History
The initial initiatives to set up a National Archives
for Malta were taken in 1971 with the setting up of a Committee
on the Preservation of Public Records. One year later
a section housed at Casa Leone was opened up and started
providing research facilities
for the reading public. Initially the National Archives
of Malta formed part of the Ministry for Justice and Parliamentary
Affairs.
In January 1986, a Committee was set up by the Administrative
Secretary to study practices of preservation and disposal
of public records. A decision was taken to set up a National
Archives with its main office at Rabat, in a historical
building which was once the Santo Spirito Hospital. Extensive
structural repairs and restoration works went into the
project. The Banca Giuratale, in Mdina, was also identified
as a second repository to house the records of the various
Courts and Tribunals of the period of the Order of St.
John, the French Occupation and the Early British Period.
Late in September 1987 work commenced on the transfer
of records of the Courts of Justice from the Palace in
Valletta to the Banca Giuratale in Mdina. The repository
was inaugurated on 28 October 1988, and opened its doors
for research soon after.
The transfer of the Palace Archives
to Rabat was concluded on 28 July 1989. In 1990 the legal
structure was put
into place through the enactment of the National Archives
Act. Dr Ugo Mifsud Bonnici, then President of Malta held
the official opening of the National Archives on 28 May
1994.
Several projects such as the publishing
of the first catalogue on CD-ROM, the inauguration of an
exhibition centre, the initiation of the annual public lecture
and the annual newsletter, the setting up of a new cataloguing
unit using ISAD (G) standards, and a new computer network
were undertaken. The first-ever international conference
on archives in Malta was organised by the National Archives
in October. Following that conference, a reprographics unit
was set up and is operating at the National Archives in Rabat.
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