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Danish National Archives
The following is copied and forwarded from the UK archives-nra list. Thought it would be of interest to all. Pls take note of the Minister's quote.
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Colleagues will, I think, be alarmed to hear some dire news from the Danish
National Archives.
Denmark has for some time been suffering the sort of economic downturn that
we here experienced in the early nineties, but possibly worse.
Consequently cuts are the order of the day. A new government has just
taken up the reains, including a new Minister for Cultural Affairs.
One of the first things the new Minister did was to cancel the construction
of the new National Archive building, which had progressed so far as site
preparations and foundations. In explaining his reasoning, the Minister
publicly (and more than once I understand) asked, "why should the public
bother about archives, they are only yellowing old paper?". The last
utterence of this sort, at an event in Sweden two weeks ago, is being
responded to be the Swedish government and especially the archive community
there.
This environment of disregard for the fundamental importance of archives is
alarming. What is even more saddening is the response, during the past few
months, of the National Archives administration itself to the cuts it is
having to impose. They have decided that they can do without preservation
and conservation expertise and are to cut completely the conservation
department. To my knowledge, this could be the only national archive in
the developed world that has no preservation and conservation expertise on
the staff.
I would urge leaders of the archive community to consider how they might
respond to these extraordinary events. As chairman of the United Kingdom
Institute for Conservation, I shall be writing to express my Institute's
concern about the developments, in particular questioning the principle
that the archival heritage of a nation can be managed for the future with
no preservation oversight.
The details of the Danish Minister for Cultural Affairs are:
Kulturminister Brian Mikkelsen
Kulturministeriet
Nybrogade 2
DK- 1203 Copenhagen K
Chris Woods
UKIC
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Peter A. Kurilecz CRM, CA
Richmond, Va
pakurilecz@aol.com
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