Board meeting at the Department for Archives and Records Management discuss the creation of electronic inventories

On 28 February 2013 the Department for Archives and Records Management of the Justice Ministry of the Republic of Belarus held a board meeting to discuss the issue of creating file inventories in electronic form at the state archival institutions of the Republic of Belarus. Having heard the report by the chief specialist at the records preservation, state inventory and information technologies division, T. Labaznova, the department board emphasized the development of information retrieval resources as a major task in the activity of the state archival institutions. The file inventories in electronic form are being created in accordance with the schedule. The archives convert the file lists into electronic form by means of digitization; entering data on computer in MS Word or MS Excel; maintenance of databases. The electronic inventories can be submitted to the staff of the state archives and the researchers at the reading rooms. Access to electronic inventories is provided at the official website of the National Archives of the Republic of Belarus (http://narb.by).

The discussion of the issue revealed the necessity for the development of a unified approach to creation of electronic inventories, their preservation and provision with wide access, in particular by means of the internet.