Angelika Menne-Haritz is the director of the German School for Archival Training. She gives lessons in archival science with up to 200 hours during each postgraduate professional training program of 18 month and leads seminars in the continued training program of her institution. The problems of office automation and electronic records are integrated into the archival sciences and play an important role in the lessons. Every member of the school (80-100) has an e-mail address and the homepage of the institute has developed to a clearing house for interesting archival links.
Angelika got a first introduction into the use of computers in 1969/1970 during a training as system analyst in a big German chemical firm. After studying German literature, mathematics and history she started her professional career as archivist with the training at the state archives of Berlin in 1980 and passed her examinations in Marburg. She developed and introduced automated archival description in the state archives of Berlin and of Schleswig-Holstein where she was occupied as a normal archivist with appraising records of several ministries and other state agencies and with describing all sorts of archival material from mediaeval charters to modern records.
Since she came to Marburg in 1988 she started new research activities of the Archivschule with regular conferences on themes like information handling in offices and archives, appraisal or Quality Management in archives. She has led several research projects with external fundings like the developments of criteria for the application of preservation methods based on the intrinsic value, also for digital material. (The final report will be available in English on the website of the Archivschule in July.) A new project for the development of a prototype of an on-line-inventory is just about to start. (http://staff-www.uni-marburg.de/~blackvel/Englishtext.html) Future changes will be accessible at the Homepage der Archivschule Marburg.
She is member of several bodies of the ICA, the German Association of Archivists and the SAA. She is author of about 100 publications mainly in archival sciences especially in "Der Archivar" und "Verwaltung & Management" and has translated some American publications with supplimentary editorial remarks. She has given reports or papers to several international and German archival and administrative conferences such as at the Federal Academy for Public Administration at Bonn or at the University of Administrative Sciences at Speyer and she cooperates with private consultants.
In July her habilitation theses about decision making processes in
administrations will be submitted. Its shows the development of
administrative instruments since the 16th century using oral, written or
electronic media. The findings show the effectiveness of cooperative or
interactive production of decisions. E-mail replaces oral or written
cooperation. If such processes of interactivity create their own
plausibilities , they are - also afterwards - more reliable and authentic
than separate protocols, minutes or records made for the purpose of
documentation. But they need to be stabilized and that is the problem with
digital storage - as it was with oral communication.
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16 June 1997