As funções arquivísticas e os documentos históricos: um estudo em instituições de guarda permanente

Abstract

This work aimed to list and to identify the conditions of custody and conservation of some documents that are referred in the historiography of the city of Santa Maria. It also identified how those institutions with permanent custody of these documents applied the archival concepts of description, classification, conservation and diffusion. This qualitative, applied research, is a case study of the historic archives of Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Maria, and Cachoeira do Sul; of the public archive of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, and of the parish´s curia archives of Santa Maria and Cachoeira do Sul. It is a research with a descriptive character that consisted in the reading of two historiographic writings about Santa Maria, namely, Cronologia Histórica de Santa Maria e do Extinto Município de São Martinho (Chronologic History of Santa Maria and of the Extinct Town of São Martinho) 1787 - 1930, by Romeu Beltrão, and the História do Município de Santa Maria (The History of the City of Santa Maria) of 1797 -1933, by João Belém. After these readings, the documents to be investigated were chosen, and the schedule of the visits to the custody institutions was defined. Several things have been mapped and identified in each one of the visited custody Institutions as: the access conditions, the searching tools, the custody characteristics, the conservation conditions, and the diffusion mechanisms. All the documents chosen for the investigation were found, although some of them in a terrible state of conservation. As a general conclusion, it can be said that the documentation under the custody of the state institutions are submitted to specialized archival treatment, where the archival functions are easily noted. On the other hand, the ecclesiastic archives still need the use of techniques and tools that can qualify them.