While working on your genealogy book, you have exhausted all your strengths, exhausted your relatives’ questions, squeezed out all the possible information from home metrics, and now you are ready to get acquainted with the work in the archives. In order for this campaign to be successful, you must first of all know what an archive is, and secondly, to present the features of working in an archive.
Archive is an institution that provides storage and study of documents. Documents are archived orderly. Either by themselves or stitched into the “case” they represent a storage unit. Storage units are combined into funds – most often by the donor. Each fund has an inventory that opens with a historical reference. This certificate outlines the history of the fund-maker, briefly describes the fund, marks some storage units that contain unique documents of particular value. Further in the inventory, in a certain order – often chronological – the storage units themselves are listed, indicating the number, name, chronological scope and volume in the sheets.
To immediately navigate the sea of archival documentation, it is easier to start working in the archive by acquaintance with a guide. Such books publish very brief historical notes on the most significant funds with their numbers. Having selected the funds you need in the guidebook, you, having requested their inventory, look for the necessary documents — storage units — in them and write down their numbers and names in the “requirement”. And you get documents for work. It is important to understand that one of the serious difficulties for you may be the need to disassemble the handwritten text. Documents of the XIX and especially the XVIII centuries. handwritten, and handwriting was far from always legible. The course of their work in the archive must be properly documented. Starting to work with a document, it is necessary to record its code.
Open funds
There are open funds in the regional state archives that reflect the history of repression in the early period.
You will find a lot of materials reflecting all spheres of life in the funds of the provincial executive committees and provincial party committees. This included even secret reports of the Cheka-OGPU on the political and economic condition of the province, the attitude of the population to certain social phenomena, political discussions, and economic difficulties.
Information of a genealogical nature (about birth, baptism, marriage, registration, death) should be sought in the metric books of church parishes, home books, registry offices funds, which are in both district and regional archives.
The Archive provides for use by all legal entities and individuals open documents of the Archival Fund. The archive does not have the right to limit or determine to users the terms of use of document information obtained by them as a result of an independent search or provided to it in the manner of rendering paid services. The archive restricts users’ access to documents containing information on facts, events and circumstances of the private person’s private life, if the period of 75 years from the date of creation of such documents has not expired. Such documents and cases include: personal, personal, investigative, court cases, documents of personnel services, personified materials of censuses, sociological and other examinations, medical documents, personal correspondence. Restrictions on access to documents containing information about the private life of citizens are established during the collection of personal data, which together make it possible to identify a person.
Restrictions on access to privacy information earlier than 75 years are removed if there is a written notarized order of the personal data subject or his heir to a third party to familiarize themselves with them. The subject of personal data for the information about his private life may establish a regime of publicly available information by informing the management of the archive about this.
Documents containing personal data (surname, name, patronymic, year and place of birth (death), address of the place of residence, official positions, information about the profession and other information provided by the person in the prescribed manner) can be issued by the archive subject to the user’s observance of personal rights to privacy. At the request of organizations, it is allowed to issue certificates containing information on the official and social activities of citizens for use in the above purposes.
Working with archival documents and in the archive is not so difficult, if you approach the work from a creative side will be very interesting.
Good luck in finding.
