The Landscape of Community Archives in Poland and Its Contextual Environment
ABSTRACT
Community archives, especially in roughly the last ten years, are becoming an increasingly recognized element of cultural heritage in Poland. This is evidenced, among other things, by growing interest from academics and mainstream cultural institutions, including the state archival administration. Further evidence is the establishment in 2020 of an institution funded by the Ministry of Culture called the Center for Community Archives in Warsaw, which aims to support grassroots archives. Although the phenomenon of community archives exists in many countries around the world, the literature focuses in particular on countries from the Anglophone world, especially the United Kingdom and the United States of America. The purpose of this article is to expand the scholarship by describing the contemporary landscape of community archives in Poland. Since the landscape of community archives (regardless of location) is complex and susceptible to a variety of contexts, this description of the phenomenon is presented based on six categories (impact factors) developed during comparative studies of community archives in the United Kingdom, Portugal, and Poland. These contextual conditions, which are also essential parts of the results section describing the contemporary reality of community archives in Poland, are terminologies and definitions of “community archive”; typologies and characteristics of community archives; recent history and social structure of the place; archives’ relations with external partners; funding and support; and legal environment and national archival and heritage system.
Currently in Poland, depending on the definitions adopted, there are anywhere from dozens to hundreds (or more) of community archives—which are, generally speaking, independent archival initiatives. The Center for Community Archives (CCA), based in Warsaw, lists more than 700 of them in its database.1 In the last decade, the phenomenon of community archives has become increasingly recognized in Poland. Since 2016, archives of nongovernmental organizations (including community archives) have been able to finance their archival activities through projects funded by the state archival administration; and, since 2020, a state-funded organization has supported Polish community archives—the Center for Community Archives.
Archival science does not seem to be indifferent to this important phenomenon in the contemporary archival landscape, as evidenced by the presence of the topic of community archives at academic conferences, in publications, in research projects, and in university teaching.2, 3 Community archives have become an important part of Poland's archival heritage over the past ten years, recognized by both archival administrations and academia as well as cultural heritage practitioners.
Community archives are also an important component of the archival landscape in many countries around the world, such as the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand.4 The subject is also frequently addressed in English-language literature.5 A content analysis of scholarly articles published in the last ten years in the archival journal Archival Science shows that the topic of community archives is one of the most frequently addressed subjects.6 The very topic of grassroots documentary initiatives and community heritage is universal, and the phenomenon is found in various countries (along with those mentioned at the beginning of the paragraph, also in South Africa, Portugal, Germany, Croatia, the Philippines, Chile, China, and South Korea, among others).
However, the phenomenon of community archives in Poland is little recognized on the world stage, despite the high degree of development of community archives and their relatively high recognition in the Polish landscape of cultural heritage.
The purpose of this article is to comprehensively describe the nature of community archives in Poland. The article provides an opportunity for comparative analysis by researchers from other countries, as well as for comparative analysis of the landscape of community archives in Poland over time. I trust that it may also inspire other researchers (especially from non-English-speaking countries) to analyze and describe the nature of independent archives in their regions, which may serve to create a greater diversity of narratives about community archives internationally.
Materials and Methods
The following description of the landscape of community archives is based on a research project that involves developing mechanisms for building an international discussion about community archives. The level of complexity of particular community archives landscapes (national or otherwise) and their susceptibility to sometimes difficult-to-grasp contexts makes discussion of these archives, especially in international and cross-cultural settings, very difficult. Therefore, the author, together with Andrew Flinn (London, UK) and Luisa Metelo Seixas (Lisbon, Portugal), has been working to develop a framework to help describe the contextual environment of community archives in our respective countries. This article is based precisely on the six contextual conditions developed in this research group that we believe are most useful for describing the phenomenon locally. These factors of influence are terminologies and definitions of “community archive”; typologies and characteristics of community archives; recent history and social structure of the place (e.g., country); archives’ relations with external partners; funding and support; and law and the national archival system.
The article uses an inductive method. The results were based on qualitative analysis of existing texts (scientific literature, online sources, reports, legislation) and on the basis of knowledge of the contemporary practice of Polish community archives, drawing on, among other things, interviews and observations conducted in 2016–2019 as part of the project Community Archives in Poland—Multiple Case Study.7 These materials were re-analyzed, re-interpreted, and supplemented with the latest data from 2019 to 2023. The data was reduced and compared (if from different sources), and then assigned to the above-mentioned six interpretive categories, which made it possible to build a coherent narrative comprehensively describing the landscape of community archives in Poland and the most important contextual conditions.
