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Urban Oral Archives (Interaction of archive with people and people with history)
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Archives are considered as the nations' historical memory and are responsible for preserving, keeping and organizing the whole historical documents and resources of a country. They can be divided into national regional, local and private archives in terms of coverage of resources, areas of authorities and explanation of duties. In view of the developments of the recent two decades, the most important goal of archives is to achieve the motto of public access to information resources at anytime, anywhere, with any tool and at any level.
The definition of status of the archives as an important instrument for cultural policy-making in the society has caused the short and long term planning for them tends to publicizing archive resources and creation of variety and attraction for establishing more relation with the audience.
Review of the archival centers in Iran shows that the number of active archival centers would hardly reach to ten and the policy of most of these centers is to print and publish the resources not archival information and public access. Moreover, the type of their resources is generally political and administrative documents which have its own special audiences. Now the question is what is the people's share from the archives? What happens to the people's history? Do the people have a right in Iranian contemporary history? How is the amount of people's participation in making their own history provided? And how is the role of archives defined in this regard?
The review of the events of Iranian contemporary history shows that the people's role and status has always been important as the most significant factor in their shaping. The events of 28 Mordad 1332 solar hijri (August 19, 1953), Islamic revolution and the imposed war demonstrate the active presence of people in the contemporary history who have made efforts knowingly in line with achieving their demands and goals, and many of them have never been seen. While the western world make large information archives from the smallest events in order to make identity for the next generations and to show off their own history, we have forgotten many of our own identical symbols. In fact, it should be asked how many archives we have about 28 Mordad coup? Although the revolution and war have been the most important concern of Iranian centers, how many archives with public nature have been set up about them? And to what extent the collected information in the current archives have been close to the people's life at that time? These questions and tens more others have concerned the researchers who are facing with information weakness with regard to researching about social history and the popular aspects of these events.
In response to these concerns that can establish relation between archives and people and social history, one of the most important solutions is urban oral archives. The most important responsibility of these archives is the collection, organization and information of the various aspects of the history related to people's life. They can collect valuable information in the fields of social history, guilds and jobs, medical history, cultural history, religious history and so son through interview. The shaping and expansion of urban oral archives backed by private centers and institutions such as the municipalities can remove many concerns about lack of responsibility regarding the history of people in the society, providing the grounds for people's interest in history and their active participation in the archives.
One of the good instances of urban oral archives is "Astan-e Qods Razavi Document Center" in Mashhad. The center's archive with 7500 hours of interview about the history of Mashhad in such various areas as the history of holy sites, administrative history, Islamic revolution, mourning, political and literary associations has provided valuable resources for social history researchers. The method of work in the center in selecting defined subjects and plans and way of archiving collected resources can be used as a model for similar archival centers. No doubt that one of the most important needs for us in inciting the historic sense of the present society and fulfilling the historic needs of the future generations is to set up urban oral archives which should be noticed by the authorities seriously.
Dr. Abolfazl Hassan Abadi
Translated By: Mohammad Bagher Khoshnevisan
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