14th-19th March 2016
A week of events to be voice of thousands of kilometres of documents which are the extraordinary heritage of Italian Archives
Without Archives, we lose our heritage, we lose our documents which are our history and our identity. We lose the opportunity to learn from the past and build the present and the future. We risk missing the charge to use our citizens’ rights in our everyday life: in our relations with governments, at banks as customers, at the doctor’s as patients, when we buy services, at work place.
The Archives are everyone’s patrimony. They document ongoing activities, they guarantee rights and preserve the memory. The Archives are everywhere and represent various contexts, both public and private ones: public offices, local administrations, hospitals, schools, military institutions, tribunals, companies, families …
The aim of archives and archivists who work within their communities is to avoid losing this treasure.
Without law archives trials couldn’t be conducted, cases couldn’t be reopened when new evidence arises. Without archives important work-related lawsuits couldn’t be held before a court, such as the asbestos-related trials. Without case studies and data preserved in scientific archives, research couldn’t go on and we couldn’t have done many fundamental discoveries. Doctors couldn’t study diseases and find and experiment new therapies. Without hospitals archives, our clinical life couldn’t be reconstructed and doctors wouldn’t have the documents they need to take care of us. Without the documents that give us data about the weather conditions trough the centuries, we couldn’t study climate changes. Without historical cartography and documents that describe the landscape evolution, we couldn’t study the environment and prevent floods and landslides. We couldn’t plan actions on landscape such as evaluation of earthquakes consequences (And, unfortunately we’re not doing enough!). Without archives, it wouldn’t be possible to know the violence of dictatorships, to analyse the politics over the years. We couldn’t investigate on terrorism, massacres, mafia.
The Italian National Association of Archivist (ANAI) promotes a week full of events in order to introduce citizens to our national rich archival heritage and to call on governments to guarantee appropriate resources to protect and promote this heritage, and to manage digital preservation with full awareness. Digital documents have many advantages but expose to risks which we have to evaluate immediately and carefully.
- Guarantee the safeguard of thousands of kilometres of archives all over the Country
- Manage both selection and appraisal
- Preside over the transition from paper to digital by nears of professional skills.
The way we build our archives is the representation of how we conceive social relationships and also the society that we would live to build.