Results
Terminology and Definitions
The term “community archive” has been defined in the English-language literature many times. What different authors seem to agree upon is how problematic the terminology is.8 Sarah Welland and Amanda Cossham, in their recent literature overview, managed to specify four themes raised by the scholarship that could be useful in describing the character of community archives: active community support and participation; being “places (physical or otherwise) that validate and provide access to community memory and the stories that may be created from it”; going beyond materials traditionally considered archival; and usual lack of direct government funding and control.9
Alex Poole, in his literature review on the information work of community archives, acknowledges that definitions provided by scholars tend to be incongruous and variable depending upon geographical and cultural contexts. Significantly, Poole asserts that, in addition to different organizational constructs, community archives also differentiate according to their levels of autonomy and affiliations.10 They blur the boundary between stakeholders (e.g., archivists, volunteers, community members, and researchers) and value a broader range of materials than traditional, mainstream archives.11 According to Poole, community archives have a strong connection to social, cultural, and political activism. These archives engage in activities that involve addressing historical gaps and re-imagining the past, as well as actively participating in social justice movements. Poole also highlights various areas of interest within community archives, such as postcolonialism, race, ethnicity, nationality, indigenous and marginalized communities, feminism, and the LGBTQ+ community.12
Polish academics have also addressed issues with defining and understanding the term “community archive.”13 Researchers refer to archiwum społeczne, a term that can be translated to “social archive,” where “społeczne” (social) means “relating to society or a part of it; created by society and shared by it; intended to serve the public; working selflessly and voluntarily for the good of some community; organized by some community independently, without the participation of the state.”14
Given that Polish researchers still have not coined a coherent definition of the term “community archive,” one usually finds in the literature descriptions of the characteristics that authors believe community archives have (or can have). Among the most mentioned are grassroots nature;15 nonstate character, usually associated with nongovernmental organizations;16 intention of long-term (instead of only temporary) preservation of materials;17 and social and civic motivations.18
The term archiwum społeczne has been in use since the 1990s, especially in the environment associated with the largest Polish community archives, the KARTA Center in Warsaw.19 The term gained particular recognition around 2012, when intensive public activities aimed at independent archives began. Currently, the terms archiwum społeczne and archiwistyka społeczna (social archivistics/archivy, as a whole field of activity related to bottom-up documenting) have gained significant recognition, both among practitioners and academics. Also, the phrase “the movement of social archivistics” is used, especially in the environment of KARTA and the Center for Community Archives.20
Presently, the two most important sources of definitions are university scholars and the Center for Community Archives (and previously the KARTA Center), the latter having particular impact on practitioners in the cultural heritage sector. In its database of community archives, the Center for Community Archives currently lists “organizations that were created as a result of grassroots, deliberate civic activity, which collect, process and provide access to archival materials.”21
It should be noted that many initiatives that fall within the definition(s) do not use the term “community archive” or the word “archive” at all, relying on other nomenclature. In recent years, however, on the wave of popularity of the term archiwum społeczne (probably resulting from KARTA's and CCA's public programs), new initiatives have emerged that deliberately call themselves community archives (archiwum społeczne / społeczne archiwum), and their number is growing. In August 2021, the number was thirty-five; in August 2022, forty-eight; in August 2023, fifty-four.22
Despite its growing popularity, however, the Polish term (as in other countries) is vague, and its understanding is prone to changes. The most significant tensions related to the definition of community archives that we can observe in Poland are:
The “archival nature” of community archives, that is, the divergence between the traditional understanding of historical archives and the new approach to archival theories and practices represented by community archives (enduring/archival value; originals/copies; nontraditional archival materials);23
The independence of community archives (among other things, the relationship with institutions such as community centers, and state and local government museums and libraries);
The difference between an NGO's own archival materials (historical and current records) and a community archives; and
Incorrect understanding of documentation activities of public archives as the creation of community archives, which has been presented for several years now, for example, by the Archives of New Records in Warsaw.24
Typologies and Characteristics
The consideration of the types of organizations that make up community archives largely depends on the way they are defined (and definitions can differ significantly). If we understand community archives as archives independent of the state or local government authorities, then a typical community archives is kept by a nongovernmental organization (foundation or association) or, much less frequently, by informal groups (which often formalize as NGOs over time to become eligible to apply for public funds). Sometimes, an independent archives is kept by private individuals (and such are also included in the database run by CCA, although the questions then arise whether it is a private or community archives and what level of community engagement is involved). If community archives are understood more broadly (according to the present definition by CCA), many of these initiatives are also carried out by local governments (e.g., local libraries or cultural institutions), and, less often, by schools, universities, and public museums.25
The most common subjects of community archives in Poland are local history and social history, including socially excluded groups (e.g., people with disabilities and women); the history of sports, education, and culture (e.g., theater, photography, and music); and the history of war, minorities, and social movements.26
Typical motivations for community archives include cultivating regional traditions, preserving cultural heritage and memory, activating the local (or any other) community, generating intergenerational dialogue, and spreading traditions and knowledge about the past among young people (to maintain the continuity of tradition and memory). Often, collections are built as a side effect of some activity for the community (e.g., exhibitions, publications), and archival activity is not the primary objective of an organization. Less frequently, archival works are the primary goal of the initiative, and all activities are organized around the archives and its collections.27
Most community archives in Poland are small, with limited staff and relatively small archival collections. Typically, a few people work at the archives, usually on a voluntary basis, and they receive remuneration only during projects financed by public funds. Very rarely, in larger archives, archivists are employed for longer periods of time, full- or part-time (in this case, the number of employees also changes depending on active project funding externally).28
Most commonly, community archives collect photographs. Personal records (letters, school reports, old IDs), ephemera, oral history interviews, and written memoirs are also frequently acquired. Unlike mainstream state archives, community archives rarely collect traditional paper records.29 Typically, community archives collect different types of materials, in both traditional and digital form, both originals and copies. They usually do not focus solely on archival materials but also collect museum and library objects. More important than the type of materials is whether they fit into the archives’ subject matter.30
External Relationships
This section on external relations of community archives is divided into two significantly different parts: relations maintained by individual community archives with various entities, and relations of community archives (collectively) with the state archival administration. Advocacy organizations—KARTA and the Center for Community Archives—will be discussed in section “Funding and Support.”
