Arhivski vjesnik, Vol. 61 No. 1, 2018.
Review article
The Features and the Experiences in Collecting Archives of the Private Holders from the Homeland War
Ivan Radoš
; Croatian Memorial-Documentation Centre of the Homeland War, Zagreb, Croatia
Tomislav Šulj
orcid.org/0000-0003-3682-7977
; Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
For different reasons the important records from the period of the Homeland War were also kept or are still kept by the private holders, whether these records were created by institutions or individuals, associations and organizations. By acknowledging the importance of such records and the sensitivity in its acquiring the Croatian Memorial-Documentation Centre of the Homeland War has started to collect them ever since it was established in 2005. By establishing the Centre as the central institution for archival and scientific research of the Homeland
War, the Centre is recognised in the public as a trustworthy institution to which everyone interested to hand over the records can turn to. The private holders of the archives from the Homeland War can be divided into those who are the creators of archives and those who in various ways became possessors of public archives. The Centre can acquire records of private holders in two ways; mostly through donations, and partly by purchasing records that are particularly valuable and that were created as someone’s authorship. After acquiring, the records are
registered, appraised and classified, after which they form individual fonds or they supplement existing fonds and collections. Among the conventional archives, besides military documentation, the Centre acquired various newspapers, magazines and official papers, military maps, political and military posters, caricatures etc. The majority of the acquired records were digitized, due to a more efficient storage and keeping, as well as the desire of holders to keep the originals. The majority of archives from private holders are unconventional records (photographs, video and audio clips), i.e. the re-recorded and digitized conventional records. The archives acquired from individual private holders were in terms of subject and quantity appraised as a rounded off whole and after the archival processing it was decided to form personal papers. By the end of 2016 the Centre had ten of them. Besides these, the Centre also stores memoirist records of private holders, whether it concerns records created by structured interviews or written entries of the direct participants of the Homeland War. The Centre published part of these in 17 books as part of its publishing activity. Also, several photo-monographs were published based on the received or bought photographs from the private holders. Among the private holders from which the Centre got the archives are also the historians-researchers who gave or deposited in the Centre the materials they used, after finishing a certain research or a book. The majority of the acquired and processed archives of private holders are available to researchers through fonds and collections of the Centre. The basic problem regarding the acquiring of the records of private holders pertains to certain indistinctness in the Act on the Archives and the ignorance of holders regarding their obligations prescribed by the law which entails relinquishing of the public archives to the Centre. Besides ignorance, some of the holders advertently kept these records in their keeping mostly out of fear of misuse and the negative perception of the activity of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. However, after the acquittal of the generals Gotovina and Markač in late 2012 and the greater public recognisability of the Centre, the inflow of archives from public holders has been increased. Another problem in acquiring records of this kind is the parallel activity of certain individuals and associations with similar archival activities. As far as arranging is concerned, due to the large quantities of acquired records and their stockpiling in the future it will be necessary to pay greater attention to their appraisal and disposal. Still, it could be said that the archives of the private holders prominently features in the Centre’s professional archival policy and that so far the important amount of such records had been acquired. Despite certain difficulties concerning their processing, these records
are an important source for archivists, researchers and historians, particularly for subjects that are wider than the more usual political and military ones.
Keywords
archives; Homeland War; private holders; acquiring archives
Hrčak ID:
216939
URI
Publication date:
14.9.2018.
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