Digitizing  A  Survivor’s  Identity  The  Past,  Present,  and  Future  of  the  Kuwait  National  Museum  Archives.    Farah  Al-­‐Sabah    Kuwait  National  Museum,  farahalsabah@gmail.com  

Abstract    Kuwait National Museum was established in 1957. Since then, it has accumulated its massive archives, which have survived a devastating war. The decision in 2009 to digitize the ID cards, photographs, manuscripts, and other collections in the archives has resulted in the implementation of the ADLIB museum database system. This manuscript will recall the history of the archives at the Kuwait National Museum, how they were affected during the 1990 Iraq invasion, and how they were united and digitized. A special concentration will be given to the implementation of the ADLIB software program, explaining our process and challenges. Author  Farah Al-Sabah has been a Kuwait National Museum employee since 2006. Although primarily working as an archaeological conservator, Ms. Al-Sabah was asked in 2009 to join an inventory commission of the Museum. After presenting the findings and offering solutions, Ms. Al-Sabah was asked to head a newly created team that would be digitizing the archives of the Kuwait National Museum. Farah Al-Sabah also participated in the ATHAR and SOIMA programs of ICCROM, as well as participating in other international UNESCO conferences.

1.  Introduction  

Everyone, everywhere, has been asked to identify themselves. ‘What’s your name?’ ‘Where are you from?’ ‘What do you do?’ These are questions we have all been asked, as well as asked other people. It is how we identify how this person fits in our lives. It is how we judge what purpose he/she serves. It is how we decide if he/she is important. The very same questions of identity are used on a country’s cultural heritage. Museums all over the world showcase their importance by displaying their unique contributions to mankind. Destroy these objects of pride and you have a nation robbed of its history. Lose the archives of a museum and you can make it seem like a nation never existed. The archives of the Kuwait National Museum contain identification cards, photographs, audio-visual recordings, and historical documents. The archives are a tangible link to our past, holding detailed information about an otherwise obscure archaeological artefact, or a first-person account of what life was like 100 years ago. The bulk of the archives have survived relocation, war, neglect, and have finally been granted digitalization, the closest thing to immortality.

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This paper will discuss the history of the archives at the Kuwait National Museum, with a special concentration on the identification cards and their digitization. Thematically, the history of the archives will be separated into pre-war, war, and post-war, with a brief explanation of what international laws and conventions Kuwait is obliged by. The focus of the paper will be on the post-war unification of the archives, the eventual digitization process, the use of the ADLIB database program, and the various challenges that were presented.

2.  Kuwait  National  Museum  

The Kuwait National Museum was established in 1957. Kuwait’s Amir, Sheikh Ahmed al Jaber al Sabah, granted his residence to the State, on the enviable shoreline of the city. In 1976, some artefacts were moved to a traditional Kuwaiti house near the Museum, so that the building would be constructed to serve the purpose of what it has become. When the Kuwait National Museum officially opened in 1983, archaeological and traditional artefacts were proudly displayed. It was during this time that the Museum took its responsibilities of cataloguing the archives seriously, creating a responsible department.

The Kuwait National Museum is comprised of several sections, including the Archaeological Museum, the Heritage Museum, the Dar al Athar al Islamiya (House of Islamic Antiquities) Museum, and the Planetarium. Save for the semi-private Islamic Museum and the Planetarium (they are the responsibilities of differing departments), the artefacts in the Archaeological and Heritage museums all have identification cards that are archived.

The Heritage Museum contains a life-sized ‘old town Kuwait’ that visitors can walk around in. In the ‘souk’ part of the ‘old town’, traditional, often authentic, materials are used to convey a sense of what life would have been like. Items including clothing, tools, boxes, woodwork, swords, utensils, and other necessities housed in the Heritage Museum all have identification cards in the archives. Cataloguing these often mundane items has proved rewarding, as the younger employees reading the ID cards now are reminded of the forgotten colloquial Kuwaiti words for items no longer used. The Archaeological Museum, while less crowded with artefacts than the Heritage Museum, houses our most prized possessions. Rare and unique archaeological finds are proudly displayed, with information plaques boasting Kuwait’s rich history. The information plaques would often read ‘Excavated by Danish Expedition in Failaka Island, 1952’. The Kuwait National Museum was established in 1957, and had it not been for the research papers and meticulous record keeping of the excavation teams, the artefacts would have lost part of their luster. This would not be the last time that foreign assistance would be needed in order to verify our history.

