mation on archival institutions and bibliographies were being published should remain the only vehicle for the distribution of internationally important texts. Since the mid-fifties, however, Archivum was accompanied by the Proceedings (Actes) of a new series of meetings dedicated to the profession: the Conferences Internationales de la Table Ronde des Archives, short CITRA. The initiative for these meetings was taken by Charles Braibant, the French national archivist and second president of ICA, who wanted the directors of archival institutions to meet more frequently than only at international congresses. The Round Tables were held under the auspices of ICA, but operated independently. The first Round Table in Paris 1954 was attended by representatives from eleven European countries. From that year onward, in the intervals between congresses a limited club of archivists convened annually: directors of national archives services and presidents of professional associations, supplemented by members of ICA's Executive Committee, archivists of affiliated international organisations (like the United Nations, Unesco and FAO) and specially invited experts and observers. Although state archives strongly dominated CITRA and one could therefore expect that politics might play an important role in the deliberations, in reality the themes under discussion were mainly of professional interest. Topics of archives administration, methods and practices were debated with reference to reports especially written for the occasion of the Round Table. From its very start CITRA attracted a large attendance, partly because Unesco took a share of travel and other costs. In view of the composition of its attendance, in these early years CITRA could better have been named CETRA, being a purely European meeting. As a whole, in its first stage ICA was almost exclusively engaged in the study of general professional issues and the realisation of particular projects for which specialised working parties (e.g. for terminology, bibliography and sigillography) were established. 2.7 A changing world A major theme of congresses and Round Tables had been the problem of scholarly use of and access to archives, the promotion of which had been adop ted as one of the main goals of ICA. This general objective of ICA gained a central position in international archival consciousness as, at the end of the fifties, ICA finished its period of building up its organisation and widened its horizon. It was stimulated to do so by the rapid changes the world went through in those years. Since the end of World War II empires which for centuries had kept the world in a fixed power system and moulded the minds of men when thinking of other parts of the world began to crumble and fall apart. As a result new countries arose and people had to redefine their ideas about foreign cultures and international relationships. A constantly increasing number of independent states needed historical documentation and archives for the study of their past. As a consequence of former conditions, many of the sources for the history of newly independent nations were to be found in the repositories of the metropoli tan countries. In order to facilitate research in these archives, finding-aids had to be developed and published. ICA recognised this need as a challenge to its own commitment and dedicated its first long-term project to the interests of the new independent states. The project, comprehending the production of a series of finding-aids named Guides to the Sources of the History of Nations was adopted by Unesco in 1958 and started a year later. With this series ICA and Unesco wanted "to draw attention to the existence of an extensive and widely dispersed body of materials, as yet unexploited, which would allow us to renew our acquaintance with the history."36 In collaboration with the relevant national members ICA set up a tripartite series of guides to archival sources of countries in Latin America and the Caribbean region, Sub-Sahara Africa, and Asia, including Oceania, the reali sation of which took several decades. An International Technical Committee co-ordinated the participating national committees. The guides have been published in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish, and in oriental languages too. Although efforts were made to distribute the guides as widely as possible and many of them attracted an enjoyable interest of, for example, African archivists, it must regrettably be acknowledged that many of the guides are unknown and not to be found, even in the target countries!37 The Guides had been intended to play an important role in providing the new independent nations with a history of their own, and strengthening their identity. The fact, however, that metropolitan countries often took the archives of colonial administrations with them together with the withdrawal of the administration system deprived the new countries, generally speaking, not only of local archival institutions but also of traditions and experience in records keeping. Sometimes archives were deficient because the former administration had been mainly interested in records of current relevance, as was the case in the British Commonwealth. In those countries where colonial filing systems subsis ted archivists discovered that they did not suit the purposes of national administration.38 Another persistent problem was and remains the lack of archival awareness. It would be, though, fully mistaken to think that this complaint applies only to so-called developing countries. What is different, actually, is the fact that the lack of interest in archives in young countries seems often to be disguised in ideological phrases, underlining the break with the colonial past. Archives are being regarded as superfluous luxury institutions, product[s] of imperialism, of alien record keeping traditions. Hence, keeping archives was often seen as less important than recording oral history and traditions."39 Archivists in developing countries often were and are caught in a vicious circle in which the authorities' lack of archival consciousness prevented the abolition of professional and material backwardness, the persistence of which, in its turn, fortified authorities in their disparaging attitude towards archives and archivists. In this situation archivists in the so-called Third World applied to ICA for help, arguing that international archival help were not only a matter of humanity or professional solidarity, but also of rehabilitation. DE PROFESSIE 164 JAN VAN DEN BROEK FROM BRUSSELS TO BEIJING 36 Quoted from the general introduction to the Guides, p. xi. 37 Eckhart G. Franz, "Für ein internationales Mikrofilmprogramm zum Auf- und Ausbau nationaler Archiviiberlieferungen in der Dritten Welt", in Friedrich P. Kahlenberg, ed., Aus der Arbeit der Archive. Beitrage zum Archivwesenzur Quellenkunde und zur Geschichte. Festschrift für Hans Booms (Boppard am Rhein, 1989) pp. 9-17. Here: p. 10. Also: Frank B. Evans, "Archives and research: a study in international cooperation between Unesco and ICA", in: Miscellanea Carlos Wyffels, Archives et Bibliothèques de Belgique (Archief- en Bibliotheekwezen in België) 57 (1986), pp. 127-158. Here: pp. 131-134. 38 Michael Roper, "Archival Europe and the Archival World", in: "Proceedings of the Symposium 'Archives and Europe without boundaries'", Janus (1992), pp. 322-326. Here: p.322. 39 Ibid. 165

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