Penza, 10 March 2016. PenzaNews. The State Archive of the Penza Region has held an event dedicated to the unofficial professional holiday of the archivists on Thursday, March 10.

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Tatyana Kurdova, head of the Penza region Department of Culture and Archive, congratulated the institution staff and called them the keepers of history and life.

“Yes, the Penza region archive is way past its capacity, and yet you find the bravery, strength and force to work in order to solve these problems and provide archival services to our citizens,” she said.

Tatyana Kurdova presented one of the archivists, Tamara Komissarova, with a letter of gratitude for longstanding hard work from the Federal Archival Agency.

Moreover, during the event, the institution received a gift of a book by Konstantin Popov “Raskol And Its Leaders” published in 1980.

After the official part, the archivists organized a brief guided tour through the archive for the journalists.

According to Tatyana Evnevich, director of the State Archive of the Penza Region, they managed to achieve all objectives they had outlined five years ago.

“We sought to procure good scanning equipment – we have it now. […] We created a web portal. […] We sought to digitize our most frequently used documents – the materials of Russian-wide agricultural census: now it is about 70% digital. At first, third companies were doing it for us, now we are doing it on our own,” she explained.

In turn, Pavel Kashaev, assistant director of the Penza Region State Archive, explained that the funds of the institution contains documents mostly from the middle of the 18th century.

“Here, you can touch the history, that is, the document, that was written 200-300 years ago, signed by famous people – governors, emperors, our first archbishops; here is where the whole history of the Penza region is kept, starting from the 18th [century]. We also have documents dating further back,” he said.

Its storage warehouse has exceeded its capacity, as the region does not have a separate archive for personal workforce papers, Pavel Kashaev stressed.

“These are documents of liquidated organizations, factories, various enterprises, bundles of information on salaries, hired and fired workers. All that is here, in our warehouse. People are coming here to get a pension, to get some payment reductions, which naturally requires a document. We are currently overflown with these documents,” he noted.