Belarusian archivists participated at the Forum of Slavic Cultures in Ljubljana, Slovenia
On 3 November 2011, a meeting was held at the headquarters of the Forum of Slavic Cultures in Ljubjana, Slovenia between the Forum representatives and the participants at the Second Conference for Archives of Slavic Countries. The meeting brought together representatives of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Macedonia, Poland, Russia, Slovenia, Serbia, Slovakia and Ukraine. The Republic of Belarus was represented by the acting director at the National Archives of the Republic of Belarus N.K. Rudakovsky and the director at the Belarusian Research Institute of Documentation and Archival Science A.E. Rybakov. The Czech Republic and Croatia did not participate in the event.
The Forum of Slavic Cultures was established by the initiative of culture ministries in 12 Slavic countries with the aim to promote cooperation, propaganda of cultural achievements, and joint projects. Attending the meeting was the Chairperson of the Forum of Slavic Cultures, member of Slovenian Parliament Ms. Andreja Rihter.
The joint session discussed the projects proposed by the Forum “Heritage of socialism” and “Archives in the capitals of Slavic countries”.
The project “Heritage of socialism” will include several conferences. The first conference entitled “Culture of socialism” is scheduled on 13-15 September 2012 in Maribore, Slovenia, which has been declared a European Cultural Capital in 2012. As part of this conference the archive representatives would prepare reports on the contents of archival collections relating to the culture in the epoch of socialism, their appraisal and selection for further preservation or disposal etc. In the perspective, the data on fonds and records available on the topic could have been posted in the Internet. However, the discussion of the archives’ participation in this conference has revealed a number of difficulties of organisational and content character in some of the Slavic countries needed to be further examined.
The second project will include an exhibition of records from the archives in the capitals of Slavic countries. The exhibition is to be held in May 2011 in the UNESCO headquarters in Paris.
On completion of the Forum meeting, its participants moved to Lipica, Slovenia, where the Second Conference for Archives of Slavic Countries was held between 4 and 6 November 2011. The Conference was organised by the Forum of Slavic Cultures (Slovenia), the Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Technology of the Republic of Slovenia, the State Archives in Trieste (Italy) and the Society of Historian Archivists of Slovenia.
The Conference discussed two topics: “Important technical issues in archives” and “Important issues of information transfer between archives”. Participants at the conference were representatives of 11 out of 13 member states (excluding Croatia and the Czech Republic).
In view of the close cultural traditions and languages in the member states, the reports at the conference were made in national languages. The Belarusian side offered presentation reports on “Important technical issues at the National Archives of the Republic of Belarus” (N.K. Rudakovsky) and “Construction and reconstruction of archive buildings as a main condition for records preservation” (A.E. Rybakov).
The second day of the conference addressed the issues of information transfer between archives. Most of the reports and papers dwelt with the issues of archive records presented in the internet as the most simple and universal means of information exchange (Belarus, Bulgaria, Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Montenegro). Especial attention was drawn to the report by M. Marosz (Poland) on the APEnet Project (European Gateway for Documents and Archives). According to the concept of this project, not only archival records but also archival guides and directories that help to search records in archives are to be posted in the internet (in all, over two million description units have been made available in the internet).