3.  Kuwait  and  UNESCO

The State of Kuwait became an entity on its own on 19th of June 1961. One of the laws predating the 1961 Constitution was the Princely Decree on the Antiquities Law n. 11 of 1960.1 Laws such as these helped to shape how important the Government of Kuwait viewed antiquities and cultural property. In fact, Kuwait was keen to protect its cultural property and heritage on an international level, as it was an eager signee to the various United Nations laws and conventions in this regard.

1 Copy of the “Princely Decree on the Antiquities Law n.11, 1960” can be found on <www.unesco.org/culture/natlaws> .

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By 1963, Kuwait joined the United Nations, becoming its 111th member. Since then, Kuwait has been a fruitful member of the international body, and has “upheld the UN’s principle of constructive cooperation, based on peace, equality and justice”.2 Kuwait has contributed economically to over 100 state-members of the UN who have sought assistance through the Kuwait Fund for Economic Development. To date, over 12 billion dollars have been given in assistance of the various members of the United Nations.3

Kuwait was also interested in contributing to the cultural aspects of the United Nations, as it joined UNESCO in ratifying and accepting the various cultural laws and conventions. The first example of such laws was the accession of the 1954 “Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict” law, popularly known as the Hague Convention.4 The ‘Hague Convention’ was the UN’s response to the devastating destruction of cultural heritage during the Second World War. In it, the ‘Hague Convention’ “sought to ensure that cultural property, both movable and immovable, was safeguarded and respected as the common heritage of humankind”. 5 Kuwait’s accession to this groundbreaking UN Convention, as well as the subsequent “Protocol to the Convention”, meant that Kuwait’s cultural property had to be respected, especially since Iraq, which invaded Kuwait in 1990, itself had ratified the same Convention.6

The “Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export, and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property” of 1970 was also signed by both Kuwait and Iraq.7 The Convention helped cement Iraq’s “obligation to return exported cultural property” from Kuwait when it took the National Museum’s archives (among other irreplaceable property) in 1990.8 This would prove ironic, as although Saddam Hussein’s forces invaded Kuwait and took its national treasures, it was Kuwait that helped hold Iraq’s stolen objects for safekeeping during the 2003 US-led invasion.9

Kuwait's willing hand to help, and with its peaceful and friendly nature, led the UN’s Security Council to unanimously condemn Iraq’s unprovoked invasion of Kuwait in 1990.10 Had the UN not intervened, especially since Kuwait was a signee to the UN conventions that protected cultural property, the archives of the Kuwait National Museum, along with other treasures, might never have been recovered.

2 “Kuwait and the United Nations” <http://www.embassyofkuwait.ca/pages/International/Kuwait-UN.htm> 3 Ibid. It should be noted that the amount of assistance is double in percentage that which was agreed on internationally. 4 06/06/1969 Accession by Kuwait. “Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict with Regulations for the Execution of the Convention”. The Hague, 14 May 1954. <www.unesco.org/eri/la/conventions_by_country.asp?> 5 Rene Teljgeler, Preservation Management for Libraries, Archives, and Museums (London: Facet Publishing, 2006). <www.culture-and-development.info/issues/conflict.htm> 4 6 21/12/1967 Ratification by Iraq. “Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict with Regulations for the Execution of the Convention”. The Hague, 14 May 1954. <www.unesco.org/eri/la/conventions_by_country.asp?> 7 22/06/1972 Acceptance by Kuwait and 12/02/1973 Acceptance by Iraq. “Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property”. Paris, 14 November 1970. <www.unesco.org/eri/la/conventions_by_country.asp?> 8 International Committee of the Red Cross. “Rule 41. Export and Return of Cultural Property in Occupied Territory”. <www.icrc.org/customary-ihl/eng/print/v1_rul_rule41> 9 Teljgeler p.10. 10 United Nations Security Council Resolution 660 (1990).

