Winter School on Archival Management

From 5 until 14 November 2019, the National Archives of the Netherlands (NAN) hosted an international Winter School: “Managing Archives. Challenges and chances for the twenty-first century archivist” in the Hague. A total of 16 participants were invited from NAN’s Shared Cultural Heritage partner countries: Brazil, India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Suriname and South Africa.

Twenty-first century challenges

The training was organised for (senior) archival professionals to reflect on and gain more in-depth knowledge about specific aspects of modern day archival management and recordkeeping. The topics covered ranged from acquisition from paper archives, to preservation of digital files in an electronic repository; from collection management systems to transcribing documents with semi-automatic handwritten text recognition software. The programme consisted of practice-based lectures, assignments, discussions and fieldtrips to other Dutch (archival) institutions, like the Amsterdam City Archives and The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision.

Final meeting

During a final meeting on Thursday 14 November, the participants reflected on what they learned during the Winter School, and gave presentations on how they could implement this knowledge in their working practice. “We can now make new suggestions and take small steps with our organisation to implement the things we’ve learned”, one participant said.