Tradition formation
The Bavarian State Archives archive documents of constant value. Documents are written or audio-visual information that arises when managing administrative tasks. Authorities, courts and other bodies of the Free State of Bavaria and, under certain conditions, also of the Federal Republic, have to offer their unneededed documents to the state archives of Bavaria in the course of excerpts. The state archives of Bavaria thus have a legal jurisdiction for the archives of these bodies.
Archived documents are also produced by private organisations and private individuals. Insofar as there is a public interest, the Bavarian State Archives can also archive private documents. According to what principles they are doing, the documentation and acquisition profile of the Bavarian State Archives is defined. The acquisition of private archives takes place mainly by donation, in individual cases also by purchase or as a deposit.
In order to determine the archivability of documents, they are evaluated according to archival criteria. The Bavarian State Archives decide on the relevance and significance of the documents for future research. In accordance with the responsibility of the administrative structure, the documents of various bodies must be matched to each other in order to avoid redundancy and to determine the most meaningful transmission. In appropriate cases, Assessment models Define decisions foresight. They also promote the traceability of transmission formation.
In the case of digital documents, further questions shall be resolved after the evaluation if a transfer to the archive is provided. Archiving interfaces that are to be tuned with data-keeping locations and, if necessary, their service providers include, inter alia, definitions of transmission paths, file formats, significant properties and structuring of primary and metadata. As far as possible and expedient, the state archives of Bavaria use standard interfaces such as the xdomea extract client (for electronic processes or files) or the generalized XML extract client (for database contents).
If the remaining value is determined, the Bavarian State Archives will take these documents into their delivery. In this way, the documents are converted into cultural goods, which can be used and evaluated as an authentic source for research on the past according to the archival laws.