by Pat Whatley
In September, three members of the University's Archive Services team attended the International Council on Archives Section of University and Research Institution Archives (ICA/SUV) conference, which was held in Warsaw and Cracow, Poland.
Patricia Whatley is secretary of the ICA/SUV while her colleagues Caroline Brown and Michael Bolik presented a joint paper at the conference, supported by the Society of Archivists International Affairs bursary. Poland was a poignant choice for an archival conference - a country which even in living memory has endured unbelievable cruelty and oppression, and where the necessity of preserving historical records cannot be disputed.
Before the conference the delegates were taken to the Jewish Museum in Warsaw where some of the barbarity of the last century has been recorded and its memory preserved.
The theme of the conference was "Archives and Changing Societies" and it concentrated on active strategies for meeting public, institutional, and archival needs. The various speakers covered such topics as outreach and marketing at Tel Aviv University, promoting use of archives in education in Germany, preparing exhibitions in Vienna, using archival databases in Russia and encouraging new readers in the Jagiellonian University in Cracow.
Caroline and Michael gave a presentation on the Archive Services' strategies for inreach and outreach. Caroline outlined how the archive collections are increasingly used as a resource for research, teaching and learning and are becoming an integral part of several courses at the University. Also, a number of the University's administrative and service departments were coming to appreciate the role of Archive Services as the corporate memory of the institution. Michael concentrated on the use of Dundee University collections being made by foreign researchers and publishers, from Dundee's involvement in the West Bengal jute industry to rare photographs of C.S.Lewis from the Michael Peto Collection.
The event was especially valuable in that it offered an insight into how archivists across the world are approaching the same types of situation faced by archivists in Dundee. As such, it was a chance to exchange ideas and compare methods and practice. The hospitality of the Polish hosts was excellent and all three of the Dundee team has acquired a taste for chlodnik - cold beetroot soup.
Pat Whatley, (back, 2nd from right) and Caroline Brown (front) at the Warsaw School of Economics with other members of the SUV Steering Committee from the US, Canada, Israel, Poland, Sweden and Austria.