Archives départementales de l'Indre

Like all departmental archives, the Indre departmental archives originated during the revolution, when the papers of the suppressed institutions and the titles of the national domains were collected in the district capitals and then, from the year V, in the departmental capital.

For a long time, the archives were kept in the treasury room of the Château-Raoul (in the old dungeon destroyed in 1824), and then moved to the attic of this building, where they were kept in the uncomfortable conditions of a fire or flood.

In 1894, they were moved to the building of the former printer Migné, at 32 rue de la Vieille Prison, to which the departmental architect Henry Dauvergne had added a two-storey warehouse. Few changes were made until the directorate of Xavier du Boisrouvray (1953-1966), who emptied the depot and fitted it out with three levels and an attic with concrete floors supported by metal shelving with supporting posts.

In 1970, when the new prefecture was built, two rooms in the basement (about fifty metres from the main warehouse) allowed for a significant increase in shelving. However, the small size of the premises used by the public (the former salon of the Hôtel Migné, now a reading room) and the inconvenience of the offices (converted flats or attic) led to the search for a new location.

Since October 2003, the departmental archives have been transferred to the former girls' teacher training school. This building, built in 1888-1889 by Henry Dauvergne, was restored and enlarged in 2000-2002 by the firm SAREA (Mr. Alain Sarfati) and Architectes et Associés de Châteauroux (Mr. Jean-Paul Broquet). It has a 48-seat reading room (some of which can be used to consult digitised collections), exhibition, conference and school rooms, and approximately 20 linear kilometres of shelving.

The Indre Departmental Archives are a service of the Departmental Council. Their main mission, like all the departmental archives, is to collect, classify, conserve and communicate the archives within their department. The oldest preserved document dates from around the year 1000 and comes from the collection of the Saint-Laurian de Vatan chapter, which was sequestered at the time of the Revolution; the most recent documents are only a few years old. From the parchment charter to the digital database, the competences of the Departmental Archives cover archives, a term whose broad definition encompasses paper documents as well as electronic and audiovisual documents, photographs or models, since it covers "all documents, including data, whatever their date, place of storage, form and medium, produced or received by any natural or legal person and by any public or private service or organisation in the exercise of its activity" (Heritage Code, art. L211-1).

Public archives include documents resulting from the activity of the State, local authorities, public establishments and other legal persons under public law; documents resulting from the management of a public service or the exercise of a public service mission by persons under private law; minutes and registers of public or ministerial officers and registers of notarised civil solidarity pact agreements Private archives are made up of all documents that do not fall into the category of public archives.