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4.  The  1990  Iraqi  Invasion  

On August 2nd, 1990, Kuwait suffered an unprovoked invasion by its neighbour Iraq.11 The subsequent looting of the Kuwait National Museum “was one of the greatest art crimes of the twentieth century”.12 By September 1990, the stolen artefacts from the Kuwait National Museum were exhibited on Iraqi television as ‘war booty’.13 The archives at the Kuwait National Museum were also taken.  The cultural invasion of the Museum and its antiquities was not surprising, recounted my colleague Mrs. Nawal al Failakawi, as the Iraqi National Museum staff had been at the Museum “learning how we run things” only a week prior to the invasion.14 In fact, Mrs. al Failakawi’s story is corroborated by Dr. Donny George, the Iraqi Director of Relations at the Iraqi National Museum.15 Mrs. al Failakawi remembers how prior to the invasion, employees from the Iraqi National Museum had visited Kuwait’s National Museum in order to learn how to properly package antiquities, how to best showcase artefacts in their display cases, and how to organize the archives. According to Dr. George, “we got the orders from the Ministry of Culture to go and insure the evacuation of the Kuwait Museum” and “I myself made a video film for the two museums, the Kuwait National Museum and Dar al Athar al Islamiya”.16 Once Kuwait was liberated and Iraq was forced by UN Security Council resolution 687 to return the stolen goods, Dr. George “handed the UN representative two volumes for over 25,000 items that we had”.17

Seven months after the brutal invasion, Kuwait was liberated on February 26th, 1991 by UN-backed coalition forces. UN Security Council resolution 687, adopted in April 1991, required Iraq “to facilitate the return of all Kuwaiti property seized”.18 In May 1991, the UN’s coordinator overseeing the returning of the objects “found virtually the entire KNM and DAI (Dar al Athar al Islamiya) collections in the Assyrian Hall of the Iraq Museum in Baghdad”.19 Almost a decade later, in 2000, the UN Secretary-General remarked that there were still plenty of items that have not been returned to Kuwait, and that “priority should be given to the return by Iraq of the Kuwaiti archives... and museum items”.20 “The Iraqi pillage of Kuwait...was a complete and utter destruction of Kuwaiti cultural heritage”.21 The retreating Iraqi army deliberately set fire to three of the Kuwait National Museum’s buildings, ravaging any remaining collections. Then Director of the Museum Dr. Fahad al Wohaibi estimated that 11 Kuwait, while tiny in comparison to Iraq, had offered economic support to Iraq’s on-going war with Iran. 12 Goldfarb, Stephanie. 2009. “Lessons in Looting”. ARCA “Association for Research into Crimes Against Art”. <www.art-crime.blogspot.com/2009/07/lessons-in-looting.html> 13 Ibid. 14 17/07/2012 Interview with Mrs. Nawal al Failakawi, a colleague and current head of the Exhibitions Department. She has been working at the Kuwait National Museum for 23 years, and was one of the employees responsible for creating a list of missing items. 15 George, Donny. “The Truth About the Kuwait Antiquities”. <http://www.savingantiquities.org/donny-george-the-truth-about-the-kuwait-antiquities/ 16 Ibid. 17 Ibid. 18 UN Security Council Resolution 687 Section D Article 15. 19 Bloom, Jonathan M. and Gould, Lark Ellen. Sept/Oct 2000. Saudi Aramco World Magazine. “Patient Restoration: The Kuwait National Museum”. 18 20 International Committee of the Red Cross. “Rule 41. Export and Return of Cultural Property in Occupied Territory”. <www.icrc.org/customary-ihl/eng/print/v1_rul_rule41> 21 Goldfarb, Stephanie. 2009. “Lessons in Looting”. ARCA “Association for Research into Crimes Against Art”. <http://www.art-crime.blogspot.com/2009/07/lessons-in-looting.html>

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the cost of reconstruction would be $6 million dollars.22 Twenty-two years later, there are still missing artefacts and treasures stolen from the Kuwait National Museum. Mrs. al Failakawi cannot be sure what the exact number is, as some of the identification cards corresponding to the objects are also missing.23

5.  The  Finance  Ministry  Wants  Answers  

In May 2009, the Finance Ministry of Kuwait formally requested the complete inventory of the administrative and cultural holdings at the National Council for Culture, Letters, and Arts. The Kuwait National Museum, under the N.C.C.A.L. was therefore obliged to form a technical committee to inventory and evaluate the movable assets at the Museum, something that has not been done on this scale before.

In order to carry out the required, a team of Museum employees was chosen to dedicate their time and efforts for the task. Our committee’s objectives, under the orders of the N.C.C.A.L., were threefold:

• To photograph the heritage and archaeological holdings. • To classify the objects by chronology and by ages. • To store and save all the data electronically.