Many community archives in Poland cooperate with various types of institutions and organizations in their daily work. The partners include, for example, nongovernmental organizations, schools, local cultural institutions, and local governments. Local collaborations and working with entities dealing with the same or similar topics as the archives seem to be the most important and the most frequent. Sometimes, the collaboration is informal or based on personal contacts of representatives of both parties. Rarely do community archives collaborate with state archives or universities. Most cooperation is based on entities in the country, very rarely abroad.31
The relationships between community archives and the state began to formalize at the beginning of the twenty-first century, thanks to the KARTA Center—the largest Polish community archives, which acted as an advocate for all community archives in Poland. In 2002–2004 and 2007–2008, the Community Archives Council was organized at the General Director of State Archives as an advisory body aimed at representing NGO-based archives in dialogue with archival administration. The council eventually failed due to lack of funding and impact.32
Since 2015, due to an amendment to the Archival Act lobbied by the KARTA Center, state archival authorities may fund the archival activity of community archives (among other types of nonstate archival institutions). It is currently the most important element of direct relations between community archives and the Polish archival authorities, which will be discussed further in the section “Funding and Support.”33
Funding and Support
The broadly understood community archives also include initiatives subordinate to local government authorities, existing, for example, within local public libraries, community centers, and public schools. Archives of this type are partially funded on a regular basis by the unit to which they are subject. In this case, it is worth considering the relationship between the community archives and the superior unit, that is, to what extent such an archives can act freely, and to what extent it depends (due to financial and organizational dependence) on the decisions of the unit running it. In a narrower sense, independent community archives are kept in particular by NGOs. These types of archives lack permanent funding, which is often indicated as one of the basic problems in their day-to-day operation.34
Some community archives use public grants to fund diverse activities with their audience, like work with the local community. When it comes to typical archival work, activities that are usually possible to finance with public grants are digitization, oral history recording, or preparing exhibitions and publications. Few possibilities exist for financing activities such as archival arrangement and description, restoration and conservation, purchase of professional storage materials (e.g., acid-free folders and archival boxes)—fundamental to archival practice, but with very little outreach and few community work dimensions.
The possibility of financing typical archival work is provided by the program “Supporting Archival Activities,” enabled by the amendment to the Archives Act. The amendment went into force in November 2015. Thanks to Article 43a, the General Director of the State Archives can announce competitions for financing archival activities conducted by public benefit organizations (a special type of NGO) that preserve nonstate archival holdings. This means that this competition is not directed solely at community archives, but also at church archives and historical archives of NGOs that possess only their own organizational records (which might not be community archives). On the other hand, archives led by local government organizations (e.g., community centers, local libraries) are not eligible for funding.
Altogether between 2016 and 2023, over 150 projects were funded, for almost 7.5 million PLN—or roughly 1.9 million USD. However, it must be noted that a large (and growing) number of the beneficiaries of these competitions are typical church archives (governed by the Catholic Church—dioceses, parishes, and convents), which are also part of the nonstate archival holdings. In 2023, these archives were responsible for eleven out of sixteen funded projects.35 It is also worth mentioning that in competitions organized between 2016 and 2018, a disturbingly high percentage of applications were rejected due to formal deficiencies—that is, nonstate archivists had difficulties finding their way through the complicated procedure designed by a government agency. This situation improved in later editions.
The benefits of the “Supporting Archival Activities” contests include the fact that, finally, archives that preserve nonstate archival holdings can receive public funds specifically targeted at typical archival work. The disadvantages include nonobligatory organization of competitions by the archival administration; high complexity of the submission procedure; and short duration of projects (around six months).
