Carol Cortobius Architecture

Carol Cortobius was an architect trained in Germany, with an initial practice at Otto Wagner in Vienna, who worked for the Hungarian community in Bucharest building churches. An introduction on the catholic Hungarian community in Bucharest will be given. Dănuț Doboș in a monograph of one catholic church in Bucharest offers an overview of all his works. For the three catholic churches on which he intervened (two built, one restored, but altered now) there are monographs showing archive images not available for the general public. Apart of the catholic churches (two of the Hungarian community) he also built the baptist seminar. Particularly the first built church, Saint Elena, is interesting as an early example of Art Deco and will be analysed in the context of the Secession in Vienna and Budapest, which will be introduced. With help of historic maps the places of the works were identified. Many of them do not exist today anymore because of demolitions either to build new streets or those of the Ceaușescu period (ex. the opereta theatre, a former pharmacy). Images of these were looked for in groups dedicated to he disappeared Uranus neighbourhood The paper will show where these were located. Some of the common buildings have an interesting history, such as the first chocolate factory. Another interesting early Art deco building is the pelican house. There are common details between this and the restored church. The research will be continued with archive research in public archives when the sanitary situation will permit.

Hiding in Plain Sight: Uncovering Nuclear Histories

Nuclear histories are global yet worryingly incomplete. Linking a plutonium refinery in Washington, a uranium mine in Saskatchewan, a tsunami at Fukushima, a nuclear bomb test site in Rajasthan, a reactor ‘accident’ at Chernobyl, a shipping accident in the English Channel, and a president-to-prime-minister confrontation over the US-Canada frontier, these quasi-autobiographical essays prove the importance of public archives, personal files with fragments, oral histories, and private recollections. This is the social history, business history, environmental history, labour history, scientific and technological history, and indigenous history of the twentieth century. Hiding in Plain Sight offers everyone an entry to the irregularities of our ‘disorderly nuclear world’, and offers other researchers crucial insights to what richness lies within.

Urban development and 2030 Agenda

Discussions about the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and urban sustainability can help in the search for elucidating urban problems, considering the imprecision and conflicts that orbit around the debate on urban sustainability and the term sustainable development. This debate can contribute to future actions and proposals for urban public policies. Thus, the objective was to discuss Objective 11 of the 2030 Agenda, which deals with Sustainable Cities and Communities, from the perspective of collaborating with the debate on urban sustainability, based on the case study of Mossoró (RN). As a methodological procedure, documental and bibliographical research was carried out, around themes such as urban sustainability, sustainable development, and the 2030 Agenda, aiming to raise a theoretical reflection on these themes. Primary sources were researched in public archives of the Municipality of Mossoró and academic websites. In addition, 70 questionnaires were applied together to students and public servants of Mossoro's public university . It was found that the city only fulfills its social function when it guarantees its inhabitants, habitation; circulation, leisure; work, accessibility, education, and health. The challenges to thinking about sustainable cities are numerous and, on the other hand, the solutions are in place, and, therefore, the admission of public policies aligned with the production and adoption of technologies for sustainable cities is the possible path.

Crowdsourcing historical photographs: autonomy and control at the Copenhagen City Archives

This study of crowdsourcing practices at Kbhbilleder.dk at the Copenhagen City Archives provides a rich description of how motivation and work relations are situated in a wider infrastructure of different tools and social settings. Approximately, 94% of the work is here done by 7 of the 2,433 participants. The article contributes insights into how these super-taggers carry out their work, describing and placing images on a map, through an extensive discursive effort that takes place outside the institution’s more limited interface in private discussion forums with over 60 000 participants. The more exploratory qualitative work that is going on in different discussion groups does not fit within the archive’s technical framework. Instead, alternative archives are growing within privately owned networks, where participants’ own collections merge with images from public archives. Rather than focusing on the nature of participants’ motivation, the article suggests a relational perspective on participation that is useful for analyzing a systems’ support for participation. Pointing out how people’s motivation in citizen science correspond with relational and intra-relational aspects enables an approach to system design that potentially supports or counteracts these aspects.

