Archives crisis curbs research, says historian

Archives New Zealand is in crisis, a historian says, after the national archive’s multimilliondollar online search tool was taken offline indefinitely because of consistent system failures.

The Government’s recordkeeping authority has not set a date for when the tool will return.

Last week Archives NZ removed public access to the tool because of a potential security breach. That means people cannot search for records online and must visit an Archives NZ office to view files in a reading room.

But reading rooms are only open part time in the four main centres.

The search tool being offline would ‘‘severely impede’’ progress on Treaty of Waitangi claims and work concerning the judicial system, ministries and government departments, researchers, historians, genealogists, academics, students and authors, said Vincent O’Malley, a historian specialising in Treaty research.

‘‘This is a major problem ... [It’s] a crisis,’’ he said.

O’Malley complained about ‘‘issues’’ with the new system within one week of it going live in February. The issues had only become worse with time, he said.

In June, users of the system did a workshop in which nearly half gave it the lowest score possible, O’Malley said.

Dealings with Archives NZ had become ‘‘incredibly slow and tedious’’ with the new tool. ‘‘It’s a source of huge frustration.’’

In its 2017 election manifesto, Labour promised that Archives NZ – which is under the authority of the Department of Internal Affairs – would be re-established as a standalone agency, and that the chief archivist would become an officer of Parliament, O’Malley said. But that never happened.

Archives NZ selected Axiell, an international ‘‘leader’’ in archives collections management software, as the search tool provider out of four proposals, chief archivist Anahera Morehu said.

The department undertook reference checks with two international archive institutions that used Axiell products. The agreement signed with Axiell was for five years, to October 2024.

As at mid-2020, the department projected it would pay Axiell $4.6 million for hosting, development, implementation and maintenance of the search tool. More than $2m has been paid to date.

‘‘It remains our priority to enhance the collections search functionality . . . and we are currently working with Axiell to achieve this,’’ Morehu said.