The Department for Archives and Records Management of the Justice Ministry held a board meeting

On 30 May 2019 the Department for Archives and Records Management of the Justice Ministry of the Republic of Belarus held a board meeting to discuss the following issues:

• work of state archives in the field of publication activities;
• work of state archives in making digital reference copies of archival documents (Users Fonds);
• analysis of recompiled lists Nos. 1 and 2 оf institutions which are sources of records acquisition for regional and local state archives.

The board meeting reviewed publication activities of state archives and noted that 75 archival editions of various types were released in the period of 2014-2018.

The meeting also discussed issues of normative and procedural support for publication activities and the role of the Archeographical (Historical Publications) Commission of the Department for Archives and Records Management in the realization of publication projects.
The meeting especially stressed the necessity to develop procedural and guidance documents for archeographical preparation and publication of photographic documents and scientific-technical documents.

After the discussions the decision was made on the necessity to correct the Rules of Work of State Archives of the Republic of Belarus in the area of publication activities, to conduct a review of activities of the Archeographical Commission, to organize in 2020 the republic-level seminar on the issues of publication activities, etc.

On the second issue the Department Board stressed the importance of digitization in widening access to archival records and their preservation. As on 1 January 2019, the state archives have created digital reference copies for 35 919 files, which makes up 1 924 946 electronic pages. Digital reference copies were created for 16 % of especially valuable and important documents of the User Fonds, 97 % of audio and visual documents and 100 % of video documents.

The Republic-level Technical Laboratory for Security Microfilming of Permanent Records and the Central Laboratory for Microphotocopying and Restoration of Records of the National Archival Holdings of the Republic of Belarus are the institutions in charge of digitization of archival documents at the state archives in Belarus. 15 state archives perform records digitization by themselves.

The Department Board also heard information from the Director of the National Archives of the Republic of Belarus Andrey Demyanyuk about the Archives’ work on executing Presidential Directive No. 1 of 11 March 2004 “On measures for strengthening public security and discipline”.