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 - Oldenhage, Klaus: Scope and Aims of Mobility. A German View / Portée et buts de la mobilité. Un point de vue allemand (english 279 - français 285)
3. Session/Séance: Oldenhage, Scope and Aims of mobility. A German view But my archival legal philosophy and my ability to convince was basicly developed when being sent to the US National Archives. I profited from the outstanding experience shared with archivists in particular from Denmark, the Netherlands, Ireland and the United Kingdom when we tried to introduce a liberal archival policy in the discussions on access to EEC and WEU (BTO) records during the relevant expert meetings in Brussels and London. We did not succeed in all respects but we may say that for instance the application of the 30-years-rule to EC archives is a remarkable progress at least in comparison with other international or supranational organisations. 7. Failures From a German viewpoint, there are many incomplete areas of cooperation. In the field of preservation and conservation there are no language barriers, but we failed despite of that in developing the bitterly needed international cooperation in this most important field at least as paper archives are concerned. Regional exceptions in particular in Baden-Württemberg and Lower Saxony do not prove the opposite. Standardization is an English word for which I do not know a proper German translation. Can we really afford to live without standardized description - not to speak about appraisal - even within Germany archives? I doubt. The examples could be continued. Europa will force us to become better or our successors will have to pay a price which might be too high. From a German viewpoint, the good services of the ICA are not used properly. There is, of course, no need to direct ball kinds of international, multilateral or bilateral archival activities from the ICA Paris headquarters, but there is an urgent need to keep ICA Secretariat informed of all professional activities which are of some importance for more than one national archival community so as to avoid double work and waste of time, waste of energy and waste of money. ICA tries hard to reach not only national directors or highly specialised experts. The variety of congresses, conferences, meetings and works of sections, commissions, committees and ad-hoc working groups is to be acknowledged and better used by mid-career as well as by than central gouvernment archivists. We do need cooperation at all levels and in all fields. Mobility, therefore, does not mean the same for everybody. It depends more often than we like on the special situation. Does that mean that there are no recommendations to be made? It does not. 8. Some Recommendations a) Language The archival world is not billingual English-French. We have to include experiences spelled out in other tongues if we really want to share experiences. More translations of standard literature are needed as well as the right to use the mother tongue in the very field in which an archivist is an expert. Scholarly accuracy depends on linguistic accuracy. I dare to recommend as a first example that the 283