Other public funding opportunities used by community archives in Poland are grants funded by local governments of various levels, the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, the National Audiovisual Institute, the Ministry of Science and Higher Education, the Ministry of Work and Social Policy, the Museum of Polish History, and the Ministry of Digital Affairs.36
In general, community archives try to be creative in writing grant applications, “smuggling” archival activities in such a way that they fit the objectives of a given program—even if the program is not targeted at archives or heritage institutions in general. Project funding based on public funds forces community archives to plan their activities according to the programs that just happen to offer them funding at particular moment. This also makes it impossible to plan the activities of the archives in the long term and results in a repository living and acting from project to project, which can potentially be a threat to the archives, but is also inconvenient for archivists and other partners engaged in the activities of the archives. Project financing also creates a fluctuation in the activity of the archives—high levels of activity when there is some external financing, low (or almost none) when there is no such financing.37
An extensive group of community archives do not rely on any funds.38 Some archives do not finance their activities from external sources, but rely only on the work and donations of people associated with the archives or membership fees (in the case of associations). Some archives choose to finance their projects through crowdfunding, but these cases are rare. Few archives profit from the sale of publication licenses, reproduction of their archival materials, or selling publications. One of the less frequently used methods of financing community archives kept by NGOs, which have the status of a public benefit organization, is receiving donations from 1.5 percent of personal income tax. Taken together, however, all these strategies pay much less than public subsidies.39
Despite the poor financial condition of many community archives, it seems that their biggest problem is not a lack of financial resources, but rather the method of distribution of subsidies, which causes constant uncertainty as to the fate of an archives and its employees, fluctuating intensity of the archives’ activities, and lack of long-term planning and permanent attempts to submit project proposals to appeal to the next funding agency.40
Between 2012 and 2020, the KARTA Center (a community archives itself), as part of the projects carried out from public funds, started to systematically support and study community archives as an important element of the Polish heritage landscape. These projects included:
Publishing a manual for community archivists;41
Publishing an online database of community archives in Poland and Polish community archives abroad;
Organizing a series of community archives congresses (biennially, starting in 2015); and
Organizing a number of courses, webinars, and workshops for nonprofessional archivists.
KARTA also created the Open System for Archiving (Otwarty System Archiwizacji—OSA)—a free tool for describing archival materials and providing access to their descriptions and digital copies.
In 2020, all KARTA tasks aimed at community archivists were taken over (with the staff) by a newly created cultural institution: the Center for Community Archives (Centrum Archiwistyki Społecznej). CCA was co-organized by the Ministry of Culture, National Heritage and Sport, and the KARTA Center Foundation. In this way, supporting community archives in Poland is now funded by the state. CCA currently employs a staff of approximately twenty. The main activities of the center are supporting OSA and a community archives database; supporting portal Zbiory Społeczne (zbioryspoleczne.pl)—a website dedicated to providing access to community archives’ collections and archival descriptions; organizing congresses for community archives; training and consultations for community archivists; and sponsoring the “Little Homelands” program—a competition organized to “support the process of bottom-up recording of the past and activation of the community around the memory of one's place.”42
CCA also conducts studies to recognize the landscape of community archives in Poland and to recognize the needs of community archivists.43 Recently, the center has been engaged in the topic of sustainability of community archives, issuing the Strategy for Strengthening the Sustainability of Community Collections, the implementation of which will begin soon.44
Currently, many activities in Poland support community archivists, especially on the part of CCA. In the Gdansk region, the Pomeranian Archives Foundation and the Gdansk branch of the Society of Polish Archivists co-organized conferences, workshops, and webinars for community archives in Pomerania (northern part of Poland) and prepared a report on the landscape of these archives.45
Contemporary Polish community archivists can easily receive support related to archival practices and managing their archives. They can also use the infrastructure for archival description proposed by CCA. The creation of CCA provided substantive, infrastructural, and (to a lesser extent) financial support for community archives and full-time and long-term employment for specialists who support community archivists. Finally, it is not a project-to-project activity with uncertain funding and duration (as it was done by KARTA in 2012 to 2020), but very concrete, well-planned, long-term activities officially included in the Ministry of Culture's spectrum of interest.
The unification of archival practices of community archives in Poland, related to the professionalization of the field hugely influenced by KARTA (between 2012 and 2020) and CCA (since 2020), is significant. In many cases, community archives’ own, nonprofessional, idiosyncratic (vernacular) practices were changed and lost.46 The activities of KARTA and then the CCA dominated community archival practice in Poland in the last decade. Currently, it is difficult to find community archives that do not cooperate with CCA and do not want to be entered in the database (or rather, members of the database are so easy to access that the rest are overlooked). Of course, cooperation with CCA is not obligatory, and the fact that an archives is not entered into the database does not mean that it is not a community archives, but this perception may increase over time.
Law and the National Archival System
Polish archives operate in a legal system based mainly on the Act of July 14, 1983 on the national archival holdings and archives. This law, like many in other countries that came under Soviet influence after World War II,47 introduces the idea of national archival holdings—including all archival materials, no matter what form they are in, who produced them, or what type of entity currently owns them. In theory, the regulations contained in the Archives Act apply to all records of historical value.
