Basseterre, St. Kitts, January 31, 2018 (SKNIS): The Department of Culture is growing its digital archive of materials related to the literary, performing, culinary and visual arts, so as to preserve the unique works and make them readily accessible to present and future generations.
Marlene Phillips, Research and Documentation Specialist at the Department of Culture, indicated that staff has been busy reviewing video and audio files, publications, acts and conventions, and other memorabilia. They are being catalogued and posted on the department’s website www.culture.gov.kn.
“If you look at the research tab (on the website) and you go into that tab, you’ll see an area for policy, publications, Under Banyan Tree audio, and documents,” Ms. Phillips said on Wednesday’s (January 31) edition of the radio and television programme Working for You. “I don’t think that people realize that these different documents and policies and things like that are online.”
Information is also available at the St. Kitts Department of Culture’s Facebook Page @stkittsculturebeat.
Jacquan Harvey works alongside Ms. Phillips in the Research and Documentation Unit. As a recent graduate of the C. F. Bryant College, Ms. Harvey bemoaned the fact that much of the material on culture that is taught in local schools is from other countries and not much is featured on St. Kitts and Nevis.
This makes the work of the unit stand out as the information is now preserved and is available for research, consultation, and public record keeping.
“We are trying to make it easy for people in a digital age to access this information,” Ms. Phillips stated, adding that smartphones and tablets are a popular way for persons to surf the web to retrieve information. “We are trying to keep up with the times. We are always going to have people who like to touch the paper, so come into the office and talk to someone, but for the young generation, they are into digital information so we have scanned a lot of our documents and we make them accessible online.”
