The Albanian General Directorate of Archive has introduced on Monday Dec. 17 the newly constructed Central Laboratory of Restoration. This lab seeks to become a local and regional structure for the restoration of old archived documents.
The laboratory was introduced by director of State Archives Ardit Bido, who said that the purpose of the lab will amount to preservation, recovery, rehabilitation, reclamation and rescue of the damaged documents. This is for the physical and esthetical securing and improving of the important, cultural and historical documents.
‘’In the priorities that exist at the Archive are of course the oldest documents, which are towards their final degradation, with national historical significance, due to their specifics and are the first where the work will start with,’’ said Bido.
The project comes from a collaboration between the Albanian and the Kosovo State Archives with state funding. The laboratory will be making the restoration of Kosovo’s documents, as half of the documentation there remains damaged, as claimed by Ram Manaj, the General Director of Kosovo’s Archive.
‘’There are around four thousand damaged papers. An unregulated quantity which scale of damage we don’t know, but there is a damage scale, and a request for documentation,’’ said Manaj.
Bido said that a laboratory has existed within the State Archive Directory, however it was lacking in professional and proper tools. This lab produced weak repairing and led to further damaging of the documents, as a paper would require multiple rehabilitations which thus damaged the text and document.
Except proper rehabilitation tools, this lab lacked the proper preservation conditions and spaces for the newly restored pieces, and the already existing documents. Bido said that along with the lack of training of the employees this has led to slow restoration processes and countless of documents to end up damaged due to lack of care.
Not only a priority will be put to proper preservation conditions, but so far five restorators that will be working with the documents of the Albanian State Archive and other countries, have received a traineeship in Turkey.
‘’This investment for the updated working equipment and tools, and most of all for the traineeship of the employees at the best foreign labs, enables an opened path for both Albanian historically significant documents, but also to those of the diaspora,’’ said Bido.