It was immediately apparent that we would be unable to complete this government-sanctioned request unless we united the archives.

6.  Uniting  the  Archives  

Our committee was given complete access to the archives in order to identify what movable objects we had at the Kuwait National Museum. Every cultural object in the Museum had an identification card with a unique ‘Kuwait Museum’, or KM, number attached to it. The challenge was to unite the original ID cards and make sure that the cards, and the objects they represented, were all accounted for.24

In order to prepare an authentic list of KM property, we had to cross-reference and triple-check decades worth of archives. I was the point-person to a team of three that ultimately united and catalogued the Kuwait National Museum’s archives. To do so, we needed a dedicated space and some electronic equipment. We used computers on a network, a scanner, digital cameras, printers, and external hard drives to save our work on. We also used Microsoft Excel, Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft Picture Manager, and Microsoft Paint software to database our findings and clean-up the scanned pictures.

The archive department mentioned that they had about 8,000 Kuwait Museum identification cards. Our first step was to number an Excel sheet from 1-8000, and highlight the numbers with original identification cards. Once complete, the ID cards were then scanned and corrected with Photoshop. The scanned copies of the ID cards also included header information that included ‘National Council for Culture, Arts, and Letters’, as well as ‘Archives of the Kuwait National Museum’. Finally, we linked

22 Bloom, Jonathan M. and Gould, Lark Ellen. Sept/Oct 2000. Saudi Aramco World Magazine. “Patient Restoration: The Kuwait National Museum”. 20. 23 In a 2010 newspaper interview, Mrs. al Failakawi estimated that there are 487 missing treasures from the Museum. Calderwood, James. 2010. “Nearly 500 Kuwaiti Artefacts Remain Missing After War” <http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/middle-east/nearly-500-kuwaiti-artefacts-remain-missing-after-war#full> 24 The ID cards, which contained research information, were often transferred to archaeological sites, such as Failaka Island, which housed year-round local and international archaeological teams.

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pictures (macro, in-situ, conserved) found on CD’s from the various departments and added them to the massive folder with the numbered KM sub-folders.

The tedious work finally paid off, as we were able to ultimately unite 7,705 ID cards found from the archives. 337 of those ID cards had no identifying pictures, and the Museum photographer was asked to photograph those objects. The numerous color-coded cross-referencing also helped us pinpoint the twenty ‘lost’ ID cards, which were not referenced in any of the post-invasion archives’ list.

The 7,705 ID cards were, as required by the Kuwait National Museum, its governing body the National Council for Culture, Arts, and Letters, and the Finance Ministry, then collected and presented in a massive catalogue. The catalogue was organized both chronologically and by historical ages. In order to preserve the original Kuwait National Museum archives, these catalogues were then distributed to the archives department for daily use, to the archaeologists who needed them on-site, and to the Kuwait National Library as a back-up.

7.  A  Need  for  Change  

The uniting of the Kuwait National Museum’s archives proved to not only be a long and frustrating process, but the defining factor in realizing that we, as Kuwait’s National Museum, needed to operate using best practices. The days of handwritten notes on original archives had to end. The lack of information associated with the creation of the ID card had to be noted (previously, no date of creation or author’s name was signed). Also, the ease in which the ID cards went missing, or were taken for research was too often and too high-risk. The ID cards were not ‘checked out’, and various uses for legitimate reasons made it difficult to properly return the ID cards to their chronological place in the archives. These challenges have hindered the authenticity and safe-keeping of the archives at the Kuwait National Museum. Therefore, upon completion of our uncharted task, we whole-heartedly argued for an internationally-approved computerized system for the registration of new materials.25 After consulting with experts, we finalized our decision to present the internationally-lauded ADLIB program as the future of archiving at the Kuwait National Museum.

8.  Implementation  of  ADLIB  

ADLIB, an internationally accredited and integrated system for managing museums collections thankfully had a local distribution office in Kuwait.26 When we had presented our achievements to the Deputy Secretary General of the National Council for Culture, Arts, and Letters, we thankfully found a supportive decision-maker who pushed for the digitization of the archives as much our team did. The authorized dealer for the ADLIB program had already worked on other culture-related government institutions under the National Council’s umbrella, most notably the Kuwait National Library. As such, the company responsible for ADLIB had experience working with the National Council, and the National Council, in turn, had found a respectful and helpful partner.

