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The conducted study has shown problems with electronic documents already in the moment of their accession, as well as arrangement and description, storage and providing access to them in the archive. It turned out that, unfortunately, electronic documents are treated only as an addition to paper versions of materials. The study uses method of document analysis (including electronic document), as well as a survey – a questionnaire. The object of the study was a private papers of Professor Stanisław Gorgolewski.

This article tries to familiarise the correspondence from Wałcz region and Krajna to Toruń magistrate on the basis of letters stored in the holding of State Archives in Toruń. 75 catalogue descriptions of letters from 12 towns located in the north-western territories next to the borders of pre-partition Republic of Poland were presented. One cannot exclude that there are more of them in Toruń Archives, but only two sections chosen from so called Catalogue II (Acts of Toruń) and Catalogue III (Craftsman letters) were submitted in the query.Chronological borders of the correspondence presented are from 1402 to 1799; however, majority of the correspondence come from the XVIII century. The authors are both private persons and institutions (craftsman associations, city councils, evangelical commune council). Among craftsmen and city council letters one can find so called birth certificates (Geburtsbrief ), job certificates (Lehrbrief ) and ecommending letters (Empfehlungsbrief ). Court letters concern cases similar to contemporary ones: inheritance issues, suits for vendor cheating, legal proceeding in case of murders and others. Private persons ask the city council of Toruń to help them execute debts from Toruń inhabitants. Evangelical commune from Łobżenica asks a few times for financial help.Material gathered in the article constitutes the excellent source for research on chancery’s functioning at that time, both when it comes to senders and recipients of letters.One can see some regularity in the forms of some typical documents – just like crafts man letters mentioned above – independently of the town they were issued. After the first partition of Poland (1772), when the territories under discussion were taken over by Prussia, there appeared even printed forms of certificates of craftsmen training. Court correspondence was ad hoc in nature, where only polite forms of address were repeated. Later, letter content was described and the recipient noted down the date of their receipt. Only a few craftsman letters were written on the parchment paper, rest of them were paper. Thanks to that, one can find water marks next to common samples; there are also watermarks hardly ever met in the subject literature. With majority of letters there are seals of senders, among others hanging wax seals, shellac seals, paper-shellac seals and wafer seals. The correspondence was mainly in German language due to the neighbourhood of Brandenburg and later – Prussia. Latin and Polish languages were used as well. The condition of letters varies a lot – from excellent to poor. Letters of Catalogue III are currently stored separately while the letters of Catalogue II are stored in sewn files.

Krzysztof Grzymułtowski (+1687) was one of most influential Greater Poland landowner of his times. Thanks to his and his mother’s marriages he became related with Leszczyński and Opaliński families. He made history as a diplomat who reached the eternal peace with Moscow in 1686, later named after him. In archival papers of the Poniatowski family, which inherited after Grzymułtowski’s daughter Katarzyna, one can find a post-mortem inventory of chattel and archival material of the magnate. It is interesting, because it combines functions of a post-mortem inventory of chattel and a post-mortem archival summary. Analysis of the objects drew to conclusions that both the chattel inventory and the archival register contain information about objects or documents important from the point of view of the voivode or his heirs. Circumstances of Grzymułtowski’s death indicate that both lists were made due to inheritance reasons. Enlisted archival materials, mostly of legal and financial significance, were supposed to document rights and obigations of inheritors. Thus in their eyes, they were as valuable as jewels and silvers mentioned as the chattel. But the list of archival materials consist also of documents that at the moment of death were already out of date. Still, they remained their prestigious character. It may lead to an assumption that another criterion of posting materials in the register or not, was their mental value, which showed various types of activity, as well as importance of Grzymułtowski in his circles. Just as objects put in the list of chattel creating a particular image of Grzymułtowski as a member of the highest nobility due to their sumptuousness, as well the list of documents supplements and even qualifies that image. It is done by presenting the content of the documents, signalled in the summary, but also by indicating people the magnate contacted. Perceived through these archival materials our character seems to be a state official serving as a senator, who has wide range of connections in the circle of his equals; he actively participate in the politics, not only domestic; he was a lord of both private and royal lands. The image of Krzysztof Grzymułtowski that emerges from the documents listed in the inventory is literal; thanks to that it shows us what nobleman one should be more vividly than the chattel inventory