Colonialism, Collective Memory, and Memory Politics: Critical Reflections on Narratives and Public Archives of the Algerian War

Purpose: The article examines the trial of French General Paul Aussaresses (b. 1918, d. 2013) in the 2000s for war crimes committed during the Algerian War (1954 to 1962). Approach/Methodology/Design: A historiographical analysis covering topics such as colonialism, public memory, collective memory, counter-narratives, education, forgetting, and authenticity. Findings: Public history without individual memories or lived experiences of communities that have survived historical events can be viewed as inauthentic. It might even be called propaganda to present only state state-sanctioned accounts of historical events. Many governments will consequently enact laws to distinguish between what constitutes official national narratives—and what remains peripheral, or perhaps extremist individual, historical accounts. Practical Implications: This paper contributes to the scholarly literature examining oral testimonials in political and war crime tribunals, and the ethics of conducting public history research using media archives. Originality/value: Towards a greater understanding of collective memory processes, the case of the Algerian War reveals the constant negotiations, formal networks, and informal channels used to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate sources of historical memory—and the consequences on culture, law, and society.

Transition from analogue to digital at the National Archives of Zimbabwe

This paper seeks to bring to light the contemporary landscape of digital technology at the National Archives of Zimbabwe (NAZ) and its move towards the provision of access and awareness of its historical collections through technology. The institution has geared towards opening its doors to the public through outreach programmes; public exhibitions; websites; oral history projects; publications and broadcasting archives with changing circumstances. The ideology of taking the archives to the citizens has paved way for outreach archivists to do the right thing, in line with their obligations to provide access to information. The National Archives of Zimbabwe, like any other archive, preserves records that have been selected for permanent preservation because of their historical and enduring value. The paper explores the challenges faced by the public archivist in the management of traditional and analogue archives and the subsequent need for transition to digital technologies. The adoption of digital technologies in the management of public archives will enable the public archivists to provide faster and easier access to the archival materials. Digital technologies enhance information sharing and reduce redundancy of the collections. The researchers used a qualitative case study methodology with an interpretivist perspective where the main focus of the research was on the NAZ’s Public Archive. Interviews, document analysis and observations were used as the major data collecting methods. The results showed that the institution had made a good start, encouraging progress and was still working on the migration from analogue technology to full adoption of digital technology.

Transition from analogue to digital at the National Archives of Zimbabwe

This paper seeks to bring to light the contemporary landscape of digital technology at the National Archives of Zimbabwe (NAZ) and its move towards the provision of access and awareness of its historical collections through technology. The institution has geared towards opening its doors to the public through outreach programmes; public exhibitions; websites; oral history projects; publications and broadcasting archives with changing circumstances. The ideology of taking the archives to the citizens has paved way for outreach archivists to do the right thing, in line with their obligations to provide access to information. The National Archives of Zimbabwe, like any other archive, preserves records that have been selected for permanent preservation because of their historical and enduring value. The paper explores the challenges faced by the public archivist in the management of traditional and analogue archives and the subsequent need for transition to digital technologies. The adoption of digital technologies in the management of public archives will enable the public archivists to provide faster and easier access to the archival materials. Digital technologies enhance information sharing and reduce redundancy of the collections. The researchers used a qualitative case study methodology with an interpretivist perspective where the main focus of the research was on the NAZ’s Public Archive. Interviews, document analysis and observations were used as the major data collecting methods. The results showed that the institution had made a good start, encouraging progress and was still working on the migration from analogue technology to full adoption of digital technology.

FAIR enough? A perspective on the status of nucleotide sequence data and metadata on public archives

Knowledge derived from nucleotide sequence data is increasing in importance in the life sciences, as well as decision making (mainly in biodiversity policy). Metadata standards have been established to facilitate sustainable sequence data management according to the FAIR principles (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, Reusability). Here, we review the status of metadata available for raw read Illumina amplicon and whole genome shotgun sequencing data derived from ecological metagenomic material that are accessible at the European Nucleotide Archive (ENA), as well as the compliance of the primary sequence data (fastq files) with data submission requirements. While overall basic metadata, such as geographic coordinates, were retrievable in 98% of the cases for this type of sequence data, interoperability was not always ensured and other (mainly conditionally) mandatory parameters were often not provided at all. Metadata standards, such as the 'Minimum Information about any(x) Sequence (MIxS)', were only infrequently used despite a demonstrated positive impact on metadata quality. Furthermore, the sequence data itself did not meet the prescribed requirements in 31 out of 39 studies that were manually inspected. To tackle the most immediate needs to improve FAIR sequence data management, we provide a list of minimal suggestions to researchers, research institutions, funding agencies, reviewers, publishers, and databases, that we believe might have a potentially large positive impact on sequence data and metadata FAIRness, which is crucial for further research and its derived applications.