ADLIB is essentially software that helped us digitally archive and manage our museum collection in a professional and multi-faceted way. ADLIB was designed to follow the ‘CIDOC Guidelines for

25 Paper-based archives would be still be part of the archives, as we would print the archives and collect them in catalogues. 26 Government institutions would prefer to give contracts to companies with an authorized dealer in Kuwait, in order to secure maintenance and technical help.

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Museum Object Information’, which gave it an authoritative, standardized, and internationally-approved stamp of approval. 27 Most importantly, ADLIB allowed us to customize the program to our requirements, and use it simultaneously in Arabic and English, without jeopardizing the standards set forth by the international museum community.

The contract between the National Council for Culture, Arts, and Letters and the authorized dealer for ADLIB in Kuwait stressed the importance of training the Museum employees. The company trained us on how to use ADLIB, and tweaked the program to our specific Museum needs. We were also lucky to benefit from the company’s experience across the Arab world when we wanted to comply regionally on agreed Arabic terminology.28 Even after the training provided and months of inputting, we still find ourselves surprised by how we can further utilize the ADLIB program to our specific Kuwait National Museum needs.

With ADLIB, we were able to input the information found in the paper archives, attach scans of the original pictures, include updated high-resolution pictures, video biographies of the items, and any other information that related to the items very easily. Before ADLIB, we would never be able to concretely state how many objects we had in the Museum that were from the Bronze Age, for example. With ADLIB, and since our existing archive was based on four categories (Heritage, Hellenistic, Islamic, and Bronze Age), we were able to transfer our existing archiving categories to a computerized database. Using these four categories, we would not only be able to exact the total number of Bronze Age items, but also to pinpoint the items that were found in a certain trench on an archaeological site.

The hierarchical structure of ADLIB also allowed the users to find, for instance, how many wooden traditional boats we had in the Heritage collection. Using the predetermined hierarchy also forced the inputters and the users to uniform the terminology that was previously recorded on the paper archives as ‘wooden boat’, ‘traditional dhow’, or ‘old Kuwaiti boat’. By using the same terminology as an identifier, we would be able to not only find out how many of the traditional wooden dhows we had, but to classify them according to date produced, condition, size, and other important factors. This hierarchy and classification would also be invaluable to the conservation and exhibitions teams, as it helped them decide what to work on or showcase.

Having all of these easily-accessible various options and descriptions in ADLIB made it the go-to answer for any Museum related query. Suddenly, the possibility of asking ADLIB a question about a Museum object and having a plethora of answers made members of the various departments want to use the program. Security was key when it came to physically protecting ADLIB from floods, blackouts, and viruses. However, we became aware early on during the inputting stages that we had to protect the system from the Museum employees themselves. Well-wishing employees from the storage department wanting to find out the exact location of an object could have possibly changed or altered the entry without our knowing. Therefore, we had to assign usernames and passwords for the inputters and to the department heads, which allowed us to set editing control and view editing histories.

Security and control of the content in ADLIB was also important for the Museum, who would offer its archives to members of the various archaeological teams or researchers. We would be able to hide or edit sensitive information that we would not like to be public, including location information, pricing, and donor information. Researchers working on Failaka Island who would request access to the archives

27 CIDOC is a committee at the International Council of Museums, or ICOM. ICOM is a partner of UNESCO. 28 The glossary for Arabic terminology in the field of cultural property has been long-discussed, with Dr Hossam Mahdy of the ATHAR program of ICCROM compiling the most used and extensive list.

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would now have the option to print the information on the object they wanted to study as well as any object that would be of interest to them, made possible by using the previously-mentioned hierarchy.

9.  The  Future  of  the  Museum  and  ADLIB    

The contents of the Kuwait National Museum can be made available online, as ADLIB has the option of publishing the catalogue to the internet. However, this option has not been considered because the digitization of information from the archives has not been completed. Also, we are hesitant to introduce an internet connection to the computers on the ADLIB network, for fear of inadvertently affecting the computers and the software with malicious content or debilitating viruses.

A major selling point of choosing ADLIB as the digital future of the Kuwait National Museum was the capability of adding more than just the objects at the Museum. ADLIB could be used to catalogue the printed and audiovisual items housed in the Museum library, as well as the other museums under the control of the National Museum.29 The far-flung museums in the desert and the island (Red Palace Museum in Jahra and Failaka Museum on Failaka Island respectively) could use the ADLIB program. The heritage homes museums such as Dickson House and Bait al Bader could catalogue their items and add descriptions of how the houses were used.

