Family Archives

M. A. Alekseenko

A family archive is a type of personal archival collection that consists of documents belonging to members of a single family (limited to no more than three generations: parents, children, and grandchildren). Some personal documents lack an official character and serve as primary sources for studying the everyday history of a specific region, ethnicity, or the biographies of notable individuals.

When forming a family archive, its title includes the family’s surname and information about each key family member, specifying their degree of kinship.

Documents are included in the family archive either as separate collections for each family member (if there is a significant volume of documents) or as a unified family collection if the volume of documents is small.

As part of the "Electronic Archive of Germans in Kazakhstan" project, the following documents are accepted for the creation of family archives:

• biographical materials (personal documents, certificates,
  identification documents, records of titles or degrees conferred,
  honorary certificates, addresses, letters of gratitude, etc.);
• autobiographies, diaries, notebooks, records of creative or public activities;
• memoirs;
• photographs (individual, group, family, professional, and others);

as well as, if available:

• personal and professional correspondence;
• scientific works, methodological manuals, translations;
• texts of reports and speeches by all archive owners;
• manuscripts of the archive owners' works, including various versions;
• articles written by family members or about them;
• other documents preserved in the family archive.

When submitting documents for the formation of family archives, attention should be paid to annotating the materials, including photographs. For photograph annotations, it is necessary to specify the date and place of capture. If the exact date cannot be determined, the year or decade should be indicated.