Progress report on the availability of the Charter 77 collection

The process of putting the archival collection Charter 77 available described in the previous report (Czech only) has started with a group of archivalia called Dokumenty (Documents). A total of 598 (more precisely 597) items were grouped in this (to use current archival terminology) series in the order in which they were published in two volumes of the three-volume publication Charta 77: Dokumenty 1977–1989 (ed. Blanka Císařovská – Vilém Prečan, Prague, 2007). All the units in the series, which in their physical form are stored in new archival folders, take up 1.9 metres of shelf space, and occupy 16 archive boxes (see photograph).

The importance of the archivalia led to their thorough processing in the form of cataloguing. Each unit of the Dokumenty series has been provided with an archival description that originated in the specialised software programme Inventář (Inventory) from the firm Bach. This involved the completion of information fields with data about the content of the archivalia including the method of its preservation, its date, storage unit (the box and its number) and appearance (see photograph). Once the whole collection has been processed, an archive aid, the result of archive activity, will be generated from the software by a simple command. The archivalia will be available to researchers and interested parties on this basis.

In connection with the work on the finished series Dokumenty, some further series of the Charter 77 collection were established. It is known for certain today that the next in line will be Informace o Chartě 77 (Information on Charta 77) and Publikace (Publications). The periodical known as Infoch and its predecessors Sdělení and Zpravodaj will be gathered together and processed as the first. The second will be the place for, among other things, documentation, academic and editorial material that emerged in the course of the creation of several archaeographical publications devoted to Charter 77 and are preserved in the collection. We will keep you informed about further processing.

On behalf of the Czechoslovak Documentation Centre, we call upon the holders of documents relating to Charter 77 to ensure the long-term preservation of these documents, which can be best be done by their transfer to our expert archival care!

Jan Bílek