Women and Minorities Archives: Ways of Archiving

The archives took central place in the contemporary social memory. According to the French scholar Pierre Nora there are three types of archives according to their level of development: juridical or supplementary, historical-documental, of social memory and identity. The researcher who is interested in the political, social and cultural past of women and minorities finds information quite by chance working with the different archive fonds of state institutions. The existence of such groups in the archives is hidden: in the inventory lists they miss because the inventories reflect the activities of the institutions not the subjects. This is the reason the information about such groups to be mostly about them not the one coming from them. Most often the proscribed information combines data of different official sources: police, public health, educational, political and cultural institutions. It is necessary to discover another sources for the past of such groups, to systemize and compare the fragmentized information about them and to encourage the digitalization of the information. 24 authors from different countries: Austria, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Romania, Serbia and USA discuss various traditions and ways of archiving of women and minority documents.