Sonderband 2. International Council on Archives. Dritte Europäische Archivkonferenz, Wien 11. bis 15. Mai 1993. Tagungsprotokolle (1996)
1. Session / Séance. Experiences gained, current Situation, future Prospects / Expériences acquises, Situation actuelle, Perspectives futures - Körmendy, Lajos: International Cooperation in Europe. A Survey / Programmes de Coopération internationale des archives en Europe. Un bilan (english 13 - français 27)
tion establishments provided a general training and regularly welcomed foreign participants. Training of this kind is expensive and it is difficult to guarantee the appropriate level. It is not enough to invite some well-know teachers to give interesting lectures for a few weeks or months; the international clientèle also needs to see archive practice, or rather, practices. This means that the establishment needs to be able to draw on a well-developed infrastructure in both educational and archive terms. The linguistic question should not be overlooked: courses need to be conducted in a language acceptable to the international professional community. It is therefore scarcely surprising that there should be so few establishments playing the role of international training centres. The Stage technique international d 'archives organized by the Direction des Archives de France, certainly meets all the conditions for playing such a role. Every year, 25-30 foreign archivists take part in this three-month course, making about 300 participants over the last eleven years. The Stage was the sole educational institution specifically named in the replies to the questionnaire. Six countries wrote that they sent their archivists there, but we may presume that the nine other countries which gave France as the country to which they send their archivists were thinking of the Stage too. Some other establishments do, on a more or less regular basis, take in foreign archivists for short courses, e. g. the University of Liverpool (UK) or the Modern Archives Institute in the USA. Although there may be few permanent establishments, there are plenty of courses teaching a specific subject or area of archive work which are organized on a non-periodic basis. Most of these courses are organized under the aegis of the ICA in Western countries. We have already referred to the courses organized by the CIBAL; the Utah Genealogical Society regularly organizes microfilming courses; Canada, in its replay, noted courses on conservation and records management; Germany mentioned microfilming and restoration courses, etc. One might think that on the eve of European integration, archives would be concerned about the problem of foreign diplomas for archivists. The replies reveal that the directors take a sanguine approach: three countries (Albania, Yugoslavia and the Vatican) unconditionally accepted foreign diplomas, while 9 countries accepted them under certain conditions (e. g. the country awarding the diploma should be a member of the EC, or the recognition of the diploma should be governed by a bilateral agreement, etc.), five countries rejected them, and 11 countries were either undecided or could not provide an answer to the question. This demonstrates that a large-scale immigration of archivists is not expected in Europe. 4 .4. Other Areas of Cooperation Naturally, archives have many other possibilities for cooperation. For example, exhibitions ranging from straightforward loans of documents to jointly organized exhibitions. It is worth drawing attention to the case of the Burgenländisches Landesarchiv (Austria) which for years invited archivists from neighbouring countries to 1. Session/Séance: Körmendy, International archival Cooperation 21
