As a new e-learning module on the homepage of the Bavarian State Archives, the 4th July 2019 at 10.00 a.m. the “Small Archives” presented and unlocked (https://www.gda. bayern.de/service/archivalienkunde/). The module Prof. Dr. Joachim Wild, Director of the Main State Archive a.D., has worked out the subject “Archival Studies” for 30 years at the Bavarian Archive School, the central educational institution for archivists in Bavaria.
Currently, the state archives of Bavaria store well 47 million originals from 777 to today. If you put all archives together, you could easily bridge the distance from Munich to Nuremberg. About the homepage and the finder database (https://www.gda.bayern.de/service/finding agent database/) are currently 100,000 archives Digitalisate available. Since most archives comprise several pages, this results in the fair number 3.5 million available images. These quantities already make it clear that any form of digital access to archives will always be a part of the written tradition of Bavaria. The focus is on the state archives of Bavaria, therefore, the digital collection of directories and development information. This information is not only available through the homepage, but is also fed via interfaces into important portals such as the Archive Portal D and from there into the EUROPEANA. Another focus is the digitization of audiovisual archives. Due to the shortevity of storage media such as film, video and CD, the total loss of information threatens here. Added to this is the digitization of selected backbone stocks and the provision of e-learning modules, which allow all groups of persons to familiarize themselves with archived goods and research them in the archive.
With the “Small archival studies” want to offer the Bavarian State Archives a quick entry into the archival source. All archival genres to be found in state archives are presented with an explanatory text and an illustration: from medieval documents, files and official books, posters, leaflets, photographs to digital documents. The new offer complements the already existing areas of “School Discover Archive” (https://www.gda.bayern.de/service/school-entdecke-archive orhttps://www.gda.bayern.de/kulturerbejahr) and Digital Writing (https://www.gda.bayern.de/DigitalPublicity/).
The ‘Digital font’ is a training platform for deciphering German and Latin manuscripts. Documents were handwritten for many centuries. Learning older fonts is therefore often the only way to use original sources. Automated text recognition also quickly reaches its limits in handwritten documents.
To European Year of Culture 2018 the module Discover Schools Archive: using concrete examples from the Middle Ages to the 20th century Century students are brought to historical traditions, to sources and thus to archives. The thematic blocks or individual presented archives can be integrated into school classes and are assistance and guidance for their own research. As archives, unlike libraries and museums, are not known to everyone, the tasks of the archives, their responsibilities, their use and the archivist profession are also presented.
It is a goal of the state archives of Bavaria, pupils and students to inspire archives and the cultural property stored there. Important building blocks on this path are the development of digital offers, research from the local PC and cooperation with schools, universities and other educational institutions. With the Universities Passau (Master's degree program "Historical Sciences") and Regensburg (“Public History and Cultural Education”) archivists want to generate added value and build networks directly with research.
After prior registration, the state archives offer housekeeping. History is to be made tangible and, above all, pupils of historical tradition are to be brought forward. The exhibitions presented in the context of historical-political educational work are gradually complemented by archive educational materials that are provided online.
Both for schools and for research institutions there is an offer to carry out teaching units in the state archives. In addition to knowing the institution archive, there is the possibility to work with source material. Archivists support the selection of suitable sources. Contact persons are available in each of the state archives.
Submitted on: 04.07.2019