Over 200 million archival records and documents on Albanians and the history of the Albanian state, hardly accessible to date, will be now easily accessible thanks to the newly renovated and completely transformed National Archives premises and an archive digitisation system under a project designed to modernize and digitize the country’s historical documents and archival collections. Everyone can now easily access items of their choice online via a similar application to the modules used in more developed countries. The historical and archival documents can also can easily be accessed by visiting the National Archives Institution in person and it takes just 20 seconds to be provided with the user card by categories, which allows everyone to gain access to each document.
Prime Minister Edi Rama visited today the completely renovated and modernized premises of the National Archives and met with a group of researchers, scholars and historians. The Director General of the National Archives Ardit Bido underlined that the archives digitization provides safe storage and preservation of the original archival collections and documents, opening up the possibility of much greater access for the public. Bido also explained the online registration and search steps.
“It is really very easy to complete the registration. Just take a picture and a user card is printed and whole procedure completes in 20 seconds only. The user card is printed once a year and it is provided free of charge. The online archive can be accessed from your homes and it is free of charge,” Bido said.
Last year alone – according to Bido – investments in the country’s national archives are higher than 20 past years combined. “Major investments have been made in the archives for the first time during the Skanderbeg Year in 2018 and we have enabled significant changes for the researchers and students in particular. Since June, our scanning capacity has increased from 600 to 11701 documents a day. So in ten days we can now scan the amount of documents we scanned in one year previously. There are no longer artificial delays. This is the fundamental change in terms of the system,” he added.
PM Rama congratulated the General Directorate of the National Archives for modernizing and transforming the State Archives. “This is a great work done during the Skanderbeg Year as it became a reason to focus more and address an old severe wound. The fact that everything is now is digitized, even the originals are no longer the only option, it is a great guarantee for their preservation. We must also complete the project to ensure preservation and safe storage of all original documents in area of Shkoza and of course continue with other elements concerning the creation of the complex and semi-recreational space for the leisure hours. But the most important thing is that we succeeded in preserving what survived the declassification from the material point of view, not from the substantive point of view,” Prime Minister Rama stated.
Historian Paskal Milo highlighted that making the historical archival documents accessible via the digitisation system is welcome and it is very valuable and helpful for researchers. “After the World War II, the national archives have been open to scholars, but the materials have been in very limited numbers under strict rules on use of archival materials. The National Archives were somehow a kind of secret institution. You needed to gain a special authorization in order to visit the National Archives 50 years ago. Then the archives were liberalized and it is open to every researcher,” Milo said.
“The digital archives are no available to everyone. It helps researchers a lot, but the digitized system makes archives accessible to everyone. The second aspect has to do with the infrastructural care. The support for the Council and the General Directorate of Archives for the arrangement of archives storage in Shkoza is a positive development and more investments should follow, ” said Vasil Tole, a representative of the Academy at the State Archives Council.
The General Directorate of Archives has been supplied with a new laboratory restoration-conservation works of archival files. “An investment during the Skanderbeg Year and it has to do with the preservation and restoration of the archival files. The whole restoration personnel have attended a month-long training programme in one of the Europe’s best restoration laboratories, which is the Istanbul laboratory. Second, we have invested in the raw material, because today’s restoration is no longer a process you can easily interfered with, but a process where you tend to preserve authenticity as much as possible, ” Director Bido said.
The technological developments in the General Directorate of Archives have aligned the Albanian archives with the European archives. General Directorate of Archives has become a full member of the Archives Portal Europe Foundation. This makes the Albanian National Archives Directorate the first country in the Western Balkans part of the Archives Portal Europe Foundation.
