Ambe Marc-Bride Chenwi
Ambe Marc-Bride Chenwi
PAIX-TRAVAIL-PATRIE PEACE-WORK-FARTHERLAND
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MINISTERE DE MINISTRY OF HIGHER
L ENSEIGNEMENT SUPERIEUR EDUCATION
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UNIVERSITE DE YAOUNDE II UNIVERSITY OF YAOUNDE II
********* *********
ECOLE SUPERIEURE DES ADVANCED SCHOOL OF MASS
SCIENCES ET TECHNIQUES DE COMMUNICATION
L INFORMATION ET DE LA (ASMAC)
COMMUNICATION
(ESSTIC)
BP; 1365 Yaounde-Cameroun
P.O. BOX 1365-Yaounde
Tel : (237) 22 06 26 98
Fax : (237) 22 23 84 36
INTERNSHIP REPPORT
The University of Yaounde II does not give any approbation to the opinions in this report
These opinions mentioned in this document are entitled to the author.
INTERNSHIP REPORT CARRIED OUT AT THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES OF CAMEROON
DEDICATION
To my beloved family
Before any substantive progress of this work, we would like to address our thanks on the
one hand to:
All the staff of the N.A. who each at their level contributed to our development
during our internship. We think particularly of Mme Kolly, Mme Fonkwa, Mme
Omaya, Mr. Sadi whom we thank for their listening, their availability and their
great help;
My parents for the financial support and all their love;
My sister Ambe Lyontine, for her moral support and advice;
To all my friends, colleagues and classmates, who in one way or the other
contributed to the success of the internship. Thinking particularly of Cedric. Marius
and Laure for their availability, concern and unconditional support during these
three years of training spent together.
All the people who have not been mentioned and who, from near or far, have
assisted us throughout this year. May all these people find here the expression of
our deepest gratitude.
Table of Contents
DISCLAIMER........................................................................................................................... 3
DEDICATION .......................................................................................................................... 4
INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................... 8
PART I ................................................................................................................................. 10
HISTORY ......................................................................................................................................12
MISSIONS ....................................................................................................................................12
PART II ................................................................................................................................ 19
DOCUMENTARY TASKS......................................................................................................... 21
1. BIBLIOGRAPHIC AND DOCUMENTARY TASKS ........................................................................................... 21
CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................... 36
BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................................... 37
WEBOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................................... 39
ANNEXES ............................................................................................................................. 40
INTRODUCTION
Gaston Bachelard affirms in the "Formation of the scientific mind": "the scientific
mind must be formed by reforming itself against nature against what is in us and outside
of us." In order to elucidate this thought, he says "to reach science is spiritually to
rejuvenate". In other words, to reach science, one must absolutely submit to its
requirements. Therefore, the professional training at ASMAC would like every learner to
have an opportunity to join theoretical teachings to practical ones, all for a better
professional performance. As a professional school, ASMAC offers its students training
that combines both lectures and teachings in the field through internships. It is
undoubtedly for this reason that the academic internship has been elevated to the rank
of a mandatory teaching unit. The objective of such a methodical examination is to
familiarize students with their respective professional environments, to prepare them to
face the increasingly competitive job market today, and to acquire know-how,
interpersonal skills and new knowledge specific to the host organization. In ASMAC, three
types of internships are involved- Observation internship for L1: Impregnation internship
for L2 and Participation internship for L3. It is in this vein that as L3 students, we carried
out a participation internship at the National Archives of Cameroon which lasted three
months, from July to September, 2022. The choice of this administrative direction is not
the fruit of a perfect chance, it denotes a multitude of ideas leading to this choice. On the
one hand, the National Archives are the reflection of the collective conscience at a given
moment, because they preserve the collective memory through time and space, and
remain the only reliable witness of history because they transcend the space-time frames
to become an instrument of popularization of information and globalization of the
relations between men and civilizations. On the other hand, the documentary
information professions in general, and even more so the profession of archivist and/or
records manager, are professions that can be grafted onto all other professions,
PART I
INSTITUTIONAL STUDY
The situation of public archive services on the African continent is the result of
complex and varied historical and institutional trajectories. This diversity can be seen in
the organization of the institutions, their relationship with the administrative authorities,
the links they maintain with the contributing administrations, and the cultural, scientific
and educational policies implemented, even if only within the countries of French-
speaking Africa. To do this, it will be useful in this first part to present the National
Archives in general (section 1), their particular characteristics and their organizational
structures (section 2)
MINAC is a government entity responsible for the delivery of services related to cultural
heritage. It is also the supervising administration of the N.A. We will first present the
geographical location of MINAC, its history, and then present its missions.
GEOGRAPHIC SITUATION
MINAC is located in Cameroon, in the Centre region, in the Yaoundé III district. Its
administrative Centre is found behind the National Museum.
HISTORY
MINAC has undergone many changes with different names. The first was《 the Ministry
of Information and Culture, established by Decree No. 72/245 of November 20, 1978 and
Decree No. 88/1278 of September 21, 1988. MINFOC becomes MINCULT by Decree No.
