The transition in Mongolia affected all aspects of social life including archival sector and put forward the demand to make radical changes in the sector.

The erroneous policy which undervalued social importance of archives has been changed and nowadays the renovation of history and culture of the country became matter of state policy. Importance of information and archival documents for managerial activities has significantly been increased and new methods and technologies of information collecting, processing, and preserving are becoming essential elements for every institution establishing favorable social environment for drawing increasing attention to archives and archival activities.

In wider terms it means the development of the archival sector and its technological renovation, management improvement on all levels and modernization of information handling techniques are not possible without comprehensive training of archival workers.

There was no policy and system as such for training of archival workers in Mongolia. From the end of 1950's to the beginning of 1990's, archivists with high education had mainly been trained in the Moscow Institute of History and Archives of the former Soviet Union. In 1988 an academic training course was opened at the Faculty of History of the Mongolian State University which made possible to prepare high education professional archivists locally. This training course enrolled students once in two years. Opening of the class for archivists and office book keepers at the Professional College of Jurisprudence and organization of training course played important role in the preparation of archival professionals with mid level training for public institutions. In order to meet the growing demand for the typists and book keepers, 6 months training courses for typists were opened at the Chancellor Department of the former Council of Ministers in 1972. That was the only place where high skilled typists were trained for many years. About 100 hundred archival professionals have trained during the last 30 years, out of which more than 20 are currently working in the archival sector.

The former State Archives Administration, archives of the Ministry of External Relations, Ministry of Defense, State Security Committee mainly employ professionals prepared in the Soviet Union. But Central Archives, Aimag and City Central Archives as a rule have professionals trained locally at the Faculty of History and Archives of the Mongolian State University or from professional college of Jurisprudence. This fact shows that the understanding and acceptance of the importance of handling archival documents by professionals and the system of professional training was going to be evident. However significant changes had occurred in archivists' training system due to the conditions established in the country in the 1990's. The training course for typists at the former Counsel of Ministers had been closed and the Professional College of Jurisprudence was dissolved in 1991. From 1990 Mongolian Government stopped sending students to the Moscow Institute of History and Archives. In such a way the training of professional archivists became unorganized and to some extend lost previous achievements. From that period of time training of professional archivists with mid level training had stopped and typists and book keepers started to be prepared by short term training courses organized at NGOs and private enterprises. As a matter of fact those training courses can not meet needs of current training requirements of professional archivists.

Therefore it is becoming emerging challenge to train new generation of archivists in completely different environment where state and economic system in the country had fundamentally been changed, new strict requirements for organization of archival work, book keeping, growing usage of high tech. in information processing, preservation and transmission and drastic expansion of external relations of the country.

According to the State Statistical Bureau there are more than 30,000 organizations and business entities officially registered and running different kind of activities. It is quite obvious that each of those institutions somehow maintains book keeping and archival activities.

Today many organizations do not follow standards and regulations of book keeping and do not maintain classification, lack of information coding and retrieval techniques makes not possible to find necessary information. The reason behind is shortage of experienced and good skilled professional archivists. Therefore we make conclusion that professional archivists training system should be developed in the country. The training should be centralized, should have unified programme and up to date curricula.

Great importance is given to the training and retraining of archivists in the time when the Law on Archives has been approved by the Parliament, legal innovation is taking place in the archival sector and the implementation of state policy on archives has started. Following principals are adhered to in the development and implementation of the policy on training of professional archivists:

- the policy should cover archival sector as a whole

- the policy should highly be in line with the goal and demands of the archival sector

- totally new system of training and retraining of professional archivists should be developed

The main goal should be, as it is understood, to make possible that Mongolian archival activities are carried out on international standards, to provide state archives by professionals who can meet today's requirements of archival work in order to achieve innovation in the sector as a whole.

Following is a brief description of the current situation of professional staff in the sector, and how demands in specialists are satisfied:

Generally speaking, Public and State Archives are provided, in some extent, with professional archivists. In other archives majority is still professionals. But on individual institution level professional skill and knowledge of book keeping officials and officials responsible for archival duties are very low. According to the Law on Archives archival activities should be carried out by professionals.

In order to provide high education professional archivists to the State Archives (specially in provincial archives) correspondence course on book keeping and archival methodology has been opened at the Law Institute of the Mongolian State University in 1997. Training curricula meet the requirements of modern archives to have professionals with the knowledge of proper book keeping, information technology and legal aspects of archival activities and skill of working in public administration.

The training curricula contains research techniques for archival documents, classification of archival documents, preparation of archival inquires and archival introduction, description, information coding, processing of new documents, and organization of archival activities.

Training course has 3 years programme. 50 percent of training hours allocated for archives and book keeping, 30 percent for law, and 20 percent for archival information technology. In general the training programme will be rather intensive and will have on work training component, writing diploma thesis and examinations.

As it is stated in the Law on Archives preparation of professional staff shall be one of the major responsibilities of National Archives of Mongolia. This means National Archives will be the key institution for issues of professional training and should carry out control after and supervise implementation of the actions.

We are planning to conduct the following activities on professional training:

First of all, it will be the development of two stage training system. High education staff will be trained at the Mongolian State University. Those who graduated will go to state archives. However for the preparation of mid level archival workers special training school is needed to be established. According to the relevant survey demand for mid level professional archivists is rather high for almost all public and private institutions. Therefore there is a high rate of probability of becoming popular the profession of mid level archivists.

It is our intention that in the future to abstain from non effective several months training courses for book keepers and typists.

It will be wrong interpretation that training of professional archivists can be handled only by state institutions. The only requirement should be that such training should be conducted by the educational institution which is officially approved and runs training continuously. So far training for archival workers were conducted spontaneously out of control of professional institutions.

The special school for archival workers should look like following:

The purpose and goal of the school:

1. The main contents of training programme will be introduction of archival works, book keeping, and basics of information technology through specially tailored curricula.
2. Special consideration shall be given to the delivery of practical skills on archives and book keeping to the students.
3. Training curricula shall include teaching of basics of law, information technology, management, history of public administration, practicing on computers and foreign language.
4. Specialized training on the processing, storing, and public usage techniques of new types of information and documents like video and audio records, geological maps etc.

That kind of school can be established at the same institution responsible for archival matters, or at a education institution, or it can be organized as a private institution. Because archival workers had been trained in the former Soviet union the organization and structure of Mongolian archives were very much similar to the Soviet archives.

So, our goal will be to carry out innovation in the archival sector and preparation of professionals who will conduct these activities, to change the current situation of Mongolian archives and to make it closer to international standard. Keeping in mind the fact that archival sector of the country lacks intellectual capacity and professional skills, there are many things to learn from our foreign colleagues. We will highly encourage sending young people abroad for study.

Comprehensive training and preparation of high skill professional archival workers can only be possible within the well established educational institutions which have solid basis for running such training. Hence one of the important issues next is the creation of suitable condition for training which includes experience teaching staff, training materials, books, hand-outs, and other supply. The involvement of working professional in the training process will have double benefit both for students and teaching practitioners.

The proposal for the cooperation on the project of Training and Retraining of Professional Archivists has been submitted to EASTICA. The project contains components like introducing latest achievements of international archival practice to Mongolian archives, retraining of archivists, inviting high skill trainer to get advises on training process and getting assistance from international community on creation of material basis for training. If the project will be accepted, we are fully committed to do our best efforts for the successful implementation of the project.

Thanks for your kind attention.