Due to the planned
construction of a new wing at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, the
museum management announced in October 2008 that the Caird
Library would be shut for about the first half of 2009, with very limited
opening for the subsequent three years. This brought a great many protests from
readers of all varieties and in early December the museum’s management
announced opening for two days per week, but without any access to manuscripts.
That did not satisfy some individuals
and we carried on with our various projects. Personally, among things I
continued with my appeals to the civil servant at The National Archives charged
with enforcing public access to publically deposited official documents (as per
the Freedom of Information Act). Not being privy to the exchanges between the
officials in Kew and Greenwich I do not know the precise details, but the
museum’s management crumbled further just before Christmas 2008 and the NMM has
subsequently complied with the law. However, this did not cover privately
deposited collections of records and although there has been some access, no information on these
collections was forthcoming from the NMM.
A Cabinet Office online
petition was set up by a group that I became aware of through a contact, just
before the museum’s second climb-down last December. While there were over 250
names by the time of its closure in March 2009, it would appear that little was
attained by this. Perhaps real pressure could
have been put on the museum’s management if the maritime academic fraternity
had backed this. With a miniscule number of honourable exceptions, this crowd
failed miserably though: utterly unresponsive to the numerous appeals made to
them. As could be expected, HMG’s response
to the online petition was patronising and insulting.
Similarly, I spent over
six months trying to form a ‘representative committee’ of the august maritime
societies and other groups, such as freelance researchers and writers. My aim
was to have a balanced group that might have negotiated with the NMM’s senior
management in getting improvements to museum services for readers of all
varieties. While I had support from fellow researchers and writers, virtually
none was received from the academics. Taking months to cover aspects that
should have taken days (last November when I first floated this idea), I finally gave up through the lack of competence (or
apparent interest) by senior officials in the Society of Maritime Research. The
extreme reticence to become involved
shown by these academics I judge to be a mix of selfishness, laziness and sheer
cowardice.
Anyway, with all the
museum’s manuscripts off site, all manuscripts ordered are now subject to
something not dissimilar to their past normal offsite ‘service’. For details on
the current situation please go to the museum’s website at http://www.nmm.ac.uk/researchers/library/visiting/.
If in the meantime the museum is not bankrupted (or fall into the pit to be dug
for the new wing), this regime will remain in place until the opening of the
Sammy Offer Wing. This is planned to be opened for the Olympics of 2012 - as
those that follow sports are well known to be greatly interested in maritime
matters!
Also, it may be that
the size of the new onsite library and archive originally promised will be
significantly reduced. Seemingly this is due to a new ‘interactive’ gallery to
be built in space allocated to library and archive space.