Ana Franqueira Torres, Lisbon 1959-2017
Ana held a first degree in History (Licenciatura) from Universidade Classica de Lisboa and a second degree from the same university in Documentary and Archival Sciences (1985-1988).
Ana was a fervent archivist and scholar who never stopped in her quest for knowledge and further education. In 2014 she finished her four-year doctoral project and defended her thesis “O sistema de gestão e arquivo de conteúdos da SIC – Sociedade Independente de Comunicação S.A.: proposta de indicadores para medir a eficiência de um arquivo digital audiovisual, com base na analise de valor“ at the Universidad de Alcalá, in Spain.
In the Nineties Ana was involved in several projects with UNESCO, and with the newly developed CDS/ISIS, the first attempt to provide archives everywhere but especially in developing countries, with freeware database for archival description. She had participated in translation of the software in Portuguese and in several cooperation missions to Brazil and to Angola.
Her interest that had always bordered on sheer passion and commitment for standardization in archival description, brought her to become one of the founding members of the Ad-Hoc Commission on Descriptive Standards (ICA/DDS) in 1991. Then to the ICA Committee on Archival description in 1994. It was Ana, who together with other similar visionary archivists, brought us the ISAD(G) – one of the ICA’s greatest achievements in recent years.
Ana over the years had participated in numerous working groups, panels and took part in conferences, more and more moving away from archival description for paper and electronic records towards digital and moving image archives.
Ana had worked for the longest part of her professional career as chief archivist at SIC, a television company in Lisbon, with a brief intense 5 years break (1993-1998) at the Historical Archives of the European Union, in Florence, Italy.
Ana, after a three-year long unfair fight against cancer, leaves behind her husband Antonio, her son Martim and a lovely newborn grandchild Alice.
Ana, you will be dearly missed by all colleagues and friends, by all the people you have deeply touched by your vitality, passion and commitment for this great profession, which is the archival profession!
Adeus querida Amiga.
Paola and Stefano