Another year’s work on historical documents

TRANG: More than two years after they were discovered by workers fixing the roof at the Phuket Provincial Hall, four stacks of documents dating back as far as 80 years ago are now being classified in an ongoing project by the National Archives Office in Trang. The documents have been grouped into 300 different categories and thousands of sub-headings. All of the papers have been classified by category, but so far only about 30% have been classified at the sub-heading level. Suntree Sungayuth, Chief Archivist at the National Archives in Trang, told the Gazette, “There’s only one officer to analyze the documents. We hope to hire one more specialist soon, and complete the work within a year.” When the project is complete, the titles will be listed on the website of the Fine Arts Department and on Rajabhat Phuket’s Anurak Thai webpages, making them more readily accessible to researchers. The originals will be kept in the National Archives in Trang. Once all the papers have been treated to preserve them, and classified, they will probably also be recorded on microfilm by the National Library, K. Suntree added.