Privacy of documents – documents of privacy. Remarks on personal sources in historical and archival studies

Abstract

The authors set themselves the goal of indicating the places in the archival holdings where texts of a private nature are present. They used the ego-documentary theory developed in European science since the midtwentieth century. It makes us pay attention to narrative sources (diaries, journals, memoires, correspondence) in the first place. It also allows you to extract privacy from official sources in which a person is forced to tell the story of his life, express his individuality and identity. Court testimony is of particular importance in this context. It is an important component of the archival holdings, and at the same time the source basis for many fundamental scientific works on the history of the mentality of all social groups, including those marginalized. They notice untapped sources such as CVs (biographies) attached to official files or petitions submitted by private individuals to the authorities. They draw attention to the fact that all archival entities, such as fonds, collections or archive holdings, may be self-documentary in nature. This applies to private archives, but to some extent also official ones. It is a difficult problem to capture the private character of archives in the archival description. The authors indicate the usefulness of creating source and archival studies characteristics of classes of archival sources in terms of the possibility of ego-documentary research.