Język Polski
English
Archiwa społeczne – wprowadzenie do problematyki
Przegląd Archiwalny Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej, No. 12 (2019), pages: 53–64
Publication date: 2023-04-05
PDF (Język Polski)
Abstract
The wide scope of the concept “social archive” raises terminological difficulties that contemporary archival science faces. Referring to the definition of “archive”, formulated by Bohdan Ryszewski, the author suggests – from the point of view of archival science considered both as a scientific discipline and field of practice – to recognize the following as a “social archive”: 1) organizations (institutions) or their departments specifically dealing with archival materials created by specific social groups, 2) archival collections – archival resources created by a specific social group, 3) storage locations for archival materials whose creators, or more precisely archivists, were specific social groups. The author considers this social provenance of the created, collected, stored, developed and shared archives as crucial in recognizing and granting the status of a social archive, considered from the point of view of archival science. In addition to the social archives defined in the three aforementioned meanings which create or will create a national archive resource, there are many so-called social archives (in the colloquial sense), which collect and store documentation of social life in the form of various collections. This type of activity is dealt with by departments of social life documentation organized by many institutions, mainly libraries and museums. In English terminology, this movement is referred to as LAM (Libraries, Archives, Museums). The correlations, or in principle, the ambiguity of social archive used in the various meanings are shown with specific examples.
