Archives

The National Historic Archives of Belarus in Minsk, Belarus

This image is from the website of the Belarus Archives Administration which also describes the holdings and locations of archives at the national, regional and zonal levels of administration.

This image and the two immediately below are from the very helpful Belarus SIG article by David M. Fox. The photo of this oversized-ledger book with deteriorated leather binding and fragile pages was posted as a cautionary tale, on why we need to work together in groups to make this material available. If we can cooperatively arrange the extraction of information and the photoduplication of the originals, the fragile, valuable material will be accessible quickly in a way that is unlikely if we all go after such resources individually with the records becoming progressively more delicate.

If the materials are old, fragile, and frequently unindexed, they are not the only limitations the archives face. Their staff are highly trained and professional, but it takes a high number of such people to find, conserve, and make available such resources.

Still Director of this important National Archives in October 2007, Dr. Golubovich has shepherded the institution since the early days of Belarus independence.

There is contact information on the website of the Belarus Archives, but unless you are asking for a specific record in an identified file, you would probably do better to work in collaboration with other researchers.