Sonderband 2. International Council on Archives. Dritte Europäische Archivkonferenz, Wien 11. bis 15. Mai 1993. Tagungsprotokolle (1996)

3. Session / Séance. Sharing of Experience and Exchange of Staff / Partage d’Expériences et Echange des Personnes - Huyda, Richard: Coordination Research in Archival Sience and Dissemination of Professional Information / Coordination de la recherche en archivistique et diffusion de l’information professionnelle (english 231 - français 251)

In her view, this state of affairs is a major asset for the profession. Its consequences interms of research are highly significant, and for this reason she argues that, despite a natural tendency in the teaching function to specialize:

As this process takes place, it would be a great mistake to let the wall between practitioners and educators be built brick by brick over the next few decades. Instead, archivists have a tremendous opportunity to adopt a different model of how their profession will continue to develop and function in the future. Such a model would necessarily extend across all aspects of the profession, but would be particularly important as regards research. Its basic premise is that practitioners and academics, whatever their individual backgrounds, should (indeed must) be equal partners in shaping the future of all aspects of the profession .

With the arrival of multi-functional archival science as described by Angelika Menne-Haritz to the Xllth International Congress of Archives17 18, and given the multidisciplinary aspect already mentioned, many researchers in other disciplines find themselves associated indirectly with archivists properly so-called.

Let us first mention the researchers in sister disciplines in the general field of information science, who are customarily librarians, museologists or records keepers by profession.

Then come the specialists and scholars in the other disciplines of historical and administrative science such as, on the one hand, paleographers, numismatists, sigillographers, genealogists, and specialists in diplomacy, and on the other hand, the specialists in management, marketing, human resource management, and in organization and methods.

Finally, we also include the technical specialists who gravitate around archival science and are computer experts and information systems experts or laboratory and scientific technicians. The former are in fact indispensable for the administration of documents and electronic archives and the automation of procedures connected with the functions of archival practice, while the latter are mainly involved in the physical conservation of documents and their reproduction.

Purposes of disseminating professional information

All these specialists, who are intermittently or steadily involved in the research and development field, subsist on three things: raw data and reflections or findings from prior research.

This observation is significant if we are to fully grasp the range of information useful for research, which we’ll subsequently term „professional information“.

The raw data that we have just referred to are made up of statistics, the products of inquiries and surveys, standards, policies, procedures and directives, minutes of discussion meetings, financial statements, activity reports, general information brochures, disaster plans - in short, any recorded information that arises from the ongoing activities of our archival institutions or professional associations in this field.

3. Session/Séance: Marcoux - Huyda, Coordinating Research in archivai Science

17 Ibidem, p. 149.

Menne-Haritz, Angelika: Archival education: preparing the professionto meet the needs of Society in the twenty-first century, in: Papers of the XII* International Congress on Archives, Montréal 1992 (ARCHIVUM, vol. XXXIX), p. 261-283.

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