ARHIVSKI VJESNIK 42. (ZAGREB, 1999.)

Strana - 108

J. van den Broek, Current developments in the archival network in the Netherlands, Arh. vjesn., god. 42(1999), str. 103-112 pointed municipal archivist took care of those that originated from the town. Because state and municipal archives shared a common accomodation the splitting up caused no serious trouble for the public. Only in relatively recent times, in the seventies, the situation became really inconvenient as lack of space in the common building forced the municipal archives to move to a building in another part of the town. This fysical separation happened to take place at the same time as the public interest in archival information showed a sudden increase. A rapid growing number of professionals and amateurs had to be referred from one archive to the other and vice versa. For the visitors the reason why was often hard to understand. And really, it takes some time to explain to people who have no special knowledge of institutional history why one should go to the State Archive in order to find the records of the Chamber of Commerce of the town of Groningen, but that you can find the archive of the medieval monastery of Ter Apel, some 50 kilometers outside the town, in the municipal archives. When, in the middle of the eighties, my colleague in the state archive was working out plans for a new repository, this seemed to offer a splendid opportunity to do something about this problem. Unfortunately, the State Archival Service wouldn't hear of a close co-operation in a new common building. A few years later, when suddenly the decision was made to accomodate the State Archive in a new large multipurpose office building, I was told to prepare plans for moving to the same building and to find out in what ways state and municipal archives should be able to co-operate without losing their independence and identity. I shall not bother you with a comprehensive survey of all problems we encountered in making plans for the construction of the building and the co-operation. The lack of a clear idea of the goal we were supposed to reach, the doctrine that both institutions should embark on this enterprise on equal terms, as well as the fact that company cultures in state and municipal archives had grown far apart, all this made that the preparations went on rather laboriously. Our guiding line was that at least the public should gain and that we should do everything to present researchers a common face. As the new archives building opened its doors, in the summer of 1997, the results of our efforts did not look that bad, after all. A common entrance and exposition hall, a common reception and canteen, common meeting rooms and a large, magnificent reading room with one single counter, one common general survey of the holdings and one series of finding aids. The public appreciated the new facilities even more than we had expected and hoped for. Staff members however were less happy. From the first day on daily practice showed that front and back office are so closely interconnected, that it is absolutely impossible to have two different sections in charge of custody of the holdings behind an integrated section serving the public. 108