HKU Bulletin November 2006 (Vol. 8 No. 1)

12 13 PEOPLE Keeping the Records Straight Archivist appointed to preserve and document the University’s history. T he University’s first archivist, Stacy Gould, has travelled from the quiet rural charms of Virginia to the cramped urban bustle of Hong Kong. Yet her first impressions are of the sometimes disturbing similarities between the two places. Virginia, like Hong Kong, experiences wide fluctuations in temperature and humidity, a nightmare for preserving documents. There are also plenty of bugs in both places that like to nibble away at paper and binding. More pleasing, though, is the similarity of her mission here at the University and at her previous employer, the College of William and Mary. Ms Gould is starting from scratch as the first archivist since the University was founded in 1911. At William and Mary she was only the second archivist in the College’s history, which dates back to 1693. “When I decided to take this job, I thought what a wonderful opportunity this is going to be because I could draw on all the things I’d learned over the past 15 years about how to and how not to do things. We all tend to learn more from our mistakes than our successes,” she said. The most important thing she has learned is to discern what is worth keeping. Ms Gould will save only about four per cent of the records that the University produces and she will be developing guidelines so each department knows what to send to the Archives. “One of the most important parts of my job is appraisal. This isn’t the process of saving things up, like a storage service. It’s preserving and protecting the documentation of the past and the present, and making it accessible for the future,” she said. She intends to make the archives available to all members of the University and, eventually, the general public. Along the way, a purpose-built structure will be needed to hold all the material collected and keep the temperature and humidity under control as well as providing security. “This is a huge job but you have got to start somewhere. It is really heartening that many people at the University have helped to make this happen,” she said. Records from our early history have already been collected by the University Libraries, the Registry and Dr Peter Cunich, a historian in the School of Humanities. There are also a lot of modern-day documents that could give future researchers insight into the University and Hong Kong. Some issues that have caught Ms Gould’s eye include greater Americanisation with the change to a four-year undergraduate curriculum and five-day week, and the importance of public health in the wake of bird flu and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). Yet many papers have also been lost. She would dearly love for the University to have Sun Yat Sen’s papers. At William and Mary College, many documents vanished over the centuries due to wars and other calamities, a situation she sees being repeated in places like Kosovo where the archives were burned. Matching Ms Gould’s passion for archives is her anguish when she sees them destroyed. “It’s deliberately destroying the culture of others, the intellectual and emotional equivalent of genocide,” she said. Passion for Global Citizenship A new Dean unveils his plans. T he first executive Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences hopes to instill a passion for social innovation and global citizenship in his students. Professor Ian Holliday, formerly chair professor of Policy Studies and Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences at City University of Hong Kong, acknowledges that the Faculty is facing many challenges with the proposed four-year curriculum and the policy to attract more local and regional fee-paying students. But he said, “HKU is in a great position for that because it has a strong international profile. So the opportunities are enormous for bringing in undergraduate, postgraduate and research postgraduate students.” Many of these students will be expected to acquire a global perspective and a clear social awareness during their studies. “Social innovat ion is not an unusual not ion,” said Hol l iday. “Many corporat ions now talk about corporate social responsibility, and I feel that it is essential for all our undergraduate students to do something innovative for their society in the course of their three-year programme or, after 2012, their four-year programme. “I would like to see all our students doing something that gives something back to the society that funds us, like a compulsory internship or community-based programme.” Although the plan is still up for discussion Holliday feels it would be enormously beneficial for students. “There are going to be many graduates with very good degrees, and I think increasingly employers are going to be looking at what our students have done beyond a decent performance in class, which is taken for granted,” he said. “Over time I would like this Faculty’s brand, at HKU, to be identified with these things so that students coming out of here are known to be globally aware and socially responsible. “We must be increasingly outward-looking and that’s the same for all sorts of institutions around the world. More and more businesses are building relationships with the communities in which they are imbedded. So we will be following the initiatives that have been taken by all sorts of organizations in all walks of life. I think it would be remiss if we didn’t do it.” The Faculty has, for many years, enjoyed exchange relationships with other campuses, ensuring that students enjoy a degree of social exposure. Over the summer one group of students worked on ethnic minority issues in Belfast, Northern Ireland. “We are lucky to have donors who believe in this, and who have created scholarships for our students. We will be seeking more of that because we think it’s a good investment for our students, and it will therefore benefit Hong Kong in the longer term.” Holliday’s own research has concentrated on public policy, public management and comparative healthcare systems in the region. But his recent interest has focused more on Myanmar. “A lot of my research focuses on problems of transition in that country, but in my fieldwork research I’m moving into human security. There are two million Burmese living in Thailand, some of them legal some of them illegal, many of them working in garment factories or even the sex industry. “There’s increasing interest at the UN and among key global players in human security, and in ensuring freedom from want and freedom from fear,” he said.