Arhivski vjesnik, Vol. 46 No. 1, 2003.
Review article
Archives and non-governmental non-profitable organizations: supervision of the associations and the acquisition policy
Melina Lučić
Abstract
The civil society, known as the so-called third sector, represents the whole spectre of subjects among, which are also the associations (today in Croatia there are more than 17000 associations). Here it is the case of some new field of records creators, and the archives have not been preoccupied with it so far. Nevertheless certain number of associations shall not be of interest for the archives, however some care should be taken for the scientific associations and specialised one with long tradition and their special contribution to the Croatian culture and science, particularly in developing and preserving the Croatian national identity and level of recognition, those generating the exchange of knowledge within the branch and among the departments, advertising the line of work and raising the scientific, cultural and technical potential. For some of the selected associations it is much easier to establish the possible acquisition policy as well the type of archives which should be involved in the issue due to the way the associations have been structured. Very good examples are technical, sports associations and the associations from the Croatian War of Independence thanks to their hierarchy and by creating the system of umbrella associations and alliances. The following criterion can be applied in these cases: the umbrella associations under the authority of the Croatian State Archives, county and municipality branches under the authority of regional state archives. The associations should be appraised in order to establish their importance and role, tradition and value for the region where they are active, their field of activity and territorial presence, the range and the organisation of their activity, their size and adequate presence of different kinds of societies. Once the categorisation of associations is established and defined, it has to be submitted to re-examination, changes and amendments, since there are daily changes within societies, some get closed down and some new have been founded. Past restraint exercised by the archives toward the associations has probably been due to the insufficient number of people included in supervision of work of those creating the archival material outside the archives, inadequately defined evaluation criteria and deficient selection of the vast number of non-governmental organisations and lack of any knowledge about their importance in the modern civil society. Since the issue here is the private archives, when supervision is concerned, establishing contacts with responsible persons and their wining over to a satisfactory and worthy co-operation, some actions have to be undertaken however on equal footing, like partnership relations among archives and associations, the paternalistic approach, any kind of giving orders should be avoided, and friendly approach should be the priority. The associations should be persuaded that it is in their best interest, in order to preserve the archives, to be filed away/shelved in the institutions founded for that purpose
Keywords
associations; private archives; appraisal of associations; categorisation of associations; acquisition policy of archives
Hrčak ID:
7366
URI
Publication date:
26.3.2004.
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