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Archives Discussion:
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Introduction | Original Letter | Response | Report from the Front
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Report from the Front by Nancy Green, co-president
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Emmanuel Rousseau, with whom Ed Berenson and I have been in touch in connection with the SFHS Meeting in Paris, offered to show me around the "arrière-cour" of the Archives nationales, and I took him up on his offer. Alice Kaplan (History and French Departments, Duke) accompanied me, and I daresay Rousseau easily convinced us both of the simple fact: the Archives needs renovation and expansion.
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The buildings, as everyone knows, are beautiful but ill-adapted to today's usage. The main old section of the stacks is truly splendid, and I would encourage anyone who can to show up for one of the Journées du patrimoine to get a glimpse of the Napoleon III vaulted ceilings, wooden paneling and metal balcony work. From this elegant portion of the archives (nonetheless lacking any temperature or humidity control), we visited the grim and in parts seriously decrepit basement storage facility as well as the stacks (including a floor entitled "Guerre - 4ème étage") that are constructed of open metal slats: a fire would consume everything from top to bottom. Monsieur Rousseau pointed out that in several parts of the buildings, the weight of the documents is well beyond that for which the original foundations were built.
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He also showed us the asbestos under the CARAN, which is principally due to the backing on the linoleum tiles. The tiles were apparently legal when they were placed there in the late 1980s, before the French legislation on asbestos. Monsieur Rousseau was quite convincing that, globally, something needs to be done about the storage space that is saturated and far from current archival norms.
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I now understand the physical infrastructure situation to be as follows. There seem to be three major issues:
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1. The CARAN, which has, as we all know, had to undergo constant renovations almost from the start, now has to be de-asbestosized, which is creating the current havoc. The dates concerning the work schedule and future closures are available on the Archives' web site. The CARAN, however, was never more than a readers' room - providing, indeed five times more space than the old salle Soubise. It did not solve the storage problem. In any case, the CARAN's renovation is at least the one thing that is currently under way, however excruciatingly slowly.
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2. However, the current debate over physical space basically has to do with storage space (which will also be accompanied by readers' space). There is no question of abandoning the historical site in the center of Paris. Thus, as far as I can tell, the issue of a new archival site has always implied two sites, and therefore a split of the collections. (As it is, everything post-1958 is already out at Fontainebleau, the colonial archives are in Aix, the labor and business archives are in Roubaix, etc.) There is an obvious intellectual argument for NOT cutting the collection. It will make life especially difficult not only for the Revolutionary period scholars, but for those Tocquevillians among us or anyone interested in questions that span the 18th and 19th centuries. But I get the sense that, at this stage, archivists and researchers here both feel that this will be inevitable, and that the only substantive question left (although in fact answered by the Minister's letter), is: how should the collections be cut? A couple of weeks ago I witnessed a fascinating mini-debate over that burning issue: to cut at 1789 or at the 18th Brumaire? It seems fairly clear, however, that, given the current classification system, and, as the minister's letter already points out, 1789/90 will be the breaking point.
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3. Perhaps the most pressing issue, that also concerns us all, is where the new facility will be located. Apparently, as the rumor mill here has it, over the past year or so, solutions ranging from Vincennes to beet fields in the middle of "nowhere" (although presumably in someone's constituency) have been floated. More recently, the debate has come down to two sites: Fontainebleau versus Saint-Denis. And as anyone who has tried to go out to Fontainebleau knows, there is practically no usable public transportation there (currently). Thus, there seems to be a large consensus that Saint-Denis (at a site right across from the university metro stop) is by far the best choice. Although the Minister did not specify it in his letter to the SFHS and has not yet made a public pronouncement, according to Emmanuel Rousseau and this month's issue of the magazine Historia, it does seem - to the satisfaction of archivists and researchers alike - that St. Denis will ultimately be the new home for those working on the post-1789 period.
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Therefore, it seems that the two main issues we raised in the letter (the splitting of the collections and the choice of a site) are beyond us now (and indeed, beyond the Archives), but that a conclusion is being reached which is the least of several worse evils.
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But all of this means that there will of necessity be continued disruptions of various kinds as long as the CARAN is closed. Undoubtedly, the main problem for us is access now, an issue which, believe me, has the French researchers up in arms as well. Perhaps we could work with the Archives to see if they could set up some sort of e-mail site for processing advance reservations and documentation requests for researchers from outside of Paris, that is, from abroad and from elsewhere in France. This is possible at the National Archives in Washington, for example (which, by the way, is also a split site, with the building on the Mall catering almost exclusively to genealogists, and the College Park, Md. facility, miles from a metro, serving most researchers). It lowers blood pressure when you're going there for a short trip.
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Of course, as of January 2004, the reading room will move back to the salle Soubise, eliminating the advance reservation system altogether, returning to a first-come, first-serve seating system. See you in the courtyard…
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Nancy L. Green, EHESS
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P.S. Something everyone should note for this summer: once you've reserved a seat and your boxes for a first visit (no mean trick), you can then return on subsequent days at 1pm even if you do not have a formal reservation. At that time of day they reallocate "bis" seats, that is, reserved seats that have not been claimed in the morning. This works quite well; in my experience, there is never a problem getting in in the afternoon.
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