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Historical industrial archives. A tool to make people love history
| The historical industrial archives are a part of the cultural heritage of any country, in which industrialization took place. They can be dated at the end of the 18th, 19th century, or even at the early beginnings of the 20th century, and they are a basic source of information for the economic, social and political situation for the time period they cover. In most countries, industrial archives are private property and that had and still has as a result the appearance of some problems for their preservation and their further more valorization. But, fortunately, a lot of them have been preserved and more organizations and industries get interested in maintaining that part of cultural heritage.
A great characteristic of the historical industrial archives is that their content is “user friendly”. That means that the documents are written in a language that can be easily read and understood from the majority of people, who do not need to be specialized academics to do so. Also, because a lot of the archives cover a very recent historical period, a great number of people may be interested in them. Many people or members of their family have worked in the industry, which is part of their life or their family history. This last clue is the most important incentive for people to get in touch with the historical industrial archives and open for them a door to the preservation of memory and the study of history, in general. This is very important, because in nowadays, history is taught in the cinema or through mass media and it is a boring lesson at school. Getting to know the real history is very important for our societies. It is well known that, the people who ignore their history cannot have a future and the real facts exist in the archives.
People think that archives can be consulted only by researchers and academics. Unfortunately, the archives, although they are a cultural good, which means that they have a public educative mission, they have become a good for the elite of knowledge. So, only when people come in touch with documents that they are very close to whom they are, will start to get interested in the study of the general past. Of course it is up to the governments and to the archival communities to find ways to bring every day people to the archives. There are several ways to achieve that.
In my paper I intend to present how people can come back to the archives using the model of historical industrial archives and its benefits for society.
The above proposed paper is based on the research I did for my PhD thesis which is entitled: “The recording of Greek Historical Industrial Archives and a proposal for their electronic cataloguing”, which I will defend shortly at the Department of Cultural Technology and Communication of Aegean University in Greece.
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