The National Archives of the Ministry of Justice of Georgia implemented several new initiatives and actively worked on various projects throughout the year 2021, despite the complexities caused by the ongoing pandemic of coronavirus.
During the year, a new 3-year strategy for the development of the National Archives has been developed and the National Archival Fonds have been replenished with new written, film, photo, and phonograph documents, including over 12,000 archival files of administrative content, 145 video, 280 photo, and 26 phonograph documents.
Up to 16 thousand archival certificates were issued, as well as up to 38 thousand certificates – within the framework of the systematic land registration project, and up to 77 thousand certificates – within the framework of the sporadic land registration project. The archive actively served the researchers and the research halls of the National Archives of Georgia served 1056 researchers.
The year 2021 was also important in the field of restoration of documents. After 18 months of work, the restoration of the 12th century Four Gospel has been completed and is kept in the St. George Church of the Lakhamuli community of the Mestia Municipality. In addition, up to 17 thousand paper-written documents preserved in the archive were restored.
As a part of the policy of the National Archives to better protect and access the original documents, the digitization team digitized 1100 thousand pages of written documents, 440 film documents, and up to 3,000 photo, and 207 audio documents. Additionally, digitization and annotation of household records of the 1935-2005 period had begun.
The VI International Scientific Conference of the National Archives − “Archival Studies, Source Studies - Trends and Challenges” was held online. Because of the safety concerns, an educational project for schools had to be held in a different format last year, and took form of an essay competition on the theme of "The First Democratic Republic of Georgia", which had to be held remotely.
Five exhibitions were organized in the exhibition pavilion of the National Archives, 3 books were published: "Reports of the Meetings of the Military Council ", "Erekle II" and "Memoirs of Maro Tarkhnishvili".
The Cinema Hall of the National Archives hosted 6 screenings, as well as a retrospective on the 20th century Georgian Cinema − "Georgian Cinema 1920-1930", which was held in collaboration with the Georgian National Film Center, within the framework of which 21 digitally restored films were screened.
As a part of celebration of the European Year of Railways, the Georgian Railway photos were published on the European Archival Portal (APEx); At the same time three types of Georgian alphabetical fonts were created together with the cooperation of company "Gepra" and calligrapher Davit Maisuradze; 5 virtual exhibitions, 10 multimedia pages, and 15 archival collections were posted on the website and Facebook page of the National Archives.
Same year, the National Archives presented its projects at the 26th Congress of the International Center for Archival Research (ICARUS); closely cooperated with the National Archives of Britain, Slovenia, and Estonia in the field of electronic archiving; prepared the new nomination for submission to the UNESCO Memory of the World Register.
In 2021, a new building of the Regional office of Samtskhe-Javakheti region was opened in Akhaltsikhe, which will preserve the archival fonds of Adigeni, Aspindza, Akhalkalaki, Akhaltsikhe, Borjomi and Ninotsminda.