The role of outreach services in enhancing the use of archival materials at the national archives of Namibia

Abstract

Various scholars have stated that archives remain an asset that is underutilised and misunderstood. The general public is unaware of the importance of archives and the information they can get from it. It is against this background that archivists are encouraged to develop outreach programmes because without outreach, their publics will not know what the archival institution does and offers. The study used the theory of soft power to in order to illustrate the role of outreach services for the enhancement of the National Archives of Namibia. A qualitative study informed by an interpretivist paradigm was adopted using semi-structured interviews to collect data. The population of this study were staff members of the National Archives of Namibia as well as any relevant documents. From the findings it is clear that the NAN did not have a planned outreach programme but would conduct outreach activities based on yearly commemorated dates. The study revealed that the NAN used a passively solicited customer feedback mechanism through emails, Facebook and the website and there was a lack of active effort from the NAN staff to obtain feedback from users on a regular basis. Research findings also indicate that the occasional outreach activities carried out by the NAN had increased the number of users that would visit the Archive as well as provided opportunities to collaborate with other partners. The benefits to the users were that it made them more aware of certain issues or topics that they did not have full information on before. The results show that lack of sufficient staff and lack of funding made it difficult to implement an outreach programme. One of the recommendations from the study is that the NAN staff should develop an outreach programme with objectives that are specific, measurable, and contain activities that are designed to achieve them.