Tomáš Černušák (Moravian State Archives in Brno) on “New digitizing projects in the Moravian Provincial Archives in Brno” held on 27.04.2015 at the international conference "Archival Cooperation and Community Building in the Digital Age" within the panel “The Czech Archival Landscape" at Břevnov Archabbey in Prague (CZ).

1. Tomáš Černušák
New digitizing projects in the Moravian Provincial Archives in Brno
The Moravian Provincial Archives, the oldest institution of its kind in the Czech Republic,
was founded in 1839. In 2007 it took up residence in a multi-purpose building that provides
perfect conditions for a long term depositing of valuable archive documents, for scientific
research and the work of archivists and which makes the research of archive documents
carried out by local and foreign scientists easily accessible and comfortable. In the past ten
years the Moravian Provincial Archives has successfully taken part or has been involved in
several different projects with the aim to record and digitalise archive documents. The
Archives did this either by carrying out the particular project on its own, or by becoming a
member of a currently running project (i.e. Monasterium) or by designing completely new
projects (Acta Publica). Currently, there seems to be a new tendency initiated by various local
or foreign organisations, which have declared and made offers to the Moravian Provincial
Archives to record and digitalise particular types or groups of archive documents. They will
use these documents and records for their own projects and plans in accordance with the
conditions stated in the contract with the Archives. During the realisation of these projects,
which will always be conducted within the premises of the Moravian Provincial Archives and
supervised by the archive staff, the Archives will provide access to the archive documents and
coordinate manipulation with them. The technical and administrative expenses to cover the
recording and digitalisation will be borne by the ordering party. The Moravian Provincial
Archives will receive the digitally recorded archives documents in a copy for its own use.
The interest in digitalisation of a wide range of archive documents is an important part of a
project in which the Moravian Provincial Archives will participate in the next couple of years.
The American governmental organisation „United States Holocaust Memorial Museum“,
which is situated in Washington, aims to collect and make available digital copies of
manuscripts and historical records that relate to the persecution of Jews in the time of the Nazi
occupation of Czechoslovakia from 1939 till 1945. This work will take place in the Moravian
Provincial Archives in Brno and in its particular district archives in the whole region of South
Moravia. In our archive the archive documents concerning papers of highest importance for
the political administration of Moravia (Police Files, Gendarmerie Files) can be taken into
account. There are about 21 files in the Moravian Provincial Archives in Brno and 65 files in
the particular district archives in South Moravia that have already been defined and pointed

2. out. The extent of the digitalisation will increase in the next 5 years to 2 million pages of
archive material.
The next project that has been currently conducted for a couple of months in the Moravian
Provincial Archives by the American organisation „Family Search International“ is the digital
recording of a wide range of historical documents. With the help of its own staff and technical
equipment the organisation has been gathering and purchasing digital records of those archive
documents that contain information about the history of the population in South Moravia and
that are used by people who want to learn more about their family history or are interested in
genealogy, as a supplementary resource to the parish vital registers. In particular these are the
individual census records from 1857 to 1929, which are deposited in the district archives in
the region of South Moravia. In this case it is a way to preserve these archive documents, for
the quality of the paper is very poor and this is causing their gradual destruction. The next
type of archive documents that the previously mentioned organisation has been gathering and
preserving are documents from different financial authorities from 1667 to 1768 and a great
amount of Grund Books. The cooperation between the Moravian Provincial Archives and the
organisation „Family Search International“ is planned to continue for several years – the
digitalisation should cover about 661 microfilms and about more than 1 km of archive
documents and resources.
Another organisation with which the Moravian Provincial Archives in Brno cooperates in
terms of digitalisation is the non-profit organisation Terezín Initiative Institute. The aim of the
Institute is to pursue and support the digital recording of application documents for the issuing
of identity cards for the Jewish inhabitants of Brno from 1939 to 1941. These are a part of the
files of the Police Headquarters of Brno. It is not a tremendous amount of archive documents
though – only 2.5 boxes. Besides this the organisation can also pick up rare documents from
these files that relate to its area of interest and add them to the main subject of digitalisation.
In a short time the purchasing of digital records will be started by Československá obec
legionářská. The cooperation also covers the organisation of exhibitions and lectures on the
topic of the Czechoslovak Legions in the First World War, alongside the archive material
from the Museum of Resistance, which shall be scanned. Even though this does not exist
anymore it used to store various valuable collections on this topic. Besides old maps and
posters the main aim of the project is the digitalisation of the photographs that document the

3. activities of the Czechoslovak Legions in 1914 to 1918 in Russia, France and Italy. The
digitalisation will start this year and continue till 2018.
The last current project is the cooperation with the Department of the Auxiliary Historical
Sciences and Archive Studies of the Faculty of Philosophy of the Masaryk University. The
main aim of this cooperation is the gradual digitalisation of the commissions, i.e. normative
historical documents from the 17th and 18th century that are stored in several files in the
Moravian Provincial Archives and the creation of descriptive metadata. The active
participation of the students of the mentioned department is assumed and expected. The
project is being designed at the moment. The particular term for the start of the project has not
been set yet due to the broad range of other currently running project.