Aims

At the end of this course, the student will be familiar with the principles, methods and techniques of adminstrating archive documents, not only in the traditional sense of "collections of pieces, titles, documents, ancient dossiers", but also in the sense of "documents necessary for the functioning of an institution, association, business or activity (ex. : insurance, justice, police, medical or scholastic files, etc. ...)", in their ancient and contemporary forms, whatever the material support. He will also have begun to use them.

Main themes

Archiveconomy or archivistics is the scientific discipline dedicated to the theory and practices related to organizing and managing archives. After a brief presentation of its history, its terminology and different sorts of training in managing archives, we will successively examine archive producers, conservation problems, treatment, transmitting and showing archives to advantage, specific questions new archives pose, and finally the organization of archives in Belgium and abroad.

Content and teaching methods

Content : After having examined the notion of archives and its evolution, as well as the history of their managament and institutions in charge of conservation, inventorying and archivist training, on the national, as well as international level, the course will deal with the following points, systematically distinguishing the case of dead or ancient archives and that of living archives :1) classification of archive documents and juridical rules in application; 2) archives in formation and pre-archivage; 3) entering documents in archives, sorting and elimination; 4) classifying research tools (summary lists, guides, repertories, inventories, ...); 5) communication : rules, practices, questions; 6) material conservation (buildings, storage and shelving, public and non-public workplaces, etc. ...); 7) special archivistics (by category of funds, by category of documents, notably seals and sealed documents, figurative documents, microfilms, audio-visual documents, electronic documents); 8) treatment and restoration of damaged documents; 9) scientific and cultural rôles of archives.

Other information (prerequisite, evaluation (assessment methods), course materials recommended readings, ...)

Evaluation : written examination and inventory of a fund (or part of a fund) of archives.
Teaching materials : Student notes.
Course plan and bibliographical orientation.

Other credits in programs