Description
The project's objective is to permanently improve the situation of social archives through: - developing a model for cooperation between social archives and public institutions, improving their legal status by amending the law on archives (possibility of cooperation between the social archives and the state archives authorities), and preparing guidelines for the future law on archives that would introduce the notion of social archives into the Polish legal system; - "internal" consolidation: professionalization, more competencies for social archives (access to expertise, trainings), IT tools for their activities in the field of compilation, digitalization, and presentation of their collections; - creating a network of social archives: self-organization and integration of social archives, building the platform for exchange of information and experiences (special portal archiwa.org); - "external" consolidation: change in social perception of social archives and their important cultural role (promotion and social communication).
Summary of project results
"Poland has approximately 500 social archives, including 300 operated by non-governmental organisations. Their work is vastly important to preserving archival resources of historical, local, and art history. Obscure legal circumstances, poor condition of social archives, and lack of any support system for such initiatives or state-archive organisation co-operation model made all related work difficult. The project purpose was to stabilise the situation of social archive entities by amending the current and drafting assumptions for the future archives law, and making the work of organisations active in evidencing history more professional. Foundations were laid for a Polish state-archive organisation co-operation model by amending the Archives Act. Competencies of social archivists improved; they were issued i.a. IT tools to secure, develop and digitise collections. In co-operation with the Central Directorate of State Archives, a draft amendment to the Archives Act was produced, alongside assumptions to an open competition guaranteed in the field and broadly consulted. An international “Social Archives. Models of Co-operating with the State"" conference was organised for 75 persons. Social archivists from throughout Poland were trained (200 persons, 6 on-site and 2 online courses) and issued with a free-of-charge collection development tool: Open Archiving System software implemented at 27 archives. The 1st Social Archives Congress was organised for 200 persons; 26 organisations formed a contact network and signed a Social Archives Chart. The
www.archiwa.org social archives portal was expanded to include 34 new sub-sites, 183 articles, and a paper on social archives worldwide. Project beneficiaries included 345 social archive organisations."
Summary of bilateral results