The museums honouring our sea-faring traditions and the Kuwaiti Martyrs would also be able to catalogue their collections by using ADLIB. Everything from the special pearl-diving tools found at the Maritime Museum to the blood-covered clothes worn by the Kuwaiti martyrs could be added to ADLIB easily, thus preserving the history of how items were used and who wore them.

Beyond the direct administration of the Kuwait National Museum, the prospects of digitizing and cataloguing the Modern Art Museum’s various multi-media artworks would showcase the re-vitalized art scene. Artwork otherwise condemned to the storage rooms would now be able to find new life in the online digital world. In fact, the National Council's Modern Art Museum would be able to compete for the art interest prevalent in the Kuwaiti and Arab scene, once the works of famous authors are shared on a global level.

Globally, we plan to coordinate with the international embassies of Kuwait to house and safe-keep the hard disks that we have backed-up. By doing so, we ensure that any copies of the Kuwait National Museum's identification card database and archive are protected should the Museum be compromised by any natural or man-made means. However, there are legal and ethical ramifications that we have yet to discuss with the decision-makers.

It is with these plans for the future that would not only catapult the Museum’s archives to the 21st century, but would benefit the National Council for Culture, Arts, and Letters and the Government of Kuwait.

10.  Technological  and  Economic  Challenges  

While the National Council for Culture, Arts, and Letters was supportive of the database collection and ADLIB implementation, the process was not without challenges. Other than the challenges that my colleagues and I faced with having to learn the ADLIB program, there were also technological, economical, professional, and ethical challenges.

29 The library at the Kuwait National Museum should not be mistook as the Kuwait National Library, which incidentally uses the library version of ADLIB.

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A complex program such as ADLIB requires that the machines used are capable of seamless integration, which posed a technical challenge. While the ADLIB contract included three computers and a server, we wanted to ensure that the hard work of inputting the database would be safe from an erased memory or a crashed server. We faced difficulty in convincing the decision-makers that extra UPS protection (Uninterruptible Power Supply) was necessary to protect the computers from crashing should there be a power outage. The server is automatically set to download and save the day’s work at 3am every night, but should the power suddenly go out, we didn’t want to risk the computer hard drive from crashing.

Another technological challenge we faced was making sure that the database was properly saved and secured. As previously mentioned, the server automatically backs up the database daily, but we were adamant in securing the database on an external hard drive, as we could not risk the chance of a burst water pipe or a fire breaking out. Saving the entire database on an external hard drive is a task that is completed on a monthly interval, and the external drive resides in a separate building. Another way of saving the database was to prevent viruses of getting in. In order to protect the database, USB devices are not allowed to connect to the computers or networks, and there is no internet connection on the network system.

We were lucky, in a sense, of initiating the database in 2009. Starting on the database in this technologically advanced age saved us from facing obsolescence associated with floppy disks and microfiche. The challenge is to integrate into the future technology seamlessly. The ADLIB database is built on the Microsoft Windows operating systems, and has continuous support and upgrade conversions by the company. In fact, one of the most important clauses in the contract is the maintenance clause, which guarantees that the technology will be up to date.

The cost of implementing ADLIB, which was in the tens of thousands of dollars, was postponed until the proper funds could be secured. It would take two years until the contract was signed, and the prices of the updated equipment kept rising. Few could understand why a software program connecting a few computers was this expensive, or why we needed these add-ons of UPS devices, external hard drives, and virus protection. However, we made sure to include in the total cost of the contract any future maintenance renewals, machine upgrades, and software updates. In this way, we presented the National Council for Culture, Arts, and Letters with one big bill that they would only have to pay once.

11.  Professional  and  Ethical  Challenges  

The Kuwait National Museum, where the archives are held and are being digitised, has plenty of dedicated, hard-working, and professional employees. The challenge, though, was to find all-around computer savvy and detailed database inputters. The ID cards are bilingual, and the inputters would have to be familiar with English in order to type it on a keyboard. The Arabic text also proved challenging, as some of the words were misspelled or were based on a colloquial term rather than a classical Arabic word. Certain Kuwaiti words written on the ID cards would not be found on other ID cards containing the same Heritage items.30 Instances such as these would over-populate the database terminology hierarchy with two words for the same item, one in classical Arabic and one in the local colloquialism. Only a Kuwaiti, and a traditional-speaker at that, would be able to correct and edit as they moved along.

