University Archives may destroy some archives they keep. Destruction of records in the State University with retention less than 10 years is set by unit leaders and academics working in the State University environment. "Of course, all of this is conducted after receiving approval from the rector, or written consideration from the respective Head of the Archive," said Deputy for Conservation of ANRI (Indonesia National Archive), Drs. Mustari Irawan, MPA, at UGM Graduate School on Saturday (10/12) during the National Archives Seminar entitled “Archive as Collective Memory For Higher Education and Research Resources".
According to Mustari, the ten-year retention is determined by the rector, or based on results of the Archive Destruction Committee assessment and the written considerations from the respective state university, head of archives and the leadership of state institutions. While for some static archives of State Universities, these must be submitted to the respective State University Archives. "The determination of the static archive in the State University is made by rector or static handover executive of the work unit and academic community within the State University to the respective State University’s Head of Archives," he added.
Discussing the development of human resources, Mustari explained that development of human resources is needed to have competent and professional human resources in the field of archives. Therefore, national archival institutions implement coaching and development. "This was done by good organization, regulation, and control of education and archives training," he explained.
Another human resource development is regulatory of archivists’ role and legal position, also health insurance and allowance.
Prof. Dr. H. Nandang Alamsah D., SH, M. Hum, coordinator of Padjadjaran University’s doctoral program reminded that not every file/document is archived. This is the main problem that is often faced in archiving, which needs to find or choose carefully and precisely from a stack of files/documents they received. For Archive is an ongoing series of mechanism in the form of verbal records/files, semi-static archive until it becomes a static archive that must be submitted to the National Archives of the Republic of Indonesia.
The archive assessment is the most difficult tasks in archival. "Determining the value of archives is an act of judging and, therefore, may contain some subjective value," said Nandang Alamsah citing the opinion of some experts when presenting the paper "Archives, Archival Institutions and Legal Aspect in Indonesia".
The difficulty of assessing the archive is due to the diverse properties of the archives/files that will be assessed. Some files are singular in the sense that the respective archives have utility apart from the relation to other files/records. Besides, there is some archive that only has value if it is assembled in a single file with other archives on same issue. "An archive or group of archives sometimes have a variety of utility values, both for the interests of archive creator organization as the primary value in addition to the utility value for other purposes as secondary value," he added.
In a seminar organized by Universitas Gadjah Mada Archives, present as speakers were researcher and historian from UI and recipient of Nation Building Award 2011, Dra. Mona Lohanda, M. Phil, Historian and Head of History Program Study from UGM, Dr. Sri Margana. The activity attended by researchers and archivists in Java, Sumatra and Kalimantan is expected to provide insight and new understanding of the archive as a source of research in terms of management and utilization.