International Council of Archives

On October, 18-19^th 2010, the Section for Notarial Archives, permanent section of ICA since 2008 Kuala Lumpur, held its annual meeting in Santiago (Spain), after Genova (Italy, 2005), Algers (Algeria, 2006), Paris (France, 2008) and Brussel (Belgia, 2009).

It was invited in Santiago by its vice-president, Mrs Maria José Justo Martin, Director of the Historical archives of the prestigious University of Santiago.

The countries in which the notarial institution is established represent 70% of the world population, and notaries have created and conserved, by virtue of their office, amongst the oldest archives in the world, as was pointed out by Mrs Paola Caroli, chairperson and Director of the Archivio di Stato in Genoa, the record office that conserves the most venerable notarial register worldwide (1154).

Notarial records however, that are primarily a service to the citizens, nowadays are created and recreated throughout the world, whether the profession has switched to public instruments in electronic form, thus giving birth to digital born records (Austria, France, in the next future Belgia, Spain, etc.), whether it has made a fresh start in countries that have chosen to equip themselves with this institution for the authentication of private acts.

In this respect, the colloquium organised by our Algerian collegues in 2006, « Notarial Archives. Management and Memory », clearly demonstrated how crucial it is for the great institutions of National Archives to also take into consideration this segment of documentation in defining their acquisition and management policies. In other countries, the questions that archivists ask themselves deal with the way to handle records that are very old and voluminous as well as highly valued by researchers to whom they offer - to the present day and even for well-defined periods - chances of making actual historic discoveries. Indeed, even if notarial archives often are considered to be relatively simple - consisting of instruments and repertories in a more or less chronological order - the very notion of « fonds » is sometimes far more complex than one would imagine. Is the notary the natural person that creates the fonds ? Or is it the legal entity of the notary's office through its consecutive holders that does so ? While finding aids become increasingly specialized, while they are digitized and made available on-line, new questions present themselves. These questions the section tries to answer within the scope of three different projects :

• The documentation of the conservation of notarial archives : an inquiry into the institutional and legal framework of the notarial profession ; a bibliography of notarial archivistics.
• The exchange of experiences regarding the preservation of notarial records and access to this kind of source-material.
• An inventory of the needs and resources with regard to the training in preser­ving and the treating notarial records, and the elaboration of a training scheme.

To participate or get involved, please conctact us !

M.-F. Limon-Bonnet

Secretary ICA/SAN

marie-francoise.limonATculture.gouv.fr