95/245 of November 26, 1992 and affects the National Archives. In 2012, MINCULT
became MINAC by Decree No. 201/381 of September 14, 2012. Currently MINAC is under
the responsibility of Mr. PIERRE ISMAEL MBIDOUNG KPWATT appointed on January 4,
2019.
MISSIONS
° The protection, conservation, enrichment and promotion of the national cultural, artistic
and cinematographic heritage;
° The exercise of supervision of the Palais des Congrès and the liaison between public
authorities and copyright organizations;
After this general presentation of MINAC, we will present the National Archives.
❖ A professional body: decree n-°86/752 of 23 June 1986 on the special status of the
body of civil servants of the documentation service;
❖ A legal corpus in constant mutation, based on law n-°2000/010 of 19 December 2000
governing archives in Cameroon as well as its implementation decree: decree n-°
2001/958/PM of 1 November 2001 to lay down the modalities of implementation of law
n-°2000/010 of 19 December 2000;
❖ A penal code revised on 12 July 2016 which punishes attacks on archival heritage;
This section is devoted to the missions, the internal organization of the structure
and the documentary resources.
a) The Missions of The National Archives.
The collection, conservation, communication and control of documents produced
or received by natural or legal persons under public or private law;
The collection, conservation, communication and control of all other documents
acquired free of charge or against payment, temporarily or permanently;
To collect and catalogue documents in the name and on behalf of the State;
To participate in national scientific activities related to the heritage for which it is
responsible, particularly in the field of archiving;
Volumetry: Approximate estimate, 7000 linear metres (funds on shelves) 4000 cubic
metres (funds in Bulk) at Yaoundé depot 3000 linear metres (funds on shelves) and 2000
cubic metres (funds in Bulk); Buea depot.
❖ Colonial and Autonomous Archives fonds not listed available in:
- Traditional chieftaincies in the ten regions of Cameroon
- Private companies,
- Religious institutions,
- Public and parapublic administrations, decentralized territorial authorities (due to the
freezing of payments to the National Archives since 1984)
- The total volume of the Cameroon Archives (indexed and non-indexed) can be estimated
at between 300,000 and 500,000 linear metres.
PART II
INTENSHIP PROPER
We were warmly welcomed on Monday July 11th 2002 at the National Archives by
Mme KOLLY. We further had a meeting with the director and the rest of the staff, where
we did general presentations and we were introduced to our supervisor. We then
discussed on the work to be done at the N.A. throughout out stay there. This takes us to
the second part of our internship report, where we will present on one hand the tasks
carried out and on the other hand the personal evaluation of the internship.
We will also want to precise that we met the N.A. of Cameroon at a Work-in-
progress state, meaning it is presently in a rehabilitation and construction stage, so they
are preparing a transfer, not forgetting that this had to impose a change in the normal
functioning of the institution.
During our three months stay at the N.A. of Cameroon, a lot of activities were
carried out including documentary tasks such as sorting, cataloguing, storage, archival
description, constitution of research tools and non-documentary tasks such as dusting,
cleaning and others.
The following paragraphs are more explicit explanations of the work carried out during
our stay at the national archives of Cameroon.
DOCUMENTARY TASKS
ii. CATALOGING
Here, the documents were the described by creating a cataloging sheet which was
iii. STORAGE
The storage of documents can be understood as the ordering of archival documents in a
packaging unit or placement on the shelves. With regard to the documents found in the
corner of the room, we had to arrange them by theme in order to respect a predefined
intellectual and physical order. During this work, the monographs and the serial
publications were arranged according to the themes, the archive documents found were
put aside for a proper classification. All this in order to facilitate the search for documents
in a radius.
2. ARCHIVAL TASKS
On the archives side, we performed a wider variety of tasks since they were directly link
with our professional realization project. These tasks included; sorting, cross-checking,
description, inventorying and finally digitalizing, the main aim of all these being to
produce a finding aid.
i. SORTING:
This task consisted of location the official gazettes that where available for treatment.
After this process, we sorted a list of documents ranging from 1994 to 2021, a total of
17 years, listed as follows:
1994
1999
2003
2004
2005
2006
2008
2011
2012
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
2021
ii. CROSS-CHECKING:
Here, we had to verify if the years sorted above were complete, that is if the O.G. of
each year had complete publications for each month, from January to December.
