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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- The Science of Archiving is crucial in preserving the history of the GDR, particularly in regions like Erfurt, where numerous archives, including communal, economic, state, and church archives, are located in Thuringia.
- The digitization of East Germany's records, housed in these archives, presents a significant opportunity to make historical events or narratives more accessible and to ensure their longevity, even as analog records continue to dominate.
- The process of digitizing GDR's records, stored in the archives of Thuringia, is a challenging task due to the poor quality of the paper used in the last years of the GDR, which can rapidly decay with time.
- The Chairman of the State Association of Archivists and Archivists, Jens Riederer, emphasized the importance of digitizing East Germany's records, noting that despite the vast advancements in digital technology, analog transmission remains the majority in archives.
Source: www.stern.de
