20th International Archival Day and the Autumn Archival School in Trieste, Italy, 10-16 Oct 2010
Regular events were held in the framework of the 20th International Archival Day and the Autumn Archival School in Trieste, Italy, from October 10th to 16th.
The events were organized by the International Institute for Archival Science of Trieste and Maribore (IIAS) with the support of the State Archive of Trieste and the Central European Initiative (CEI).
The main topic at the 20th International Archival Day Conference was “Archival Legislation” (with accent on the legal regulation of access to archival documents). The other topic was “Web Sites Dedicated to Archives”. Participants at the conference were the IIAS members representing Austria, Belarus, Germany, Israel, Spain, Italy, Canada, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, France, Montenegro and Czechia and the guests from Great Britain, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Greece, Malaysia, Romania, Oman Sultanate, Croatia and Estonia.
The working languages were English, Italian and Slovenian.
The conference (11-12 October) was held in two sessions on the above topics. The Belarusian side presented a report on the topic “Access to Archival Information: Legislation and Practice” (in English) delivered by the Director of the Belarusian Research Institute of Records Management and Archival Science (BelNIIDAD) Andrei Rybakov. Summary of the papers presented at the conference are published in “Atlanti” 2010.
In debates on the first day of the conference it was recognized that most clearly and transparently the issues of access to archives and archival documents are reflected in the Belarusian legislation. Ch. Kecksemeti, Former General Director of ICA, stressed in his speech that the legal regulation of access to archival information in Belarus meets to the highest degree the recommendations on the issue adopted in 2000 by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, and in their implementation in national legislation Belarus is ahead of many countries of the European Union. The Italian archivists became interested in the legislation norms on administrative responsibility for the illegal refusal of access to archival documents established by the Code of Administrative Offences of the Republic of Belarus and the practices of their use.
In the framework of the IIAS Autumn Archival School (13-16 October) the BelNIIDAD director A. Rybakov and the VNIIDAD director M. Larin offered to the school audience a joint lecture on the topic “Archival Web Sites in Belarus and Russia” (in English), with the presentation of websites “Archives of Belarus”, “Archives of Russia”, and other websites of research institutions in their charge. The presentation was prepared as part of the Plan of Joint Actions of the Department for Archives and Records Management of the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Belarus and the Federal Archival Agency of Russia. When answering the audience questions, the lecturers noted of the website role and potentiality to meet the users needs for archival information, the distribution of responsibilities between archivists and software engineers in design and content development of archival websites, perspectives of website development and improvement.