The Secretary General of the National Union of Archivists Razak Gorou assured that the archives constitute the best heritage that can be reserved for future generations. For the proper preservation of these “only credible tools that bind the generations”, he pleaded for the establishment of a national archiving strategy.
“We need to have a real strategy in terms of maintaining archives at the national level to avoid going by sight,” declared the secretary general of the National Union of Archivists of Burkina Razak Gorou.
This national strategy, the absence of which handicaps the profession of archivist according to Mr. Gorou, will serve as a focal point for archivists in the development of their own strategies at sectoral plans.
Razak Gorou confided in the AIB, on the occasion of the international day of the archivist, celebrated every June 9.
He assured that the archives represent the intimacy of Burkina Faso and carry the veracity of its history.
Also, according to Mr. Gourou, the archives which also constitute the collective memory and are the “best” heritage reserved for future generations.
This memory, he continues, is the only “credible” tool that binds the generations.
Thus, the archivist deplored the precariousness of the preservation conditions of the archives which are abandoned to dust and bad weather.
Razak Gorou added that the low level of digitization is an obstacle to the long preservation of archives.
He specified that the scanning of a document does not mean its digitization but rather a migration of support and invites archivists to be more professional at this level.
Razak Gorou also underlined a bad distribution of archival competences in the structures of the State, creating according to him, vacuums by places.
He mentions the budgetary difficulties and the lack of training which he describes as constraints to the development of the profession of archivist.
The SG at the same time invites archivists to union and continuing education for the influence of their profession.
He hailed the advances in archiving and congratulated the National Archives which, according to him, are carrying out “a painstaking job” for the repatriation of Burkinabè archives kept outside the territory.
Razak Gorou summed up the work of an archivist to collection, classification, conservation and communication.
The collection, he explains, consists in making available to the archivist, the archival documents through the operations of transfer, deposit or acquisition of archives by various means.
Filing, he continued, is all about organizing the documents with the necessary infrastructure.
Mr. Gorou added that the conservation component helps preserve the physical and intellectual integrity of archival documents for as long as possible.
And finally the communication aims to make the document accessible to applicants as quickly as possible, according to Razak Gorou.
As a reminder, the National Union of Archivists of Burkina was created in 2016 and its mission is to preserve archives but also to promote the profession of archivist in Burkina Faso.
Source: Burkina Information Agency