The feature ‘Celebrating Gozitan heritage’ (The Sunday Times of Malta, December 8) was very interesting and highlighted an exhibition being held at the Gozo National Archives. However, I feel I should clarify two points.

The statement that in the late 1940s hundreds of manuscripts pertaining to the Universitas Gaudisii were destroyed as they were handed over to an owner of a fireworks factory to produce petards seems quite strange. This type of paper is very delicate and therefore unsuitable for petards. Secondly, in the past, it was claimed that part of this collection was destroyed exactly in the period referred to by some members of the junior staff at the Commissioner’s Office in Victoria.

According to this claim, parts of this collection were used as wrapping paper when buying fish from the hawkers across the other part of Victoria’s main square, today being Independence Square, where their office stood. These premises have since been rebuilt.

This collection was spared from further destruction through the intervention of an ex-Commissioner for Gozo, Edgar Montanaro. On being installed as the island’s Commissioner in the late 1940s, he became immediately aware of what was stored in his office’s basement. He first ordered the transfer of all volumes to his office and, eventually, all manuscripts were deposited in two wooden cupboards.

It should be pointed out that the Commissioner for Gozo acted, apart from his duties as the government’s representative in Gozo, as the ex-ufficio chairman of the Gozo Public Library Committee. On the other hand, in May 1952 I was appointed assistant librarian of our island’s Public Library.

I still vividly remember that one fine day, as I had started building our Melitensia collection, I asked him whether he agreed to have this collection transferred to the Gozo Library. My aim was to enhance the library image, as at that time, the Giozom Library owned only one manuscript.

The transfer of this collection from the Commissioner’s Office to the Gozo Public Library occurred on the afternoon of December 7, 1952, and a Public Works truck was used for this transfer. I am indeed glad to point out that the Universitas Gaudisii manuscripts have formed the main backbone of our island’s National Archive, which was established in 1989, on the initiative of the then Gozo Minister Anton Tabone, just a few years before I retired from the library service after a span of 42 years.