Barbara Berska

Archival buildings are increasingly being constructed in ways that help reduce energy consumption. This applies mainly to repositories, but in some cases also applies to other functional parts of the archive. By opting for environmentally friendly solutions, archives reduce their dependence on technical installations and thus achieve greater security of building use, in addition to reducing operating costs by reducing energy consumption. The archive building must be properly prepared for long-term storage of archival materials. It must also meet the requirements for a friendly public institution, well prepared to serve and meet the diverse needs of users in the field of state archives activities. The functions performed affect its design, equipment and the installations, technologies and functional solutions used. The state of preservation of collections collected, stored and accessed in archives is influenced by a wide variety of factors, and largely depends on the conditions of the internal environment in which the collections are stored, but also on the functional, architectural or structural solutions used. An example of a modern archival building, referring, in terms of the above solutions, to the best examples of facilities designed to secure archival resources built in Europe is the National Archives in Krakow.

A state archive building is a place that serves primarily the long-term preservation of archival materials. It must also meet the requirements of a friendly public institution, which include serving and satisfying various user needs in the field of archival activity. The archives’ functions determine the construction, equipment, installation and technology considerations at the very conceptual stage and later in the design documentation. In case of a state archive, storage facilities used for the storage of archival materials are of particular importance. In case of the new building of the National Archives in Kraków, a concept involving passive climate control has been developed for the eight-storey storage segment. The storage segment is a separate structure, with no permanent workstations. The largely passive stabilization of the microclimate was ensured by well-thought-out construction solutions: good thermal insulation, high-performance external partitions and installation of architectural surfaces made of porous materials with good water vapor exchange capacity. Temperature inside the storage facility follows the annual cycle of external emperaturę changes, and relative humidity remains spontaneously at the optimum level of approximately 50% throughout much of the year. During the warm season, the air is dehumidified. Dry conditions and low temperatures in the cold season reduce the rate of degradation of archival materials.

The 2018 centenary of restoration of Poland’s sovereignty and the country’s reinstatement on the political map of Europe after 123 years is a popular research topic among historians, regionalists and students. Therefore, it seems important to indicate source materials for research on the subject in one of the largest Polish archives, the National Archive in Cracow.

In the National Archive in Cracow, many documents allowing for investigation and even reconstruction of a number of events related to the restoration of independence in Cracow have been preserved. The event is very well documented thanks to, inter alia, the interests and actions of the then Director of the Cracow Archive of Historical Records, Dr Adam Chmiel. The extraordinarily interesting research material comprises various types of reports, testimonies of takeover of structures of strategic importance, such as railway stations, barracks, hospitals, fire brigades by the Polish command, as well as reports of individual formations submitted to the City Command. Another interesting source for research on this issue are the diaries, which are a lively and often current account of events. Legacies also constitute invaluable source material for research. Complementary to the file documents are the photographs stored in the Photographic Collection as well as posters, broadsides, proclamations, announcements, notices, preserved in the Posters and Broadsides Collection.

This article presents a set of sources for research into the First World War, stored in the National Archives in Krakow. The set has been created subjectively, and is restricted to archival materials stored in the branches of Krakow’s archives. The chronology of the set generally covers the period of 1914–1918, although there are also archival resources created during earlier and later periods, which help the research and study into the history of the city, region and other Polish areas. The materials most frequently used in research into the subject are the collections of the Polish Legions and the National Supervisory Committee, the Photographic Collection, the Collection of Placards and Posters, court records, county council records, the Imperial-Royal Police in Krakow, and of town records. An interesting complement to the conducted research are collections of individual and family records, formed both during the War as well as after it. Losses, both demographic and economic, were documented by military and civil powers, among which the most frequently used are the records of: Military Bureau of Care over War Graves Corps No. V in Krakow, the Imperial-Royal Central Commission for the Economic Redevelopment of Galicia in Lwow as well as the National Bureau for the Redevelopment of Galicia in Lwow.