also toured around the various sections of the archives during the open day witnessing some of Fiji’s historical documents dating back to the pre-colonial days. Mr Alefaio said they had surpassed 500 per cent of their outreach and exhibition programmes in rural and isolated areas in line with Government’s policy of taking services out to the community. The national archives holds documents equivalent to 6km of shelving along with 2000 hours of audio-visual footage and over 100,000 photos of the country’s history and heritage.

Edited by Ranoba Baoa