Por Redaccion UNESCO commemorates on Monday 9 worldwide its celebration, which will extend until Sunday. Therefore, the Junta de Castilla y León has designed a varied program of specific activities throughout the month to make known and bring these cultural centers closer to all citizens, highlighting the documentary heritage of the Community.
June 7, 2025
Castilla y León |
Department of Culture, Tourism and Sports
The International Archives Day is celebrated, as every year, on June 9, a date that coincides with the day of the creation of the International Council on Archives (ICA/CIA) in 1948, under the auspices of UNESCO. Around this date, the ICA convenes the International Archives Week (IAW/SIA2025), which will take place this year from June 9 to 15. The selected motto is ‘#AccessibleArchives: Archives for all’, with the aim of highlighting the work of archives to make information more accessible to a general and global audience.
This motto demonstrates the willingness of archives to break physical barriers in their accessibility and promote their evolution in the digital age, allowing greater access to archival content by adopting new digital technologies that enable greater dissemination of their collections, facilitating access to knowledge, culture, and history for all equally.
Archives of the 21st century share a common goal: to ensure that all citizens can access the information they hold, through digital platforms and enhanced user interfaces, enabling innovative preservation of the documentary heritage and allowing its consultation, regardless of their geographical location and physical limitations.
The motto ‘#AccessibleArchives’ focuses on four fundamental aspects:
- Overcoming barriers to archive access: addressing obstacles such as limited resources, lack of knowledge, and technical challenges that hinder full participation in archival work.
- Utilizing technology to improve access: exploring how digital innovations, including Artificial Intelligence, are transforming the way archives are navigated and made accessible to a wider audience.
- Archives in society: changes in perceptions: changing the narrative to recognize archives as key players in shaping cultural identity, governance, and accountability.
- Inclusion and representation in archival practices: ensuring that the voices of historically underrepresented communities are included in archival collections, promoting diversity and inclusion.
In this sense, the Archives System of the Junta de Castilla y León has been working on the implementation of SIEGA, a technological tool used by the different archives of the system for the comprehensive computerized management of the documentary heritage preserved in them, facilitating its processing throughout the life cycle of the documents by allowing electronic communication and transfer of information between them.
Thus, through the online Catalog of SIEGA, citizens also have access to a large part of the documentary funds preserved, described, and sometimes digitized in the historical provincial archives, the General Archive of Castilla y León, and the Castilla y León Film Library, allowing the search and navigation through the extensive documentary heritage preserved in the archive centers:
Scheduled Activities
The Department of Culture, Tourism and Sports celebrates the International Archives Week in the historical archives dependent on the Junta de Castilla y León through an extensive program of cultural events.
With these activities, which will take place throughout the month, the archives aim to highlight the documentary heritage of Castilla y León, contributing to strengthening the cultural fabric of the cities of the Community and seeking an opportunity to reach new audiences and society in general.
In this way, visitors to the archives during these days will be able to learn a little more about the facilities and operation of these centers and the important services of culture, information, and rights assurance that they provide to the institutions whose documentation they safeguard and to the citizens in general.