Documents to be kept found in the archive are cleaned and brought into custody in the main archive of the town hall. There are also plans to bring the finest finds to the residents.
In Äänekoski, the demolition of the Koulunmäki school’s C building will begin in June. Before that, the contents of the school’s archive room are reviewed and treasures to be saved for posterity are picked up from there: teachers’ diaries, annual plans and documents.
For Niemelä, who normally works in electronic information management, going through the paper archive has been an interesting exception from everyday life.
– You have to go through the materials case by case, and there are as many as 100 years. Each case also has to be opened, and you can’t just rely on what’s written on the back, Niemelä describes.
According to Niemelä, the school’s archives contain quite a bit of what the National Archives orders to keep. Minutes of board meetings can be saved, for example. From the point of view of local history, we want to save more, even though storage space is limited.
– We don’t want to blindly throw away old materials, but go through them carefully and save some of them for posterity. The oldest materials are interesting and also really beautiful, when they are written with the teachers’ ink pen in calligraphy, says Sakari Niemelä.
The material to be stored is stored in the main archive
Among other things, all saved material from the beginning of the 20th century until the 1940s has been planned for preservation. The material includes, for example, teachers’ diaries, annual plans and various statistical data. In addition, documents from the 1950s to the 2000s are selected as a sample every five years.
The documents to be kept are cleaned and brought to the city hall’s main archive for safekeeping. According to Niemelä, they are currently investigating how to make the most interesting pieces available to residents.
– There have already been preliminary discussions on the subject with the museum staff, Niemelä says.
Surplus chattels will be auctioned
The construction project for the Koulunmäki school’s C building was presented at the residents’ bridge in Äänekoski at the beginning of March. The cost estimate of the construction project is 21 million euros and the school building is scheduled to be completed at the beginning of 2025.
There are plans to organize an auction for the citizens of the remaining movable property of the building to be demolished.