The Enlarged Board Meeting of the Department of Archives and Records Management of the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Belarus, 22 January 2009
On 22 January 2009, the Department of Archives and Records Management of the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Belarus held an enlarged board meeting for summing up the activities of the State Archival Service of Belarus in 2008 and setting the objectives for the year 2009. The department board also examined the issue of fulfilling by government institutions the Instruction of the Council of Ministers of the Republic of Belarus No. 05/226-206 of 3 May 2007 on developing the agency records schedules.
Among the participants at the meeting (in all, over 70 people) were V.G. Golovanov, Minister for Justice of the Republic of Belarus, the department board members, heads of the administrative departments of justice and the archives departments at the regional executive committees and the Minsk City Executive Committee, directors of the central archival institutions and the regional and local archives.
V. I. Adamushko, Director of the Department of Archives and Records Management, made a report on the past year’s results and the objectives for the current year. The second issue was addressed in the report by E. N. Davydova, head of the department of records management and the formation of the national archival holdings at this Department.
At present the State Archival Service of Belarus includes 11 republic-level archival institutions, 9 regional archives, 16 local archives, and 123 municipal and district archives of personnel records, which hold over 12.4 mln paper files, 35,778 film records, 244,802 photographic records, 12,974 sound records, and 1048 video records. In 2008 the state archives of Belarus handled 30,000 social and legal enquiries; over 14,000 citizens visited and consulted the archives in person. A special attention was paid to work with citizens based on a “single window” principle of handling citizens’ enquiries. In the past year the Belarusian archivists organized 86 documentary exhibitions, published 13 collections of documents, directories and scholarly publications relating to the history of Belarus. 110 official heraldic symbols were entered into the State Heraldry Registry of the Republic of Belarus