The article comprises two parts. The first one pays attention to educational function of archives and professional profile of a person, who would conduct such activity, which is an archival educator. It is shown that professional competences of the archival educator were determined in the paper of Archival Education Section of the Society of Polish Archivists, published in 2010, entitled “The model of professional competences of archivists and records managers”, in its part concerning the professional level in promotion, education and archival information. The second part of the article describes training of archivists at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń in the scope of content and skills connected with promotional, cultural and educational activity of archives in the past, the present and the future.

In the contemporary world technology is an indispensable element, both in personal and professional sphere. Despite the fact, that we do not attach significance to it in our everyday lives, the technological development engulfed us and still reminds us about that. In the face of dynamically growing digitization there occurred a new form of document – an electronic document. The study concerns the growing electronic documentation among researchers working at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń. The analysis of surveys and interviews resulted in thesis, that researchers use e-document more frequently than analog documentation. Flexibility and accessibility of this type of documents become a problem in personal papers which will be archived in the future – maybe in most part in the form of electronic documentation.

In its first part, the article consists of a detailed discussion on eighteen texts on oral history published in the second half of the 20th century in the leading American archival journal „The American Archivist”. The second part are conclusions concerning the presence of the subject of oral history in archival discourse in the United States in the latter half of the 20th century. In the analyzed texts a lot of space has been given to the character of oral history interviews as historical sources. Especially, the question of reliability of oral history has been raised, as well as ways of guaranteeing it (e.g. through a proper description). Moreover, in many cases these texts attempt to persuade their readers to use oral history in their research. Also, it may be noticed, that at some point the understanding of oral history as historical source changes – an audio or video recording of the interview becomes a source itself, and not notes made while carrying it out or its transcription. Also relations between oral history and traditional (paper) records are an important issue in discussions of the American authors. The analysis of the articles also indicates that the authors were interested more in issues of the historical nature, than of the archival one. Those latter are mostly providing access to oral history materials. But also the question of the role of archives and archivists in recording oral history is touched. Discussion on the issue of storing oral history is not present at all.

Adam Sędziwój Archives of great marshals (hetmani wielcy) and field marshals (hetmani polni) of the Polish Crown and of the Great Duchy of Lithuania functioned within an organisational framework very different to archives of other ministerial offices within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Marshals' archives should be regarded as belonging to private archives and, to be more specific, as fragments of archives belonging to clans and families from which marshals descended. The documents written by marshals while they were in office were considered their private property and they were entered into archives as their personal, private files. This is how a paradox occured because documents written by a person holding one of the most important offices in the country, and who was often seen as dangerous for the nobility's and the ruler's own interests and for the country's security, could not be made known to the public and existed beyond any control. Various documents survived amongst the archives of the marshals of the Polish Crown, different in terms of form, sender and subject matter. The first criterion that we can adopt while characterising the documentation found in marshals' archives is its form. Here, the first place definitely takes correspondence, followed by documents set out in tabular form, case files, books, and finally documents. Other criterion which can be applied is the sender and the addressee. According to this criterion, the documents can be divided into these incoming, addressed to marshal or people close to him (e.g. people working in his office), and these outgoing, written by marshal or people working with him. Another criterion used for typology of documentation found in marshals' archives is the subject matter, usually dependent of the function of marshal of the Polish Crown. And so the documents can be divided into the following categories: military, financial, judicial, diplomatic and private (these include documents related to the office held but referring directly to marshal, e.g. papers appointing to the office of marshal, documentation regarding remuneration, correspondence). Taking into consideration the fisical form in which the documents can be found at the moment, we can describe them as loose, glued or bound together. Certainly, all those forms could well be found in the past but it is important to remeber that the condition that the documents are in at present does not always correspond to their original form. They were usually produced as loose documents and were later bound into fascicles.

