Eric Ketelaar (1944) is Professor of Archivistics (Archival Science) in the Department of History of the University of Leiden (since 1992) and in the Department of Book, Archives and Information Studies of the University of Amsterdam (since 1997). He is also on the staff of the Institute of Cultural History of the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Amsterdam. He is part-time General Counsel of the Netherlands State Archives Service.
His main interest is socio-cultural and comparative archivistics: what makes a society or an organization or an individual in a given time and on a given place create and use archives. In this area the research by prof. Ketelaar and his students is focused on
Recent publications on Internet:Can we trust information ? in: The International Information & Library Review 29 (1997) 333-338; reprinted (with footnotes) in: Eric Ketelaar, The Archival Image. Collected essays (Hilversum 1997) 119-124
Professional ethics:
the moral defence of the Archivist. Paper
presented at the conference "Cyber, Hyper or Resolutely Jurassic ? Archivists
and the Millennium", University College Dublin, 3 October 1998.
CURRICULUM VITAE
Educated as a lawyer and legal
historian, Eric Ketelaar received his LLM (1967) and
LLD (cum laude) degrees from Leiden University. His previous functions
were
Assistant Lecturer of Legal History at Leiden University, Secretary of
the
Archives Council, Director of the Dutch State School of Archivists, and
Assistant to the General State Archivist. In 1980 he was appointed Deputy
General State Archivist. Four years later he moved to Groningen to become
State Archivist of that province. He was General State Archivist (National
Archivist) of the Netherlands from 1989-1997.
He
has served the Royal Society of Dutch Archivists as Vice President,
President. In 1987 the Society awarded him with the first Hendrik van Wijn
medal for his
work as editor of the series of thirteen guides to the archival repositories
in the
Netherlands.
He
was Secretary for Standardization of the International Council on Archives
from 1980-1984. The following eight years he was Secretary of the
International Conference of the Round Table on Archives. In 1996 he was
elected Chairman of the Program Management Commission of the
International Council on Archives and Vice-President of ICA. He has
been a
member of the European Commission on Preservation and Access since its
foundation in 1994.
Eric
Ketelaar is a member of a number of professional organizations: the
Royal Society of Dutch Archivists, Verein Deutscher Archivare, Society
of
American Archivists, Netherlands Information Science Community, etc. He
is
an elected member of the Society of Dutch Literature (Maatschappij der
Nederlandse Letterkunde) and the Dutch Academy of Sciences (Hollandsche
Maatschappij der Wetenschappen). In 1987 the French Government presented
him with the order of Chevalier de l'Ordre d'Arts et des Lettres.
His
key-note address Exploitation of new archival materials at the 1984
International Congress on Archives was translated into six languages. He
has
presented papers at conferences and seminars in several countries, including
lecture tours in Australia and South Africa, and on a wide range of subjects:
archival training, legislation, professional ethics, standards, access,
appraisal,
electronic records.
He
wrote the UNESCO guidelines of archives and records management
legislation. As a UNESCO consultant he worked in Indonesia to establish
an
archives school in Jakarta. He conducted seminars on archival legislation,
appraisal and archival management in Central Africa, Central and Eastern
Europe and elsewhere. In the summer of 1997 he was a fellow of the Research
Fellowship Program for Study of Modern Archives at the Bentley Historical
Library, University of Michigan.
He
wrote some 200 articles in Dutch, English, French and German (some of
which were translated into other languages) and he wrote or co-authored
several books, including two general introductions on archival research
and a
handbook on Dutch archives and records management law. Since 1986 he is
editor of a multi-author loose-leaf handbook on archives and records
management methodology and practice (now more than 1000 pages). In 1997
The Archival Image, a collection of his essays in English, French
and German,
was published.