CD-ROM as a support for research about the identity and history of educational institutions

Abstract

Trough the analysis of the adopted methodology, we situate a research carried out at high schools, which present between 130 and 97 years of creation, discussing the characteristics of found documents and strategies of digitalization and organization of documents in CD-ROM. We discuss the digitalization as a way of disposabilization of information about the institutional history, and as a strategy of “preservation” and amplification of the possibilities of documental consultation. Digitalization is also discussed as a (re)presentation and production of a document different from the original; the characteristic of freezing, disfiguration and manageability, which digitalization impresses on the document. We treat the CD-ROM as subsidy for the rewriting of the institutional history, as a Data Bank, a space for storing, organization and hierarchization of documents related to the institutional history, presenting a theory about the institutional history, its nature and functions. A Data Bank, by digitizing documents related to the institutional history, is potentially a porter of symbolizations and attributes meanings to the institutional history, by putting into order “documents”, “documentation”, “syntheses of documents”, printed, clippings of newspapers and comments. The recognition of the differentiation between archives, scholar museums and digital Data Banks is focused. A CD-ROM of documents about the institutional history is characterized as a resource that can be adopted for the dissemination of a culture of documental preservation, being also a basis for the social memory and the support for the reevaluation and feedback of the institutional identity, favoring new views and reconceptualizations about the institutional history.

Key words: institutional history, data base, digitizing of documents.