The Archival Inventory of the Institute of National Remembrance, available on the Internet at http://inwentarz.ipn.gov.pl/, is currently going through a fundamental transformation, which will bring significant benefits for all of its users. Alongside the supplementation of the inventory with the data produced over the past few months, as well as new or improved descriptions, a procedure has been adopted with reference to the publication of data relating to files previously treated as having a "personal nature".
Until now, these files were described in the Inventory only with the use of basic personal data of the person whom they concerned. From now on, the full title of the archival unit, specifying the nature of the file, will appear - as was previously the case with non-personal files. Thus, the files of a personal nature will therefore be described in the Inventory on a similar basis as is the case with all other archival materials. This applies not only to the more than 184 thousand records recently transferred to the Inventory, but also to all of the existing 1 million 690 thousand records. Transferring the titles of archival units to the Inventory will significantly increase the range of data available to the public - and will also provide access to the effects of a few years of work conducted by archivists from the Institute of National Remembrance.
A further change in the method of the publishing of data involves identifying the specific location of each archival unit in the structure of the archival resources of the Institute: descriptions of files will include not only the name of the collection they are in, but also the subcollection, series and subseries. This is of particular importance because many - among them the most important and most extensive series of files at the IPN have a complex structure, resulting from the historical factors and character of their creation.
The transfer of a large number of records pertaining to the files separated from the so-called classified collection - both in the past years and in recent months, to the Inventory, is also of major significance to the general public and to researchers.
The full database of IPN’s archival holdings is made available to authorised users on the previously established conditions in all reading rooms of the Institute of National Remembrance throughout Poland. In accordance with the Act on the IPN, access to the archival information system "Digital Archive" is granted to individuals conducting scientific research as well as journalists.