Staatsarchiv des Kantons Zürich

1837 is considered the founding year of the State Archives in the modern sense, when the historian Gerold Meyer von Knonau, elected on 4 February to succeed the previous "registrar", was subsequently given the new title "State Archivist" on 7 November. At the same time, in 1837, the various special archives of the canton began to merge into a central archive, which for the first time appeared independently in the Fraumünsteramt. Finally, from then on, permission from the government council was no longer required for outsiders to use the archives.

A text prepared in 2007 for a handbook deals with various aspects of the history of the State Archives. It also contains a list of older literature on the history of the archives.

The State Archive of Zurich is the archive of the Swiss Canton of Zurich and its legal predecessors, in particular the City State of Zurich. The historical holdings of the State Archive date back to the year 853 - the founding charter of the Fraumünster is the oldest surviving document - and have a significance that extends far beyond the canton. The continuity of tradition is considered remarkable, thanks to the absence of major catastrophes and wars. The more recent holdings of the Canton of Zurich (since 1831) form the bulk of the archive holdings in terms of quantity, comprising some 30 kilometres of files and documents, to which a few terabytes of electronic data material are added.

• Evaluating, taking over and indexing the records of the offices required to offer records that are permanently worthy of preservation
• Preservation of the holdings and guaranteeing their usability
• Promoting and facilitating research
• Advising and supporting the public bodies in questions of record keeping and record storage
• Professional supervision of the public archives in the canton
• Taking over documents of private origin where this is important for supplementing the state holdings and the history of Zurich

The State Archives are divided into the archive management, five departments and two divisions.

The Departments for the Creation of Records, Record Development and Individual Customer Services form three archival core processes in series. The Post-Cataloguing and Digitisation Department is another core process that complements the Record Cataloguing and Client Services Departments. The Preservation department is the fifth core process in parallel to the other four.

The Cross-Sectional Tasks section supports the archive management and departments, and the Municipal Archives section advises and supports municipalities in all questions of information management and archiving.

The State Archives are the archives of the public bodies of the Canton of Zurich: the Cantonal Council, the Government Council, the cantonal central and district administration, the courts, the notaries' offices and the public institutions. The State Archives take over, index and conserve their documents worthy of preservation.

As a historical archive, the State Archives also preserve the administrative records of the old city-state of Zurich from the Middle Ages, the Reformation and the early modern period. These holdings are supplemented by documents of private origin, for example from companies, associations, guilds, families and individuals.

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