The national archival holdings are divided into two parts: the state archival holdings (archival materials produced by state and local government organizational units) and the nonstate archival holdings (archival materials produced by other entities, i.e., private property). The latter is further divided into two parts—registered holdings (created, for example, by foundations and associations, political parties, and churches and religious organizations) and unregistered holdings (created by private individuals and companies).
Community archives are not mentioned by name or distinguished in any way in the Archives Act. Therefore, in the broad understanding of community archives, they may belong to the producers of each of the three groups of archival materials. Community archives that are part of the local government (e.g., as part of local libraries or community centers) will be part of the state archival holdings. Community archives kept by NGOs will constitute registered nonstate archival holdings. Those created by informal groups are part of the unregistered nonstate archival holdings.
Interestingly, the Archives Act introduces a distinction in the transfer of ownership of archival materials in the case of the last two types of archives. Nonstate organizational units (NGOs) cannot transfer the ownership of archives to other nonstate organizational units—but only to the State Treasury (in other words, to state archives). There is no such restriction in the case of private archives (and therefore community archives organized by informal groups), but when it comes to sales, state archives have the right of first refusal.48 The Archives Act (Article 14) prohibits the exportation of any archival materials abroad, including those constituting nonstate archival holdings. It is possible to obtain the consent of the General Director of the State Archives for the temporary export of archival materials abroad.
Other legal acts important for community archives are the Civil Code (e.g., on the transfer of ownership of archives and protection of privacy rights, such as images), General Data Protection Regulation, and the Act of 1994 on Copyright and Related Rights. Activity of community archives maintained by NGOs is regulated by the Act on Foundations or the Law on Associations, and for some also by the Act on Public Benefit Organizations and Volunteer Work.49
The archival administration (state archives) exercises control over state and local government organizational units by taking over archival materials from them and by supervising the recordkeeping processes. State archives do not exercise control over NGOs or private individuals who produce archival materials. However, these two types of entities may transfer their archival materials to the state archival network voluntarily (e.g., by donation). As a result, today's state archives take over almost exclusively records created by state and local government institutions, leaving out the other records creators. Only in recent years have state archives been organizing collecting projects focused especially on private individuals (Family Archives Program and the Program Pandemic Archives A.D. 2020). As a result of this system that is concerned almost solely with public records creators, state archives hold sources primarily regarding the history of the state, authorities, and institutions, and to a much lesser extent, those concerning the history of individuals, communities, everyday life, and social, personal, and family history. In a sense, community archives fill this gap in the archival heritage system.
Perhaps an important factor influencing the popularity of grassroots, local heritage initiatives is the number of state archival facilities and their distribution across Poland. As for the network of archives subordinate to the General Director of the State Archives, there are currently three central archives in Warsaw and thirty field archives. There are also state-owned archives outside of the regular archival network, such as the Archives of the Institute of National Remembrance (a total of eighteen regional units), but there are no municipal or other local historical archives. In a country with a population of about 38 million, this means a relatively small number of “archives per capita.” Moreover, public archives are located in the largest cities, which are also administrative and cultural centers, making it difficult for those living outside these centers to access them.
Polish public archives are also, as in many other places around the world, underfunded and not prioritized by state authorities. They are primarily concerned with the basic duties imposed on them by state and local government institutions and users, with much less focus on, for example, working with local communities, filling documentation gaps, outreach, intergenerational dialogue, new collecting projects, and so on. This is also a gap that community archives are trying to fill.
Recent History and Social Structure
This section concerning the recent history of Poland and its contemporary social structure touches briefly on the following topics: contemporary demography; the impact of recent Polish history on focuses of community archives; community archives of the Polish diaspora; history of Polish community archives; and contemporary phenomena impacting the popularity of community archives.
The Polish census in 2011 counted 38.5 million people in Poland. When it comes to nationality and ethnicity, 36.5 million of respondents identified as exclusively Polish; the rest, around 2 million, identified themselves as not only Polish or other than Polish (approx. 5% of the population). In terms of religion, 33.7 million respondents of 35 million who answered the question about their faith are Roman Catholics (more than 96%).50 Such a homogeneous social structure results in a relatively small number of ethnic- or faith-focused community archives, compared to countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, or Canada. Poland also has no colonial past, so there are no indigenous people or indigenous archives. Though they are not numerous, archives of ethnic and religious communities in Poland do exist; for example, the Roma Historical Institute (Romski Instytut Historyczny), the Archive of Polish Armenians (Archiwum Polskich Ormian), and the Lemkos Archive (Archiwum Łemkowskie).
