eabh

International Summer School for Archivists

Electronic Records Management

7 - 12 September 2008

Historical Archives, National Bank of Greece, Athens

This course, designed specifically for archivists and record managers, aimed to encourage discussion on a wide range of issues suitable for archivits of small to large banks and financial institutions.

Programme

The Athens Summer School was a one week programme consisting of intensive teaching sessions in the area of Electronic Records Management including topics such as long-term electronic preservation, standards, banking information systems, concepts, practices and technologies of data mining.

Please click here for a detailed programme. (pdf approx. 100kb)
Please click here for speakers information. (pdf approx. 260kb)

Venue

The Summer School took place in the Historical Archives of the National Bank of Greece, Athens.

The National Bank of Greece Historical Archives were set up for the purpose of preserving and displaying archival material of National Bank of Greece deemed to be of historical importance. NBG has demonstrated particular concern for its archival material since its early days. As a consequence, NBG possesses a comprehensive historical archive whose time span coincides practically with the history of the modern Greek state.

The importance of this archival material lies in the fact that NBG, the oldest credit institution in the country, has played a defining role in the Greek economy. Most of the key moments in the economic history of the Greek nation, as well as important events in the political, cultural and social history of the country are reflected in the archival material of NBG. For more information on the National Bank of Greece please visit http://www.nbg.gr

Impressions

International Summer School for Archivists, Athens 2008

(...) As banking archivists, or historians working in the archives of a bank, we serve a set of ‘clients’ with different agendas: we serve our institution and we serve the academic community; we serve researchers and do research ourselves; we are a group of people with a passion for history, but we also have to know more than most about developments in the banking and technological sectors, if we want to secure funding for our Archive and run successful digitisation projects. In sum, we banking archivists are a special breed, and represent a rather unique branch of the Archives profession. This Summer School confirmed this impression, and will hopefully serve as a basis for the constitution of a more cohesive body of banking archivists across Europe, and as a forum where professionals can exchange ideas, share information, and address common issues in a more standardised way. Perhaps it will also help empower archivists into defining a role for themselves within their respective institutions, and interact more efficiently with the various departments of their Bank. (...)

Claire Soulie, The Rothschild Archive

(...) Participation in the Summer School surpassed every expectation. While the break-even number was 18 participants, and the optimum number 25, there were so many applications that we had to raise the final number to 32 and even, reluctantly, turn down a few.

Historical archives are set up to preserve, exhibit and facilitate access to information deemed to be of historical importance to researchers. Until relatively recently the information amassed by historical archives was by and large recorded on paper and the archives were charged principally with the task of preserving and classifying this material. Today, things have changed, as information is increasingly recorded in electronic form. In the future, therefore, archives will be called upon to handle, preserve and present for research information recorded by such means.
It was a special pleasure for NBG’s Historical Archive to run this year’s Summer School on Electronic Records Management, particularly since it has itself been running an electronic archive management system since 1998, based on ISAD-G of the International Council on Archives, while it is also investigating ways to preserve the electronic records today produced by NBG. (...)

Nikos Pantelakis, National Bank of Greece