Arquivo Público e informação: acesso à informação nos arquivos públicos estaduais do Brasil

Abstract

Access conditions to information kept in public archival institutions are analyzed In this research through the study of Brazilian state public archives. The theoretical framework of this research is centered in a real and common concern in Brazil related to the contradiction between the rights one has to get information and one's real access to information. The research method adopted was the survey and the data v^s collected through a questionnaire sent by mail and answered by fifteen outof the twenty five existing Brazilian state public archives. After the study of federal and some state archival legislation, data analysis was carried out focusing on aspects winich affect significantly the access to the archives, such as: the location of the archival institution within the administrative structure of the state, the existence ofrecords management and transfer programs, the ways of organizing, storing and describing holdings, the existence of finding aids and, finally, the availability of human and technological resources. It was concluded that the access to the archiveskept in Brazilian state public archives is limited, to a great extent, althoughguaranteed by law. Either federal and some state legislation analyzed ensure that any citizen has the nght of accessing the archives. Nevertheless, it has been found several obstacles which prevent archival institutions of making the documents available to Brazilian citizens, either for research purposes or as evidence of rights.