Symposium of ASCAME and Eurochambres at Palais de la Bourse of Marseille: Archives of the Chambers of Commerce and Industry (CCI) for France and the Mediterranean Region.

Two days of the symposium have been held at the CCI Marseille Provence, honouring the French and Mediterranean consular assemblies. More than 50 people in charge of archives as well as members of the French and Mediterranean CCI came in order to share their experience and practice about this topic.

Several speeches have taken place, witnessing the great wealth of the CCI’s Documentary Collections that are prized sources for economic history. The means that have been set up to exploit them, either in the frame of research or through actions to the public, are examples of the development that can be made, participating in building up the memory of our consular institutions.

The specific difficulties related to the electronic archiving have led to vivid debates and aroused the interest of the participants. At first, the experience of the VAR CCI has been presented followed by a presentation of Françoise Banat-Berget of the inter-ministerial service of the Archives of France. She reminded the importance of national texts, addressing the subject of international rules, the challenges of which are really important for the future. Moreover, it has been showed how essential it is for the archivist to be surrounded by several actors in order to conduct an electronic archiving project.

In this context, the interventions of Stavros Vardalas of the Athens CCI, Marinella Katsilieri of the Messenian CCI and Concetta Damiani of the Naples CCI have brought a Mediterranean glance on the archiving management. While introducing the way their services are organized, they also presented from a different angle the inherent issues of the preservation of the documents, especially in case of natural disasters that the Mediterranean area could be faced with. The communication of Pascal Even, Head of the Department of diplomatic archiving of the Foreign and European Affairs initiated the debates about the French CCI abroad, especially the one of Alexandria.