The International Newsletter of Communist Studies Online IX
The International Newsletter of Communist Studies Online IX
The International Newsletter of Communist Studies Online IX
You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles
YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.
<strong>The</strong> <strong>International</strong> <strong>Newsletter</strong> <strong>of</strong> <strong>Communist</strong> <strong>Studies</strong> <strong>Online</strong> 16/2003 6<br />
<strong>The</strong> INCOMKA project<br />
<strong>The</strong> <strong>International</strong> Committee for the Computerization <strong>of</strong> the Comintern Archive (INCOMKA)<br />
undertook a project to facilitate research into the Comintern archive. Begun by the<br />
<strong>International</strong> Council on Archives, its partners are the Russian State Archive <strong>of</strong> Social-Political<br />
History, Federal Archival Service <strong>of</strong> Russia, Archives <strong>of</strong> France, Federal Archives <strong>of</strong> Germany,<br />
State Archives <strong>of</strong> Italy, National Archives <strong>of</strong> Sweden, Federal Archives <strong>of</strong> Switzerland, Ministry<br />
<strong>of</strong> Education, Culture and Sport <strong>of</strong> Spain, Library <strong>of</strong> Congress <strong>of</strong> the USA, and the Open<br />
Society Archives <strong>of</strong> Hungary. <strong>The</strong> INCOMKA project has two parts: first, to digitize as images<br />
5% (one million pages) <strong>of</strong> the most used and the most significant documents chosen by the<br />
project partners <strong>of</strong> the Comintern and, second, to digitize the finding aids <strong>of</strong> the Comintern<br />
collections at RGASPI into an electronically text-searchable database. <strong>The</strong> scanning <strong>of</strong> the<br />
documents was undertaken by RGASPI archivists who also prepared the Russian-language<br />
database. <strong>The</strong> database is essentially an edited electronic version <strong>of</strong> the printed finding aids<br />
allowing computer searches using file descriptors, key words, and personal or organizational<br />
names. <strong>The</strong> database allows rapid location <strong>of</strong> file descriptions <strong>of</strong> the entire twenty-million<br />
pages <strong>of</strong> the <strong>Communist</strong> <strong>International</strong> archive at RGASPI, not just the one-million pages<br />
electronically scanned for the INCOMKA project.<br />
<strong>The</strong> INCOMKA database <strong>of</strong> personal names and cadre files<br />
However, to facilitate international use, INCOMKA determined that the database was to be<br />
electronically searchable in both Cyrillic-alphabet Russian and Latin-alphabet English. <strong>The</strong><br />
U.S. Library <strong>of</strong> Congress agreed to be the lead agency for translation <strong>of</strong> the database with Dr.<br />
Ronald D. Bachman, the Library’s Polish and East European area specialist serving as the<br />
supervising linguist. Library <strong>of</strong> Congress linguists found that translating most <strong>of</strong> the<br />
descriptors from Russian to English to be an uncomplicated translation task although