Regulations about selecting documents for destruction existed in the Austrian Empire as early as the beginning of the nineteenth century. They were usually drafted by local authorities who from time to time ordered removal of old documents from their own registries and the registries belonging to their subordinate offices in order to find space for incoming new documents. In 1832, an imperial decree ordered general removal of unnecessary papers from registries. At the same time, it instructed to preserve any documents of historical value. Ministries of the Empire followed the decree when they issued orders about appraisal and disposal of documents in their subordinate offices. The busiest in this respect was the Ministry of Justice. All the regulations issued by this ministry until 1897 were made without archivists' opinion or assistance, and no supervision was provided over the process of appraisal and disposal carried out by the historical archives which had been emerging since the early 1860s. In the mid-nineteenth century, the Austrian Federal Monuments Office (Central-Commission zur Erforschung und Erhaltung der Baudenkmale) was established in Vienna and it became the nucleus of the Austro-Hungarian heritage protection authority which also took interest in the archives. It employed heritage conservators and correspondents who worked in Galicia since 1888 and collected information about the provincial archives, drew up archive inventory and prevented document destruction. National administration and scientific libraries provided them with support. In 1897, new regulations were issued calling for the courts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire to inform the national historical archives about their plans to destroy files. It was also then that the general local authorities in Galicia ordered all the subordinate offices to inform them about such plans by heritage conservators. In fact, only the Archives of Castle and Land Records (archiwa krajowe aktów grodzkich i ziemskich) in Cracow and Lviv were involved in the supervision of documents disposal by the entities that created them, because the vast majority of institutions planning to destroy documents at the time were courts. Because of their financial situation, archives tried to collect information about the files selected for destruction by corresponding with courts, sometimes they asked for the files to be sent over so that the archivists could have a look at them personally, and occasionally their staff travelled to the provinces to carry out an expert appraisal of documentation.

There has been a discussion led for a few years concerning the documentation generated and collected by Polish emigration all around the world. Its main subject hasmainly concerned the place of documents storage but it also has touched the problem of proper preservation, analysis and accessibility. Archival heritage constitutes the biggest part of these materials. On one hand one can observe tendency to bring private heritage to the country; on the other hand, in emigrant community there is pressure to leave heritage in places connected with its authors. The vast of private heritage is stored by Polonia institutions all over the world and by foreign archives whereas the substantial part is still in private hands. The condition of collections varies a lot. It is beyond any discussion that present owners of often valuable materials need professional, fair help if the documents are still to serve national wealth. Kazimierz Sabbat (1913–1989) was the last but one president of the Polish Republic in Exile, earlier longstanding prime minister and minister of foreign affairs of emigration government, political and social activist of Polonia in Great Britain. His archives, which are in private hands, include archival materials of a few decades of his life. These materials had been collected by Sabbat since his student time, during the war, emigration and to his death. All these materials reflect in an excellent way not only different fragments of political and private life but the author’s character features as well. In 2001–2008 this heritage was analysed and the inventory according to wytyczne opracowania spuścizn archiwalnych po uczonych (Guidelines for arrangement and description on scientists private papers), edited by PAN (Polish Academy of Sciences) was produced. Chronological borders of the heritage are from 1922 to 1989. The archives of Kazimierz Sabbat include about 6 meters (linear) of documentation (not taking into account photographic and phonographic materials); together these are 136 archival units, grouped into 8 sections. Materials collected in the archives of Kazimierz Sabbat include, among others, his published texts, typescripts and manuscripts of articles and speeches; documentation concerning political and social activity of Kazimierz Sabbat; biographic materials, correspondence from 1943 to 1989; materials about the author of archives (including biographies), materials of other people and attachments such as: leaflets, ephemeral prints, magazines, excerpts and reprints from press; books, brochures, magazines concerning scouting; prints, press beyond the scope of censorship and leaflets of underground movement appearing in the Poland before 1989. The heritage of Kazimierz Sabbat is the most valuable due to Sabbat’s position in Polish emigration structure after World War II.