Poland was one of the European countries hit hardest by World War II. Concentration camps, Jewish ghettos, Polish underground armed forces at home and abroad, forced labor, migrations and forced displacement, the entry of the Red Army, the Volyn massacre, the Warsaw Uprising, the Jewish Ghetto Uprising—these events as experienced by ordinary people often become the subject of documentary activities of various heritage organizations, including community archives. Due to the aging of the wartime generation, oral history recordings have been particularly popular to record the war experiences of elderly witnesses.
Particularly interesting in the Polish context, even if not especially frequent, are archives created in the borderlands. It is worth noting that after both World Wars I and II, Polish territories experienced significant border changes, which still exert an important impact on social life in the borderlands.51 Such archives often deal with the subject of dialogue between nationalities, ethnicities, cultures, and religions. This context might also be important in other countries in Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe.52
After World War II, in addition to a significant shift in borders, Poland experienced a major sociopolitical change as it became a satellite country of the USSR, which resulted in the introduction of communism. Communism lasted in Poland from 1945 to 1989–1990. In community archives, the collected materials deal largely with persecution and deportation to Siberia during the Stalinist period, everyday life under communism, the experience of martial law imposed in December 1981, and the birth and flourishing of the “Solidarity” movement—the most important opposition force of the 1970s and 1980s in Poland, which was finally able to dismantle the system and led to democratic elections in 1989. Apart from personal accounts and records, typical historical sources present in Polish community archives that tell the story of experiencing communism are the so-called second circulation publications—magazines, brochures, postcards, post stamps, books, flyers, and the like produced outside of the official literature that state authorities scrutinized and censored.
Another important aspect of the landscape of Polish community archives are archives of the Polish diaspora (the Polish community abroad). The Polish diaspora constitutes, according to various estimates, up to 20 million people (sixth in the world in terms of the number of people in relation to the population of their home country).53 Migrations of Poles abroad are closely related to the political and social status of nineteenth-century Polish lands—lack of independence and repressions by the invaders (aimed at the destruction of the Polish identity) and migrations resulting from the failure of national uprisings in 1830–31 and 1863–64. In the twentieth century, among the most important factors that contributed to the size of the Polish diaspora are the formation of Polish legions during World War I, resettlement and migrations related to World War II and the period immediately after it (shifting borders, forced deportations to the USSR), waves of migrations of the Jewish population in 1968 to 1970, and, after 1980, the so-called post-Solidarity and economic migration. After 2004, another factor was the opening of borders in the European Union, which resulted in a new wave of economic migration. To this day, many archives, libraries, and museums of the Polish diaspora document Polish traditions, language, and history in many places around the globe (e.g., Germany, France, Belgium, Sweden, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, Argentina, Brazil, and South Africa).54
The history of Polish grassroots and independent archives is also worth mentioning as a factor in shaping the contemporary landscape of community archives. This topic still requires in-depth study, but it is already possible at this stage to identify some of the events and factors that have historically contributed to forming the tradition of grassroots archives in Poland.
The history of grassroots collecting in Poland dates back to at least the nineteenth century. At the end of the 1700s, Poland lost independence. Its territory was divided into zones of influence of the Russian Empire, the Habsburg Empire (Austria), and the Kingdom of Prussia. This period is also associated with the intensification of grassroots activities related to collecting Polish heritage in the territories taken over by neighboring countries. At various times with varying intensity, Russia, Prussia, and Austria tried to suppress Polish identity, significantly reducing the using the Polish language in public life, teaching about the history of Poland, and organizing the Polish community. Many private/family and community museum and library collections were created during this period related to the spirit of patriotism, preservation of national heritage, and Polish identity and traditions. Those were the activities of, among others, the Czartoryski, Działyński, Raczyński, and Mielżyński families, and various local scientific and cultural societies, such as the Society of Friends of Sciences in Vilnius.55
During this period, numerous Polish cultural institutions were established abroad, some of which still function today; for example, the Polish Library of Paris (Bibliothèque polonaise de Paris), set up in 1838 by the Polish Historical and Literary Society (founded by Poles who had fled to Paris following the November 1830 Uprising), and the Polish Museum in Rapperswil, Switzerland, founded in 1870 by a post-November 1830 Uprising Polish émigré, Władysław Plater. Like their national counterparts, they had a patriotic dimension—documenting Polish identity, tradition, language, and history, as well as the Polish migrant community.56
An early example of independent grassroots Polish archival endeavor is the Polish War Archive. It operated between 1915 and 1921 and was an informal group established by historians, archivists, and librarians whose aim was to document the participation of Poles in World War I and the impact of the war on Polish society at that time. The archives also collected folk war songs and examples of the emergence of a new language and customs related to peasant soldiers (e.g., predictions of the war, customs related to saying goodbye to people leaving for war, and devotional images used by soldiers for symbolic protection). The archives had more than fifty offices in Polish lands and beyond, and field archivists were sending the collected materials to the headquarters in Krakow. In 1922, the collections were transferred to the Central Military Library in Warsaw. Unfortunately, the collections of this library, including the Polish War Archive, burned in September 1939.57
