Our University Held an Archival Work Conference

Publishing time:2008-06-04    Viewer:

On the morning of May 28, an archival work conference was held in the multifunctional hall in the International Exchange Center. Being present were NCEPU president Liu Jizhen, vice secretary of the Communist Party Committee and secretary of Disciplinary Committee Li Shuangchen, vice president Sun Pingsheng, archives curator of Nanjing University Tang Daoluan, president’s assistant Sun Zhongquan, members of archival work committee, representative directors, part-time archivists and faculty of all archival work units on Beijing campus and Baoding campus. During the conference hosted by president´s assistant Sun Zhongquan, President Liu made an important speech.

    To begin with, Wang Jianhua, archives curator of our university, delivered a report on archival work of NCEPU, which introduced the development trend of archival work in Chinese colleges and universities, the history, present condition and future plan of archival work in our university. curator Wang pointed out that currently the archival work in colleges and universities nationwide had taken on features such as the transition from traditional archives types into polycentric ones, rapid development of digital archives , continuous expansion and extension of services, etc. After several decades of development, our university is presently accelerating the progress of digitalization of archival work.

    With regard to the different responsibilities the departments took on, director of Students´ Affairs Division Wang Qinghua and the general Party branch secretary of Business Administration Department explained, their understanding of the importance attached to the archival work, the basic situation of their archival work, the experience they gained, and the future plan and goal.

    After that, President Liu made his important speech. President Liu’s analysis of the archival work included two aspects. Firstly, the archives are authentic records of social practices, collecting, arranging, categorizing and consulting information in the development of a unit or a society. Common things today may become precious tomorrow, and the archival work just has the power to change stone into gold. The archival work also plays an important role in a university, because resources, which are crucial to a university with a long history, could be effectively integrated, kept and used through excellent archival work. Secondly, archival work is a cultural undertaking. During the long development of human society, rich cultures are formed and shaped with history as one of its most important connotations. Therefore, archival work becomes an indispensable part of civilization that is used to keep human cultural carrier and legacy. Universities, cradles for broadcasting culture and knowledge, will definitely form distinct cultures during their own development, which is a major way to express the inner spirit of a university. In order to build an internationalized high-level university, we should pay attention to our own culture and its inner spirit, and make every effort to pass it down and carry it forward, which is realized by archival work in the past fifty years of development in this university.

    President Liu said that this archival work conference was the biggest of its kind in the past few years and it had great significance to the development of NCEPU, which, in another way, showed the importance our university had attached to the archival work. On the 45th anniversary NCEPU, the museum of school history of NCEPU, co-established with much preparation by the Publicity Department of the Party Committee and the University Archives, has become not only an access to reviewing the history of this university, but also a platform for concentrating the alumni and alumna, displaying its image and guiding the future affairs. This year will witness the crucial moment of the 50th anniversary of NCEPU, and the museum and achieves of NCEPU will also demonstrate the initiative and struggling history of our university.

    President Liu emphasized that archival work was an important connotation for constructing the university culture. NCEPU is still a young university that mainly concentrates on engineering and relatively lacks its distinct culture compared to other universities and colleges. Having realized this situation, we should begin to take measures right now from ourselves. He wished that we could strengthen system construction, team construction and talent construction in archival work so as to accelerate the development and help to build our university into an internationalized high-level university.

    Finally, Tang Daoluan made an academic report of How to Carry Out the Digitalization of University Archival Work, in which Tang explained to all the connotation and denotation of digitalization of university archival work from information-based construction and achieves information construction. Mr. Tang also introduced the development process and shared the experience in archival work of Nanjing University in recent years.