April 7, 1999 Dear All, Greetings from the Borgskjalasafn Reykjavikur. I hope all is well with you. Irene and Carol, along with Wayne, Lee, and Rebecca did a great job on the new GNOA web page. Thanks to all of them. The archivists here, working on their own web page, were quite impressed. And, for me, it is pleasant to be able to visit you and to feel closer to home. My work proceeds well, though, and the country is very interesting. They are moving their Archives next week so I have been able to witness last minute details, as well as hear about and see all the state of the art equipment they have. Much easier being an observer in this process! The new archives overlooks the port of Reykjavik and reflects the port's work and the Scandinavian background both from its windows and its clean lines of furniture and alternating pastel and bright colors. The architect has arranged the desks in the reading room in a semi circle and there is now a controversy over this. The Archives has four professionals, one with training in the U.S. as well as one secretary. It is wonderful for me to have co-workers daily, having been a lone arranger for so long. The week I arrived they were busy choosing thirteen items for an exhibit on European culture. This is part of an overall project of co-operation between nine cities selected to represent culture in the year 2000 -- Reykjavik being one among Bergen, Avignon, Bologna, Santiago de Compostela, and others. The overall theme focuses on the role of cities in providing for their inhabitants. Reykjavik's theme is nature and environment, whereas other cities will select documents reflecting such themes as art, work, communication, knowledge, and history. The exhibit will emphasize the part played by archives in the foundations of society and culture, and will highlight similarities and differences within the European community. The powers that be purposively selected mostly local archives for participation in this project to highlight the work of institutions not often affiliated with museums, for example, and not often thought about, when the average person considers culture. For their part in the exhibit, Reykjavik chose documents concerned with early plans for their City Hall, photographs from an active theatre group, a deed for the ownership of land by the daughter of a Lutheran bishop, and other items, mostly from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Icelandic people are proud of their geothermal springs, for example, and in the early twentieth century began plans to heat the whole city and to build public swimming pools. These plans, two of which will be included in the exhibit were somewhat like early Disney Worlds--with tropical plants to be included in partially enclosed and heated verandas overlooking the town pond, for example. For the most part, such plans were implemented. Inside buildings and in the swimming pools, one is very warm! They are a younger city, by some standards. Their stories date from the ninth century, but their history as much more than disparate farms mainly dates from the 1700s. The City Archives, founded in the 1940s, contains records mainly from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with scattered documents from the 1500s onward. The Archives most resembles our Notarial Archives. The collection is used daily by people looking for deeds and other transactions concerned with housing. They also have records from all city offices, associations, and private companies located in Reykjavik. They make a very big effort to collect material on the lives of people in the city. For example, they collect all propaganda from elections, posters about concerts, reports, and in a concentrated way, junk mail. In regards to the latter, they collect everything that comes into selected homes for one week. They similarly collect Christmas cards every five years. I am helping them write publicity about the collection of lists of gifts received for confirmation, a process that occupies even their newspapers during the last week in March and the first week in April. These confirmations of thirteen year olds most resemble a bar mitzvah or bat mitzvah combined with a debutante season. In regards to my project, we have done one Gallup poll concerned with knowledge of what an archives is and will do another next week concerned with use of archives and the private keeping of family records. The latter question says something like, "Do you have someone in your family who is in charge of photographs, documents, and other material concerned with family history?" Sociologists almost always note that women are the caretakers of family history but I can find very few studies of this process. Other parts of my work concern the design of their registration form and interviews with researchers. Historians here are very interested in linking nineteenth century education with improvements in the quality of life and hence have made unusual use of various types of records. I will be back in early June but would welcome letters and even visitors. It is a fun place to swim and to think about our work. I miss you all! Cheers, Susan

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