Services for Public Authorities

The obligation to offer documents pertains to records that are no longer subject to retention periods and are not needed for current administrative activities. Retention periods specify the duration of recordkeeping at the obligated entity.

As long as retention periods are in effect, records should remain at the respective public authority. You can find the retention periods on the intranet in the records scheme module (Aktenplan). The periodic offering involves all documents from a department and occurs in larger units covering, for example, a certain number of years. This also includes particularly sensitive personal data, electronic records, databases, plans and maps or audiovisual media.

According to the Archives Act, records may not be destroyed without the prior consent of the National Archives.

No one knows the contents of the records and the processes within an institution better than the employees themselves, which is why we are grateful for your expertise. We are pleased to help with the review and evaluation of the records on-site. According to archival science principles, we select records that are necessary for legal, administrative or historical reasons to preserve rights, maintain livelihoods and research history.

We kindly ask you to mark the records which are "worthy to archive" at the time of file closure. This significantly simplifies later appraisal.

For questions about appraisal and in order to schedule consultations, please contact the preservation team at  Landesarchiv@llv.li.

After a joint appraisal, you prepare the documents deemed “worthy to archive” for delivery. The information sheet on disposal and delivery contains the most important information about preparing physical documents. Documents not considered worthy of archiving can now be destroyed.

Prior to the delivery you’ll have to record the selected documents in the Delivery List we provide. We are happy to organize the transport to the National Archives for you. We will provide an accession number (kind of a delivery reference number), which you’ll have to include when the documents are picked up by the internal services for delivery.

As the submitting entity, you are always entitled to access your own documents. For official purposes it is also possible to borrow your submitted files. You are welcome to request the designated order forms from us. The dispatch and return of the documents can be carried out via the internal services or by collecting them in person at the National Archives.

To view records that do not originate from your department and are still subject to ongoing restriction periods, consent for record inspection must be obtained from the record-producing.