by Bailey White
Staff Writer
The City has hired a consultant to take the first steps toward establishing a municipal archive.
Claire Cardina, a records and information management consultant from Tampa, will spend the next few months sorting through City records to decide the best way to archive important pieces of the city’s history.
“The first step is to identify and get a hold on the volume of these records,” said Cardina. “I’m trying to get a sense of what we’re dealing with.”
Cardina finished a preliminary study for the City about a year ago and now the mayor’s office is sponsoring her further work.
“The report confirmed that preserving the history of the city is significant and important,” said Cardina.
“With a city like Jacksonville that has such a rich history, we came to the conclusion that this needed to be a priority,” said Audrey Moran, Mayor John Delaney’s chief of staff. She said Joel McEachin, the senior historic preservation planner for the City’s Planning and Development Department, originally approached the mayor’s office with the idea.
“He gave an example of a budget from the 1920s being kept in a closet,” said Moran. “We want to make sure the legacy of the wonderful projects happening in Jacksonville is preserved. Mayor Delaney is a devoted historian and we’re very excited about the prospect of setting this up.”
The state has requirements for records management, but “the state retention requirements are not particularly interested in local history,” said Cardina.
“A mayor’s correspondence, for example, may not seem important to the state, but with a strong leader like Mayor Delaney, it could be valuable,” said Cardina. “Other types of records that don’t have long term retention requirements could be just as important to the city’s history.”
Currently, each City department is responsible for the maintenance of its own records, so Cardina will be visiting each one within the next few months to sort through their archives.
“Tracking the history of the departments is one way to see how the government has changed over time,” she said, “from the beginning of consolidation to the present.”
Cardina will also establish an electronic database to keep track of the records.
“The City needs to know where what is kept,” she said. “The database will have a search capability so locating the records will be easy.”
“We want to have a way for historians, teachers, students and the like can come to a central location and research our government’s history,” said Moran. “We need a city archive to do that.”
Cardina, who lives in Tampa, worked to establish a municipal archive system in that city and worked as Tampa’s record manager. In Tampa, the records were kept together in a centralized location and it is currently unclear whether Jacksonville will need such a facility.
“Searching for a site is not part of my responsibility,” said Cardina. “Right now we’re just taking the first steps.”