Internship at the Archival Centre at St Petersburg University provides an opportunity to: gain experience in working with various archival documents under the guidance of academic staff; and develop partnerships with potential employers, i.e. public sector, archives, museums, libraries, educational institutions, research institutes, the media, public organisations, and individuals.
The scope of the Archival Centre
- Organisation and methodological support of practices
- Formation and improvement of professional skills by students
- Advising institutions and citizens on the search and use of information in socio-legal, thematic, genealogical spheres
- Organisation of interaction with potential employers
- Preparation of teaching aids
- Organisation and holding of seminars, round tables, conferences on historical and archival topics
During the internship at the Archival Centre, students who have basic knowledge and skills can improve their skills by performing both research and consulting services. The groups include the most talented students who have proven themselves as early-career professionals during the period of archive practice.
From 11 to 22 February 2021, students in two academic programmes, Russian Region Studies (master’s programme) and History (bachelor’s programme), successfully completed archive practice in an online format at the Leningrad Regional State Archive in Vyborg (LOGAV). The practice was organised with the support of the Archival Department of the Leningrad Region as part of the activities of the Archival Centre at St Petersburg University. LOGAV is the only archive of the regional level in the Leningrad Region. It contains materials on the history and culture of two periods: on the history of the Vyborg, Kuopio and Mikkel provinces in Sweden, Russia, and Finland from 1635 to 1944; and documents on the history of the Leningrad Region from 1927 to the present. Most of the archive collections are documents in Swedish, Finnish, and German.
During the practice, students were introduced to the main types of work of archivists: acquisition, accounting, storage and use of documents. Having listened to the lectures delivered by the heads of the departments of the Archive and having studied the materials of the websites of the Leningrad archivists, the students were able to qualitatively complete the tasks on each proposed topic. Students were greatly interested in the earliest documents in the Archive, in particular, the Order of Queen Christina of Sweden to the Vyborg governorship dated 16 April 1635.