Shivana Sawh preserves history

Library assistant Shivana Sawh recognised there was a need to preserve the identity of Trinidad and Tobago through preserving its documents, historical buildings, and culture.

That was why she did a master’s degree in archives and records management at the UWI Mona Campus, Jamaica. She is one of two people in the Caribbean who graduated with this degree in 2023.

Sawh, from San Juan, said she always had a love of working with paper, and is a bookbinder by trade. She said preserving records is important for people to be able to access the history of their country.

“Archival and historical work creates an identity. Our first record of ourselves that identifies who we are is our birth certificate, when we are born. If you do not have our birth certificate, it means you can’t say what is your identity, where are you from, which country.

"From a national perspective, our arts, our culture, our historical documents, our literature, our performances, our food, our languages, our religion, our interaction, is what forms our identity, not only as a Trinidadian but as a Caribbean person. "And that is where records are important, that is where preserving information is important, that is where capturing information is important – I cannot stress it enough.”

After leaving secondary school, Sawh went to what was then the John Donaldson Institute to study bookbinding.

“I had done business in high school, but I couldn’t see myself going into business. My mother knew I was artistic and creative, and showed me an ad for a course in bookbinding at John D in 2004.

"I spent two years learning the art of bookbinding, the components of paper, different styles of sewing, different styles of binding, some print finishing, so I know how to make a book from scratch. I learned how to make handmade paper at Studio 66.”

She said she realised she could marry her love of books, bookbinding, preservation and conservation to libraries, leading to an associate and then bachelor’s degree in library studies at Costaatt. She also began and continues to work at the Alma Jordan Library at UWI St Augustine, first as a bindery assistant, for five years, and then as a library assistant for the last eight years.

“From there, I saw UWI Mona was offering a programme under their Department of Library and Information Science, in archives and records management, so I jumped at that opportunity. I did it online, and I was able to do the hands-on aspects during my internship at the Records Centre at the UWI St Augustine Campus.

“My love for paper, my appreciation for conservation, and the need for conservation and preservation of paper-based materials have led me to that direction of archival work and records management.”

Sawh said several factors affect the preservation of archival materials, which can take different formats.

“Say you have a room of important documents, but it’s not well ventilated. We live in a climate where one day it rains and the next day it’s hot, and that can cause paper-based materials to deteriorate and disintegrate even more.

"It’s not only paper-based materials, you have formats like DVDs, CDs, VHS, BetaMax. You have to think about how to store or preserve them so they remain accessible.

“We have to move with the times and accept that digitisation, cloud-based storage, born digital records and information are being created now. So maybe we can look to creating surrogate copies and having that stored on an archival system for accessibility. That way people don’t necessarily have to come in person to an archive or a library, but you can visit their website, digital library, or digital archive to reference or research and to access information that’s there.”

She said through the institutional repository (UWIspace), paper-based records such as theses, articles, photographs, oral recordings, BBC archives, and special collections are digitised for access. Electronic publications and born digital content are uploaded unto the UWIspace platform.

"UWI and Nalis have been actively preserving and digitisating records, for example the Nalis libraries have digital online collection such as the Wayne Berkeley collection that persons can access online. The UWI, Nalis, the National Archives have been preserving records. There are video and DVD collections and preservation and conservation measures are done by staff to ensure the best practices within the international standards are applied for proper maintenance, preservation and conversation all for the users of libraries and archives in mind. Some social media pages such as the Angelo Bissessarsingh Virtual Museum are also preserving and providing access to material."

She said it was essential for present and future generations to be able to access, reference and research the things that made up the Caribbean, in order to have a sense of self.

“We are so vibrant in the Caribbean region, we have so much of our culture, so much we produce intellectually, through our literature, our movement, our celebrations, our religions, our people. How we interact with each other, how we talk, how we greet each other – all of these need to be captured in some format and stored and preserved and organised in such a way to make it accessible to us first and foremost, the Caribbean people, and then to whoever wants to explore the Caribbean.

“Maybe a historian may be looking for an article, or a map or a cadastral of how a particular area in the Caribbean or in Trinidad looked back in the 1800s – it’s important to preserve that actual cadastral. A cadastral is a document that shows or records property boundaries, subdivision lines, buildings, and related details.

"It may be a PhD student, undergraduate or postgraduate student doing research to supplement their research paper and their thesis. It may be a primary school child who wants to know how the coat of arms came to be, how the flag came to be, what the flag looked like before we were an independent nation.”

Sawh said being involved in the arts showed her the need to capture and preserve TT’s art forms in such a way that they could be made accessible to others.

“For example, Errol John’s Moon on a Rainbow Shawl has been staged several times, but there’s no reference to it, no way that one can access this theatre production that was done however many times, no video recording, nothing except what is there on the script; and then it is left it up to our imaginations to recreate something like such a profound play.”

She said there was a role for the public in documenting the history that was currently taking place, and it was up to libraries and cultural institutions to facilitate this through education and outreach.

“There is a dire need for capturing this information, capturing the culture as it is happening now.

"Some solutions could be allowing people to use their phones. We are all our self-biographers, we are our self-videographers and photographers – anything bacchanal you see happen, you pull out your phone.

"Why can’t it be that we have permission to record this for preservation purposes, for posterity, for reference? We can use social media to reach out to people to share their videos, share their content, share their experiences about something like a play or a cultural happening.

"For my research paper, Documenting and Remembering the Barahee in Trinidad: One Practice, Many Records, I wrote about a post-natal birth ritual in the Hindu community. In doing my research, I found things on YouTube, I found published work where some people mentioned
barahee, I listened to music, the genres that came out of that, and how it transitioned. The genre of
sohar music (childbirth songs) has transitioned to chutney music of this Hindu community.

"So within a community we can capture information and preserve it, capture it by videography, by writing about it, or by taking photographs.”

Sawh said almost anything could be a record, from a tree planted to mark someone’s birth to a bench erected as a memorial.

“Records are everywhere: it’s not only the paper-based or the tangible, it can be a performance. It can be a Carnival performance, it could be someone dancing a costume – that is a record of the moment of significance of a costume, what it entails, the movement, the speech, all of these things are records.

"An e-mail can be a record, a photograph can be a record. It’s so fluid – and that is why my passion for archives and records management propelled me to do this master's degree programme.”