After World War II, Poland became a communist country with totalitarian rule, where no room existed for independent social activity, and the state strictly controlled the narrative of the past. In this social and political reality, grassroots documentary initiatives could only operate in secrecy and illegally. These are the beginnings of the General Elżbieta Zawacka Foundation (Toruń) and the KARTA Center Foundation (Warsaw). These two NGOs are currently the two largest community archives in Poland. Both were created during the Polish People's Republic (Zawacka started operating in the 1960s, KARTA in the 1980s), working illegally, undercover, fearing the intervention of the Security Service. KARTA began its documentary activity by recording the experiences of martial law (1981–1983) and communism, adding later (in 1987) the subject of so-called Eastern history, focusing especially on the USSR's repressions of the Poles.58 Elżbieta Zawacka, at first on her own, then with a group of committed helpers, documented the history of the underground armed forces during World War II in Pomerania and the history of female soldiers and the undercover military couriers, wishing to record, in particular, the experiences of individuals, looking at the past from the human-centered perspective.59
Both groups quickly formalized their activities by establishing foundations as early as 1990, after the transformation of the political and legal systems in Poland, when establishing independent NGOs finally became legal. Many activist groups, previously operating informally and sometimes even illegally, did the same. Entirely new civic initiatives emerged, encouraged by the fact that, in the end, this type of activity was not subject to repression by the authorities. The democratization of social life and freedom of association are therefore important factors in building a narrative about community archives in Poland in the twentieth century, and 1990 is thus considered a significant date in the history of bottom-up archives in Poland.60
The Polish tradition of memoir competitions may also relate to the contemporary community archives movement. This tradition dates back in Poland to the sixteenth century, but more recently is associated with the sociological trend focusing on scholar Florian Znaniecki (1882–1958) and his autobiographical approach to sociology.61 In the interwar period, this was the way to give voice to social groups that rarely left written sources: peasants, the unemployed, manual workers, economic migrants, and young people. After World War II, the tradition of memoirs flourished, continued by the Society of Friends of Memoirs, and hundreds of memoir contests were organized in Poland.62 To some extent, this tradition was then continued by the KARTA Center and contributed to developing KARTA's so-called biographical method (telling history through individuals’ experiences of the past).
Another crucial period associated with the new wave of community archives is the time since 2005, which is associated with the digital revolution. The growing availability of computers, broader access to the Internet, as well as the accessibility of such tools as digital sound recorders, digital cameras, and video cameras, made community archives more widely available and easier and cheaper to create and manage.
The following phenomena can also be linked to the recent period of increased popularity of the community archives movement:
Increasing digitization of heritage materials and cultural activities. In the last twenty years, different state, local government, and private agencies have implemented numerous projects related to such digitization.63
Growing popularity of local and family history. In 2007, 64 percent of survey participants believed that knowledge about the history of their own family is important—in 2018, this percentage was already 80 percent. In turn, local history is of interest to as many as 92 percent of people who were asked this question in 2018.64
Especially since 2012, the community archives movement and the provision of support for nonprofessional archivists by the KARTA Center, and since 2020, by the Center for Community Archives.
Discussion
The context in which community archives operate is very important, yet multifaceted and complex. It is difficult to understand their essence without knowing their environment, which consists of such elements as legal setting, capacities and resources, relations with various partners, and finally the past, that is, how community archives have been shaped by history.
In hours of discussion and analysis of the landscape of community archives in the United Kingdom, Portugal, and Poland, extended because of the ICA conference in Rome in 2022 to Brazil and China, we were able to create a preliminary list of issues, that is, the influences that most affect the landscape of community archives.65 Of course, this is a simplification, a theoretical and analytical tool that serves the primary purpose of describing these contextual environments in a structured way so that they can be easier to understand for outsiders and to enable at least a certain level of comparison between cases.
The most important elements of this context, that is, the factors most influencing community archives in Poland, are:
The activities of advocacy and support organizations for community archives, especially in 2012–2020, the KARTA Center, and since 2020, CCA;
Interest in community archives on the part of researchers, professional archivists, the state archival administration, and the Society of Polish Archivists, and therefore increasing contacts between these spheres;
The potential for public funding for community archives’ activities;
Growing interest on the part of ordinary people—the popularity of local, social, and family history, as well as the growing popularity of the idea/movement of community archives (especially as a result of the promotional activities of the KARTA Center and CCA);
Poland's difficult twentieth-century history, related to the experience of war, totalitarian regimes (Nazism and communism), migration, and shifting national borders; and,
The very low interest of public archives in collecting anything beyond records of state and institutional history, while ignoring the documentation of everyday life and the lives of ordinary people.
