Art. 6 The archival European Heritage is therefore the Heritage of the citizens
of Europe and its knowledge has to be encouraged widely.
National archival properties maintain the juridic status which have in the in
dividual State regulations. As a totality, however, they may be considered
in supernational terms and so they may be protected by specific community
rules.
Art. 7 First and basic element of the safeguard is constituted by the professi
onals: the Archivists of Europe.
The care and preservation of every property anywhere and every intervention
of rearrangement and description ought to be entrusted to professional archi
vists and their training has to be carefully carried out, in university and post
graduate courses as well as in specific archival schools.
Besides the National archival Schools it is desirable to establish of a European
archival School.
Art. 8 The safeguard of archival Heritage may be practised secondly through
responsible and scientific use by researchers.
Therefore the archival institutions, the archival schools and the individual ar
chivists, must devote themselves to a specialistic work of information and trai
ning. An essential part of this action is the arranging of the sources and the
guide of researches.
Art. 9 Acommon institutional basis and regulations for the archival safe
guard are desirable in order to obtain a uniform enforcement of the essential
principles. Therefore a European integration of archival laws is needed to fix
the goal attained by the archival theory and as the starting point for the best
exploitation of archival Heritage.
Art. 10 The current records too-archives in progress - ought to be safe
guarded because in these records the documentary sources of history reveal
themselves.
It would be convenient, to prevent any scattering and destruction of records
in the period between their administrative use and their transfer to archives
for historical use, the institution, at different levels, of intermediate archives,
equipped with qualified staff and inside them arrange for the first description
of materials to be permanently preserved and for the disposal of records with
marginal interest and ephemeral value. The sorting of contemporary records
should consider as much as possible all the needs of research and prefigure
as widely as one can the archival heritage of tomorrow.
Art. 11 Terms for the transfer to European archives of records referring to
affairs entirely defined would be established uniformly in all countries so as
to assure to all researchers and users of archives the same treatment.
Art. 12 The documents preserved in public European archives must be free
ly accessible to all without distinction of nationality. In countries where the
terms fixed for the accessibility of records are independent from the place of
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their keeping, the terms would not be superior to the lowest established for
the tranfer to public archives.
Records which are not secret, classified, confidential, should be accessible from
the original.
Art. 13 The arrangement and description of the European archival Heritage
must be regulated with scientific principles.
In particular for the record-groups with a common and complementary in
terest it is desirable to have a common and reciprocal description, fostering
the interchange of archivists among the different countries and accomplishing
integrated research aids.
Art. 14 Private archives and records with European historical value, kept
and owned by private persons, are part of the European archival Heritage and
when they have considerable historical value they ought to be freely accessible
to research.
A definite regulation must indicate the way of consultation, forbid the dis
memberment, and every transfer of ownership without previous communica
tion to the nearest archival institution or to that competent by law, to prevent
any loss of its trace.
The export in extra-European countries ought to be limited by a pre-emption
right attributed to common archival institutions in particular cases, when this
right has not been exercised by the national archival institutions.
Art. 15 New techniques for objectivation of memory have superseded the
traditional paper support of records. Instead of traditional written records,
the sound, the image and the informatie code testify directly of man's activi
ty, and require nevertheless preservation according to general archival principles.
Art. 16 Even for the machine-readable records - punched cards, magnetic
records and tapes, silicon chips - international regulations are required to en
sure archival preservation and information retrieval for research purposes, li
miting their destruction when immediate administrative use has been exhausted.
The preservation of machinery out of date for the progress of technology
but needed to decodify and read records is an archival problem too, as that
of keeping alive the know-how for their use.
Art. 17 It is necessary to train qualified technicians for restoration and the
study of new restoration procedures, always according to the rules of the 'Con
servation Committee' of the International Council on Archives and with
methods which allow subsequent intervention and are not irreversable.
Art. 18 A precautionary sanction system must prevent any illegal commerce
of records, repress thefts and provide reinstatement of records to the archival
ensembles from which they have been stolen, according to the Paris Conven
tion of 1970, November 14th, referring to 'Illicit import, export, and transfer
of ownership of cultural property'.
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