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Conserving East Germany's records is a unique challenge for repositories.

In the realm of digitization, archiving remains focused on the conservation of paper documents. This becomes especially complex when dealing with files associated with specific contexts.

Im Magazin des Stadtarchivs Erfurt lagern historische Dokumente.
Im Magazin des Stadtarchivs Erfurt lagern historische Dokumente.

Historical events or narratives retold in a new way. - Conserving East Germany's records is a unique challenge for repositories.

The advancement in digital technology doesn't affect the basic issue archives face - acquiring paper documents. Jens Riederer, the chairman of the State Association of Archivists and Archivists, emphasized this on Monday, stating, "These old papers are still endangered, and even more so as the years pass." He further noted that this issue is aggravated in the eastern federal states. The countless documents contain low-quality paper common in the last years of the GDR, causing them to rapidly decay.

In response to a question about the significance of digitalization, Riederer said, "Everyone talks about digital records, electronic communication, and social media. But we can't forget that analog transmission hasn't vanished into bits and bytes in archives; it remains the majority. That's why our association plans to explore the traditional archival topic of preserving records during the 65th Archive Day on Tuesday and Wednesday in Weimar."

The primary focus for small archives at the conference is how to maintain their paper records without spending a fortune. Professionals from larger government archives shared practical methods and techniques to accomplish this.

Thuringia is home to roughly 150 communal, economic, state, and church archives.

Here's the event program: https://www.thueringer-archivtag.de/programm-2022

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Source: www.stern.de

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