Any landscape of community archives (whether understood from the perspective of separate countries or otherwise) will be unique, complex, and prone to change. These are fragile and ephemeral ecosystems that require deeper knowledge and understanding. Future studies should include understanding and enhancing collaboration between community archives and other types of archives and heritage institutions, not only to study the past, but also to improve the possibilities of such cooperation, from which not only community archives but also mainstream heritage institutions can greatly benefit. The description of community archives in Poland should also be developed. CCA's database currently contains more than 700 entries, but these descriptions, intended to quantify the phenomenon, as well as serve as a contact base, are insufficiently detailed.
Community archives are highly susceptible to change (including disappearing), so it is worth considering the continuation of descriptive case studies, which in the future may be among the few sources of knowledge about contemporary community archives. At the same time, such “encyclopedic” descriptions of grassroots archival practices can be used for comparative analyses, as happened, for example, with the Community Archives in Poland—Multiple Case Study project, the results of which CCA recently used for comparative studies on the sustainability of community archives.66
It is also worth exploring the potential for future cooperation between community archives, CCA, and academia. This cooperation is already underway, an example being mandatory student internships that are part of the university curriculum. Some students intern in community archives (as it is arranged between Nicolaus Copernicus University and General Elżbieta Zawacka Foundation). In the future, this cooperation will certainly intensify and may include joint research projects.
Another interesting issue is the relationship between Polish archival theory and methodology and community archives—that is, to what extent contemporary community archives use classical archival principles and methods, and to what extent they challenge these principles and methods. Traditionally in Poland, the principle of provenance has been considered fundamental for archival science and is the most important rule governing arrangement and description in archives.67 The principles of archival processing, which are currently used in state archives in Poland, were developed in the interwar period and were constituted in the early 1950s.68 The result of a complete processing of an archival fonds is an inventory (a list of files in the fonds) with a broad introduction describing the history of the records creator, the history of the archival fonds, the characteristics of the materials (including an analysis of recordkeeping practices), and a description of methods used by the archivist while processing the fonds.69 Great emphasis is placed on the nature of the archival fonds as the basic component of archival holdings (that is, archival materials produced and collected by a single, statutorily separate records creator) and on the internal structure of this fonds, intended (as far as possible) to reflect the original order.
However, it should be remembered that these archival principles began to take shape in the nineteenth century and were created to regulate the arrangement of holdings in public (national) archives.70 These archives usually took over (and still take over) large groups of documents from records creators (public institutions), in contrast to community archives, which usually acquire collections by creating new sources (e.g., recording oral histories) and collecting a small number of materials from a relatively large number of, usually private, records creators (although larger entities, such as family or organizational archives, are sometimes transferred). Moreover, these principles took shape in Europe at a time when public archives were discovering their new function—that of serving scholarly research (primarily a positivist discipline of history)—and the principle of provenance served to preserve the context of historical sources.71
For many community archives today, this function is irrelevant or marginal because their users and audience are local communities and not academics, and the purposes for using information from community archives are mainly nonacademic. Therefore, the original reasons for developing the principle of provenance in public archives are not necessarily valid for community archives, which were created in a different period and have different purposes. The topic of vernacular (natural) ways of arranging and describing the collections of community archives has already been addressed in the Polish scholarship, which indicates that relatively little connection exists between the practices of community archives and the principle of provenance and original order. Although some archives make a conscious effort to at least divide holdings into groups of materials from a single person/organization, much more often, they divide them by subject, form, and a mixture of these two characteristics.72 An important context for further study of how major tenets of Polish archival theory inform or are challenged by community archives is the enormous role of CCA, which, through its educational activities and the tools it offers (a manual, Open System for Archiving software), is significantly influencing grassroots archival practices.
Another research area is the affective and social impact of community archives, primarily on the people who participate in their activities (archivists, volunteers, donors, users, audiences) and on the communities in which and by which they are established. This issue has become the subject of my latest research project, Impact of Independent Community Archives, funded by the National Science Center in Krakow.
Finally, it is very important to increase international dialogue about community archives, going beyond the sphere of English-speaking countries usually described in the scholarly literature. The list of issues briefly presented here can serve as an introduction for more researchers to describe for international audiences other landscapes of community archives. This may allow comparative studies, which, due to the complication and variability of contexts, will be very difficult. However, strengthening scholarly international dialogue can also have a positive impact on stimulating international cooperation between community archives, advocacy organizations, and networks of community archives, as well as researchers.
The landscape of community archives in Poland is highly developed; there are many archives, and their status in the heritage system is high and increasingly well recognized. One reason for this is the Center for Community Archives, a permanent, publicly-funded cultural institution focused exclusively on supporting Polish community archives, the globally unprecedented result of a grassroots initiative that propelled the community archives movement into gaining recognition from state authorities. The number of researchers and students academically interested in the phenomenon of grassroots archives is also growing, and the topic is increasingly featured in university teaching and literature. The phenomenon of community archives will continue to grow and become an increasingly important part of the archival landscape in Poland—both in terms of archival practice and research.