The history of archives dates back to antiquity, so it is worth learning about the most important archives in history that have shaped the way we think about document preservation today. In the digital age, this is even more important than before!
The beginnings of document retention
Archives and archives are as old as written history, so the first archives date back to antiquity. In Mesopotamia, Egypt and other important cities of the ancient empires, there were special repositories for the various documents recorded by rulers. Important finds from the millennia before Christ include the Mesopotamian finds of Mary, the Egyptian Amarna letters and the records of documents preserved in the temple of Saturn in Rome. One of the most important archives of the Roman Empire was the Capitoline archives, where the most important documents and financial records of the empire were kept.
In the Middle Ages, the churches continued the tradition of record-keeping begun by the Romans, usually in the treasuries of individual churches. It is important to note that these treasuries no longer housed only royal and ecclesiastical documents, but also documents of civilians. The largest medieval archive still in existence is, of course, the Vatican Apostolic Archives, which have been preserving documents from the third century onwards, providing a unique insight into the history of European civilisation.
Modern archives
Archives and archives as we know them today began to proliferate after the French Revolution. The Archives Nationales were founded in 1789 and the Archives Départementales in 1796, the first in history to have a comprehensive administrative system for managing their collections. The emergence of these two institutions is also exemplary because it was here that the idea of the responsibility of the State to preserve the written heritage of a country and to make it accessible to the public was born, an idea that still holds true today.
Established in the 18th and 19th centuries, they served as a model for various archives throughout Europe and the world. The largest modern archives still in operation today is the British National Archives, with a collection spanning some 1,000 years and covering a wide range of formats, from medieval documents on parchment to the latest digital documents.
Archives and digitisation
The responsibility of public collections in the 21st century, the digitisation has become particularly valuable with the emergence and spread of. The latest technologies require an increasingly innovative approach to document storage, as documents created using newer and newer data storage techniques need to be made as accessible as older documents. Moreover, digitisation also offers an unprecedented opportunity to democratise access to archives, as new technologies now allow even the most sensitive documents to be consulted online.
It is important to stress that digitisation does not mean that old documents should not be preserved with the same care as before. Going digital will help to make documents that were previously known to only a few people more widely known, but the importance of protecting the originals should not be neglected and every effort should be made to preserve them for posterity at the right temperature, away from chemicals and rodents.