The notarial archives in St Christopher Street, Valletta are a glaring example of how this country treats its cultural treasures: abysmally.

I found this out recently when I went to carry out some research for a story I planned to write.

The archives, which can be described as "the mother of all archives in Malta" consist of thousands upon thousands of copies of notarial agreements (registri) dating back to the mid-15th century. In fact 25 volumes pre-date the arrival of the Order of St John in Malta.

The contracts are a mine of information on the social, cultural and commercial life of Malta with detailed contracts recording among others the sale of cargo, the sale and transfer of immovable property, bank transfers, bills of sale and wills.

Some of the volumes have been nibbled by mice while others have been attacked by other pests including bookworm, not to mention the damage done by the water that penetrates the building when it rains.

A considerable number of the volumes are held together with string and are merely covered loosely with brown paper.

The state of conservation is terrible. The volumes are embedded with dirt.

Two balconies, one in St Christopher Street and the other in St Paul Street, serving the same room, have had the stone slabs forming the flooring removed because they were in a dangerous state. The slabs have not been replaced.

This poses a hazard to whoever is in the research room as one could absentmindedly attempt to go out onto the balcony for a break or to answer a call on a mobile phone.

The doors of the balconies are kept open during opening hours and as a so-called safety measure, a piece of wood is placed at a 45 degree angle from the opening to the balcony. The stone slabs were declared dangerous in 2001 and were taken away in 2002.

The original contracts are kept at the notorial offices in Mikiel Anton Vassalli Street in Valletta but the copies are a richer mine of information than the originals because they often contain annotations and other details added on by notaries made after the original is filed.

The place is supposed to open every Tuesday but opening times are erratic and no one informs scholars who arrive there expecting it to be open whether or not this will indeed happen.

On the other hand, the archives in Mikiel Anton Vassalli Street, which are an important point of reference, particularly for notaries and lawyers, are kept in ship-shape condition.

Up till this day, notaries are legally bound to provide the original of the contracts they compile to the archives office in Anton Vassalli Street and a copy to the archives office in St Christopher Street.

Art historian Keith Sciberras argued that the place needs a proper maintenance scheme. A person knowledgeable about archives should be posted there full-time, he said.

The reading room lacks the very basic needs for a researcher to work. There are no facilities to hook up lap top computers.

"Individuals leafing through the contracts are helping in their preservation. This change cannot be achieved overnight but should be planned over a number of years," Dr Sciberras said.

The palazzo where the archives are kept is literally falling apart. The ground floor looks very much like one of the most maligned tenement houses in Valletta, with rising damp, flaking paint and total disorder.

There is little or no security as regards who enters the building: visitors are not asked for a form of identity and no note is kept as to who makes use of the archives.

There is no closed circuit television to see who is coming in and leaving the building and neither is there CCTV in the room used by visitors to browse through the volumes.

Continuing, Dr Sciberras asked: "Is this how this country is treating the resurgence of Malta as a cultural venue of an international standing?"

Both Maltese and foreign researchers, when asked to describe the state archives, came up with words like "shameful", "disgraceful", and "terrible", a researcher told The Times.

The researcher, who preferred not to be named, said that the archives in St Christopher Street "resembled a pigsty".

Well-known scholar Mgr John Azzopardi said when contacted that there were times when the archives were not open to the public for five weeks in a row. This, he added, was extremely disappointing.

"And every time I complain to the main office, I am told that they do not have enough staff, so there is no chance of knowing in advance whether the place will be open," Mgr Azzopardi said.

He added he was ashamed to take foreign students to the archives but preferred to carry out the research himself to avoid taking them there.

A number of volumes are untraceable because they are not classified correctly, Mgr Azzopardi added.

Historian Professor Godfrey Wettinger described the building as "frightful''.

"The place is dirty and the building itself is in a state of disrepair and it is not adequate for the purpose it has been put to.

"Several volumes are being repaired at the restoration centre in Ricasoli but there are hundreds of volumes that are in dire need of repair.

"But my fear is that unless a strategic plan is drawn up, we would revert back to the time years ago when it was extremely difficult to carry out any research here," Prof. Wettinger added. He expressed the wish that it might be possible to obtain funds from the EU for the revamping of the archives.

"But one has to bear in mind how long the operation to refurbish would take in order not to deny scholars the ability to carry on with their work."

Sources close to the national archives said there were only two clerks and two assistants to help at the archives office so that whenever one of these persons was on leave or on sick leave, it was not possible to open the archives in St Christopher Street.

The danger of moving absentmindedly out onto the balconies and to one's possible death has been minimised because a wooden guard is being placed there instead of a piece of wood, the sources noted.

However, one researcher noted that these wooden guards did not fit properly and seemed to have been placed there in a half-baked attempt once the danger was pointed out to the staff recently.

The archives office is currently seeing which volumes were damaged during the war and is replacing them with copies from the originals. Several beams in the upper floor of the building need seeing to and it is expected that shortly these beams will be reinforced, the sources said.

The sources added that a plan to have a new building that would house under one roof the notarial archives and the archives at Santu Spirtu in Rabat has not been approved under the EU 2005 Transition Facility Programme.

The plan will be submitted again under other EU financial assistance programmes.