Advice for Authorities

The Institute for the History of Frankfurt seeks to preserve historically and legally significant documents of Frankfurt’s City Council, so that they eventually become available for research on a wide range of issues. In this way the Institute makes its own impact on Frankfurt’s historical identity.

One of the Institute’s key functions is therefore to work with the offices and departments of the City Council. After all, those are the places where documents are created which will eventually determine Frankfurt’s image among future generations in 15, 50 or 500 years’ time. Our regular acquisition of archivable material will determine the options that may open up to future researchers one day. The Institute advises City Council staff on numerous questions arising through the assessment and acceptance of documents.

Such issues may be extremely diverse:
•A department may, for instance, have run out of space to store their papers and documents, both at the office and in the basement, and would therefore like to know how to sort and select files for archiving purposes.
•Another department may have problems retrieving past cases and needs to obtain information and tools to optimise its document management system.
•The staff at an office may be wondering whether and in what form they should pass on electronic documents to the Institute (e.g. Word files, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint shows, digital images, audiovisual media and files from specialist applications).
•A department wishes to introduce an electronic system while at the same time ensuring that data can eventually be exported to the Institute without spending too much time or money.
•The staff at a unit are working on a specific task or issue and want to check whether the Institute has any additional information that might be helpful.
•A department is about to celebrate an anniversary and would like to find out its most important developments over the past 100 years.

The Institute for the History of Frankfurt can help with all these questions and enquiries. Also, City Council staff can help themselves to information provided on Frankfurt’s municipal intranet.