Second, those of us who are already convinced must do a better job of persuading our community not only of the importance but the relevance of these efforts in allowing our leaders to more systematically, efficiently and effectively address and redress the problems with which we are confronted. For example, socio-economic data needs to be developed and stored in a more accessible manner so that decision makers can use it in their calculations. The numerous masters' theses and doctoral dissertations prepared about the U.S. Virgin Islands available throughout the United States and the rest of the world must be accessible either electronically or physically. Oral histories need to be compiled, cataloged, transcribed and utilized more frequently in our schools. Government agencies need to prepare annual reports on a more consistent basis and circulate them to public libraries.
More training needs to be provided for person handling archival materials.
We need to affiliate ourselves with organizations such as the Caribbean Archives Association, the Society of American Archivists and the International Council on Archives. A team of librarians, historians and other scholars needs to be created to conduct an inventory of materials here in our community, in the rest of the Caribbean, in the United States, in Europe and in Africa. Simultaneously another group, or members of the same group need to start looking for a private location to house materials. One could go on enumerating the myriad of challenges which confront us but some concrete action has to be undertaken or else all of this will remain academic. When we focus our minds on resolving the challenges confronting us regarding archival resources and actually DO something about it, we can only succeed.