The International Council on the virtual reconstruction of the Radziwills archive and book collections, 12 December 2008, Nesvizh, Belarus
The International Council on the virtual reconstruction of the Radziwills archive and book collections, 12 December 2008, Nesvizh, Belarus
On 12 December 2008 the second meeting of the International Council on the project for the virtual reconstruction of the Radziwills archival/written heritage and book collections took place in Nesvizh, the Republic of Belarus. The meeting was organized by the Belarusian Research Center for Electronic Records and the National Historical and Cultural Museum-Reserve “Nesvizh” with the participation of the National Committee of the Republic of Belarus for UNESCO and with financial support from the UNESCO Moscow Office.
The International Council on the project for the virtual reconstruction of the Radziwills archives and Nesvizh library collections was set up in line with recommendations made by the international conference “The UNESCO Memory of the World Programme: the activities of libraries, archives and museums in safeguarding documentary heritage” that took place in Minsk between 30 November and 2 December 2006. The first meeting of the council, which was held in Minsk on 27 April 2007, adopted a resolution that each country should implement the whole complex of activities stipulated by the project for parts of the Radziwills collections preserved in the archives, libraries and museums of their country. 
The first results of this work and the future plans were expected to be discussed at the second meeting.
The second meeting brought together archive and library specialists from Belarus, Poland, Russian Federation, Ukraine and Finland.
The Director of the Belarusian Research Center for Electronic Records informed that pursuant to the first meeting a joint nomination dossier has been prepared and submitted by Belarus, Lithuania, Poland, Russian Federation, Ukraine and Finland for the inclusion of the Radziwills archive and book collections on the UNESCO Memory of the World Register.
Mr Vladimir Schastny, Chairman of the National Commission of the Republic of Belarus for UNESCO informed of the support given by UNESCO to the international project “Documentary heritage of Rzeczpospolita/the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth”, which aims to identify all major complexes of documents created in the territory of this State during the period of its existence, to integrate their descriptions at the level of fonds and collections, and to develop unified principles of the collection classification on the basis of the ISAD(G) International Standard Archival Description. The project will be implemented through joint efforts between specialists in Belarus, Lithuania, Poland and Ukraine as the main historical successors of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, not excluding active interactions with experts from other countries.