Office of Library and Archives to formulate plan

Caption Pic:  Acting Director-General Office of Library and Archives, Kakaito Kasi.

 

By MATTHEW VARI

Sunday, August 23, 2015 (Sunday Chronicle, PNG)

THE Office of Library and Archives (OLA) new Acting Director-General Mr Kakaito Kasi has revealed that the OLA will now embark on formulating a plan to steer it direction in providing effective services to the populous under its mandate.

Mr Kasi revealed that since instructions are made from government for all government institutions to make plans for their direction under Medium Term Strategy Plans- the two organisations of the National Libraries and National Archives do not have existing plans of their own.

“The library and Archive services were not being run and implemented well because we lack capacity,” Kasi said.

“Capacity in terms of resources, in terms of staffing, infrastructure. So over the years there was no plan to guide us to implement these services.”

“So since coming in I am now telling my staff that before we do anything we must have a plan, have policies that must guide us, have regulations to guide our activities.”

Kasi said that the first step forward to achieve the goal was to get a board in place.

“Every organisation has a board but the library and archives does not and I am trying to get that started so by September we should have the first meeting.”

“Hopefully the board should guide us and give us directions on how to deliver these services. With the help of the board we will be able to deliver.”

He added that one of the biggest problems had was lack of prominence over the years, which every government every department should now take ownership to support the work we are doing especially in our archives.

“We cut across many sectors, many government departments, and the library as well. It is not only school libraries but we are also in charge of university libraries, public libraries.”

“My staff (48 members) we are committed- right now we are working very hard to ensure that we get these plans in place by 2017 we should be rolling out a lot of activities.”

“What I am trying to do is to increase it to 100 or 150 so that we can reach out to all the provinces.”

“DPM (Department of Personnel Management) has already given us the pathway to come up with our own plans assisting us to restructure the office of libraries and archives and hopefully by March of next year we will be considered.”