01/01/2001
EDITORIAL
The 1st Archivist without Borders Workshops (AsF)
The 1st AsF Workshops will take place on October 26 and 27 in the Maritime Museum of Barcelona. The theme of the workshops will be ‘Protection of Archival Heritage within the area of International Cooperation'. The workshops came out of the idea of hosting a biannual meeting point for archive professionals who are interested in development and aid issues. The goal of these workshops is to create a space for dialogue and participation where problems and issues of archival heritage in international cooperation can be set out, analysed and debated. After almost four years since the foundation of AsF in 1998, we believe that the time has arrived to provide workshops on a continuous basis for members and interested parties. These biannual workshops will serve to spread information on the activities of AsF and on other themes close to our aims and ends. The workshops will have thematic content. Accordingly, the first day will deal with the State Security archives of the since departed regimes and the conservation and treatment of archives in times of conflict and political transition. A second presentation will cover the area of oral history and its role in the recovery of historical memory. We expect that work with oral history will be common in future undertakings of AsF. The importance of oral history is well known as a tool for the recovery of collective memory and identity, above all in those countries that have lost, through a variety of reasons, their archival heritage. To close the day, a round table discussion will hold a debate open to all. The second day will begin with a presentation on the archivist's role in the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), areas of responsibility and the work and experiences of recent years, from an archivist's viewpoint. Members and partners of AsF will then present projects undertaken by AsF in Malabo (Equatorial Guinea) and Sarajevo (Bosnia-Herzegovina). An opportunity for debate will follow. To finish, Arcadi Olivares, vice-president of Justícia I Pau (Justice and Peace), economist and professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, will give the closing address. After the public acts of the workshops, AsF members will meet in Ordinary and Extraordinary General Assembly. All of the presentations, discussions, and debates will be collected together in a publication for those members who live distant from AsF offices and for those who cannot attend the workshops. We hope that the workshops will form a means of communicating and publicising experiences of cooperation in the area of heritage collections and that at the same time they will fill a space in the debate in our profession. Hopefully we will make a contribution beyond archive collections to the promotion and awareness of the need to protect, conserve and recover cultural heritage in danger of disappearance, towards the preservation of collective memory in civil society.
Newsletter - 3 (pdf 37 Kb)