The Museum employees, having been kept aware of the database implementation, were invited to submit their names for the ‘database input team’. The volunteers were made aware of the shared goals, 30 ‘Kuwaiti’ is simply a colloquial ‘language’ or accent of classical Arabic.

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and were asked to set aside two hours of their day to inputting. After securing the amount of inputters needed, and training them, we had begun the process of digitizing the Museum archives. Problems with the employee volunteering scheme began to quickly rise. Maternity leaves had to be granted, supervisors needed their employees back, vacations were scheduled, and other basic rights had to be upheld. This proved difficult in maintaining a steady stream of employees willing to work for no extra pay and without compensation.

An ethical debate took place when a suggestion was made for hiring professional database inputters. A quick discussion nixed the idea, as we were uncomfortable with handing over the Kuwait National Museum’s database to foreigners. This outcome proved wise, as most of the Heritage ID cards could only be understood and corrected by a Kuwaiti. The decision to utilize the Museum employees would also prove beneficial to the colleague who works solely on manuscripts and correspondences.

12.  Historical  Documents  

There are estimated to be about 60,000 historical documents present at the Kuwait National Museum. There were more, according to a colleague who handles the documents says, but a post-war 1992 clean-up of the Museum swept up hundreds, if not thousands of documents. While the historical documents are stamped with ‘Kuwait National Museum Collection’ and given a document record number, the exact number of documents missing is unknown. Taking these yellowed historical documents and digitizing them was a priority for our team during the implementation of the ADLIB program.

The historical documents catalogued are categorized according to their general topics, such as ‘Ruling Family’, ‘Sea-Faring Documents’, and ‘Merchant Documents’. Of the total historical documents, it is estimated that only a quarter of them are digitally scanned. Of these digitally scanned documents, the bulk are early 1900’s correspondence letters between Kuwaiti merchants in India and their families in Kuwait. Some of the correspondence letters scanned discussed family matters, and these have been marked by the manuscripts manager as classified. After customizing the program for us, the authorized ADLIB company was able to ‘lock’ the documents marked as classified, thus protecting the author’s privacy.

Luckily for the ADLIB database input team, importing the historical documents files into the program is seamless. The manuscripts team had thankfully already added information with each scan, including title, date, to, from, and condition. We used this information to automatically populate the entries of the document record database by importing a Microsoft Excel sheet into the ADLIB program. The picture scans of the documents are in a .jpeg format, and the ADLIB program imports them into the corresponding number documents record. By digitizing the historical documents and adding them to ADLIB, the Kuwait National Museum will be able to account for these invaluable insights to Kuwait’s past.

13.  Digitization  By  The  Numbers  

The work of digitizing the archives has in some part started prior to our 2009 creation of a task force, and that has helped us immensely in stream-lining the digitalization process. I will provide below a table of what we have achieved thus far.31

31 As of July 20, 2012.

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United KNM ID Cards

(printed and bound to serve as an accessible paper

archive - categorized by chronological order and

by historical age)

7705

KNM ID Cards Missing from Archives 20

KNM ID Cards Without Pictures 337

KNM ID Cards Scanned 1236

KNM ID Cards Information Added to ADLIB 5229

KNM ID Cards Picture

(scan of the original paper ID card) Added to

ADLIB

5229

Pictures of KNM Objects Added to ADLIB 2994

KNM Document Records Added to ADLIB 3600

14.  Recommendations  for  Other  Institutions  

As discussed throughout this paper, the process of digitization and parallel database inputting of the archives was only seriously undertaken at the Museum since 2009, at the orders of the Finance Ministry. Previous attempts at digitization or database inputting, while very commendable, have never come to fruition because of a lack of administrative, technological, and economic support.

While the Finance Ministry was the trigger for our work, had it not been the unwavering support of the now Secretary General of the National Council for Culture, Arts, and Letters, our Director of the Kuwait National Museum, and all the employees, our objectives would have been failures. You must ensure that you have the very top decision makers believing in your grand ideas. Detailed monthly reports were written to the General Secretary and the Director with progress, updates, and challenges faced by our team. The constant reminder of the work you and your team are doing will have more departments interested. This is a team effort, involving people you might never even meet.

As the Museum is part of the grand National Council, we would often have to rely on and convince people we have never had contact with. The paperwork you present must be extremely clear and easily understood by people outside the cultural discipline. Any requests for economic assistance must be crystal clear, with detailed explanations and justifications as to what exactly you are asking for and why. The finance and legal departments, populated by employees who have never considered the fate of the Museum archives or have seen the passionate presentations arguing for a digitized (united and uniformed) future, must be spoken to in their 'language' (clear budgetary numbers, referencing N.C.C.A.L. laws, etc.).

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While the decision in choosing ADLIB was straight-forward and easy for us to make, remember that not all institutions are built the same. Make a list of what you need (i.e.: a united archive), in what capacity (i.e.: high volume of records with multiple media each), and who can provide it on a long-term (i.e.: local authorized company with reputed history). Make sure to take your time in deciding on a program or company, and only after thoroughly inspecting and vetting their previous work and reputation.

The most important requirement for a program or a company is for it to follow international standards set forth by the responsible and accepted museum or cultural institutions (i.e.: UNESCO, for one). There is absolutely no use in implementing an untested or unfamiliar database. Also, connect with museum professionals around the world who have implemented databases for their archives. When you are doing something unprecedented in your country, you should network.

15.  What's  Next?  

While we are proud of our achievements thus far in digitizing the archives at the Kuwait National Museum, we recognize, as a task force, that our work is far from over. There will undoubtedly be challenges that we have not considered, irreplaceable employees who will leave, and technology that will have to be upgraded.

There are still archaeological teams working every spring and winter in Kuwait, unearthing past civilizations and inevitably adding to the ever-growing identification cards archives. Attached to the newly added KM numbers are the corresponding pictures of the objects, which will certainly be photographed repeatedly in detail by the excavating teams. All of these on-going expected future works will be have to be incorporated to the paper archives (and later bound chronologically and by ages) and ultimately to the ADLIB database.

The historical documents team has only digitally scanned about a quarter of the 60,000 strong historical manuscripts. If we are to truly have a complete and authentic archive, and not only the 'interesting' correspondences, then we must include the rest.

If the projected timeline holds, the Kuwait National Museum's objects are set to occupy custom-built storage buildings by 2013. Moving the objects to their newly dedicated space will require that the storage department and the ADLIB input team must work together to correctly identify the location of the objects. As such, we are brainstorming and gathering information into the possibility of utilizing electronic hand-held scanning devices. which would date and time stamp the location of every object leaving the storages.

Over 60% of the current 1.3 million Kuwaiti population of Kuwait is under the age of twenty-five32. As a new generation enters the government sector marketplace, taking the place of the veterans, we are constantly reminded of how valuable the employees with 20+ years in the Museum are. The veteran employees at the Museum know its history from before the invasion, helped rebuild it after liberation, and have learned from their mistakes. Their insight and expertise has been invaluable in uniting the archives, and their input into the implementation of the ADLIB workflow has helped us save months of unnecessary tedious work.

32 2012 UNDP Kuwait Youth Survey <http://www.undp.org/content/kuwait/en/home/presscenter/articles/2012/05/17/national-youth-survey-conducted-by-undp-kuwait/>

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16.  Conclusion  

The archives at the Kuwait National Museum unintentionally came into existence when the then Amir of Kuwait endowed his residence in 1957 and declared it a museum. This paper has described the turbulent history of the archives at the Kuwait National Museum. The archives, and the invaluable identification cards that they hold, have mostly been unchanged and untouched for a minimum of thirty years, and are bare of any updates or changes to the history of the object (save for a few pencilled-in notes). The historical documents, some of them dating to the late 1800's, have survived being forever lost in the clean-up of the Museum after the 1991 liberation. But by finally uniting and digitizing the contents of the archives at the Kuwait National Museum, we hope to lay to rest any fears of future discord. The story of the archives at the Kuwait National Museum is nothing short of a survivor's tale. The 8,000 + archaeological and heritage objects all have identification cards, describing the object's story. Losing the paper-based identification cards would be nothing short of a tragedy, a loss of identity. By digitizing them, the Museum has finally honoured them. And while we must always remember that digitization and technology is not the be-all and end-all of our problems, it is certainly the best step we have taken in order to protect our archives and our history.