At the end, the results were as follows:
1994
➢ January
➢ February
➢ April
➢ May
➢ August
1999
➢ January
➢ March
➢ April
➢ August
➢ September
➢ October
➢ November
➢ December
2003
➢ January
➢ February
➢ March
➢ April
➢ June
➢ July
➢ August
➢ September
➢ October
➢ November
➢ December
2004
➢ January
➢ February
➢ March
➢ May
➢ June
➢ July
➢ August
➢ September
➢ October
➢ November
➢ December
2005
➢ January
➢ February
➢ March
➢ April
➢ May
➢ June
➢ July
➢ August
➢ September
➢ October
➢ November
➢ December
2006
➢ February
➢ March
➢ October
2008
➢ March
➢ August
➢ November
➢ December
2011
➢ January
➢ February
➢ March
➢ April
➢ May
➢ June
➢ July
➢ August
➢ September
➢ October
➢ November
➢ December
2012
➢ January
➢ February
➢ March
➢ April
➢ May
➢ June
➢ July
➢ August
➢ September
➢ October
➢ November
➢ December
2014
➢ January
➢ March
➢ April
➢ May
➢ June
2015
➢ July
➢ August
2016
➢ January
➢ April
➢ May
➢ July
➢ October
2017
➢ February
➢ March
➢ April
➢ May
➢ July
➢ November
➢ December
2018
➢ March
➢ August
➢ November
➢ December
2019
➢ January
➢ June
2020
➢ January
➢ February
➢ April
➢ May
➢ June
➢ August
2021
➢ February
➢ March
➢ May
➢ June
➢ July
➢ December
iii. DESCRIPTION:
Called « Bulletinage in French, it is the process of describing the O.G.s according to the
different metadata we located and found important.
The metadata were as follows
Publication number
Description
Keywords
Structures
Localities
Observation
iv. INVENTORYING:
This task consisted of recording the obtained information from the above
analyses into the defined metadata above. This process was one of the toughest and
took us about 3 weeks to complete. The information was recorded on an excel sheet,
since it was the software, we found best for temporal inventorying taking into
consideration the state of the N.A. of Cameroon.
i. HANDLING:
it is the action of moving documents from one room to another. Our task was to move
the documents that were on the mezzanine (in architecture it is an intermediate floor
that does not occupy the entire surface of the room it overlooks) in order to bring them
outside the building to start dusting. (Annex 5)
ii. DUSTING:
With the accumulation of dust in the backgrounds, during our internship we had to take
a walk on the mezzanine, it was necessary to rid the documents of the dirt that
sometimes-formed part of them. We used feather dusters for this, without forgetting to
protect ourselves with the help of mufflers, gloves and a blouse. We were going to carry
out our dust removal outside the building, because the atmosphere of the room did not
allow us to work.
All this was done with the usage of face masks and handglooves provided by the N.A. of
Cameroon.
NON-DOCUMENTARY TASKS
This are tasks that we carried out as a result of our stay at the N.A. They included
meeting, seminars and Round table conferences, most importantly, the « Territoire,
Organizers
Ministry of Arts and Culture/National Archives of Cameroon, École nationale des chartes
- PSL
Partners
Cooperation and Cultural Action Service of the French Embassy, French Institute of
Yaoundé
Public
Staff of archives and administrations, both centralized and decentralized (ministries and
national institutions), urban planning and architecture agencies and firms, and
documentation and research services. Open to researchers and students within the limits
of available places.
Objectives
awareness.
Contents
The training concerns the archives of architecture, urbanism and territory since the period
of Cameroon's administration under mandates, then under French trusteeship, whether
they are kept in France or in Cameroon, until today.
The problematic will then be extended to the collections relating to the post-
independence period.
CHONOGRAM OF ACTIVITIES
August 2022 September 2022 October 20222
W1 W2 W W W W6 W W8 W W W W
3 4 5 7 9 10 11 12
cataloging
Project validation
Regarding the contributions of our internship at the National Archives, we can list the
following points:
Kno ho o co ec l de c ibe a chi al doc men
Deepen o kno ledge in he e of Mic o of E cel of ae
Kno ho o e office eq ipmen (photocopier, scanner, printer);
°Classify documents;
°Respect the hierarchy;
Kno ho o elcome e a oon a he a i e in he c e and demon ae
Courtesy towards them;
Abili o in eg a e in o a p ofe ional en i onmen
Kno ho to store archival documents on the shelves;
Abili o i e e ea ch in men
Become familia i h he co n ing ope a ion ha e e e na a e of n il no
Become a a e of he dange of o king in a place he e a chi e a e kep i ho
the appropriate protective equipment;
°Respect the confidentiality of the content of the documents
Kno ho o e a chi e digi i a ion of ae
The difficulties we encountered during our internship at the National Archives are:
La ge amounts of dust and dirt in the document storage rooms, and the unbreathable
air.
Lack of pace in o e fo p ope o age of doc men
In fficien o k eq ipmen fo ca ing o man ak
In fficien ligh ing in o e hich make doc mentary research painful.
The op imal o age empe a e fo doc men a e no e pec ed in
the conservation rooms and this can have a great impact on the documents given that
we are in an area of the country with high temperatures.
The p e ence of odents and insects
III. SUGGESTIONS
CONCLUSION
Coming to an end of our internship report carried out at the National Archives of
Cameroon, that 3 months stay allowed us to better know the structure, in particular its
geographical location, its history, its missions, its organization and its functioning, as well
as its means of action. On top of that, we had the opportunity to combine theory with
practice. We saw what the professional world looks like. We carried out some operations
of the archival chain, in particular classification, sorting, the creation of a research tool,
cataloging, the conservation phase, in short, we saw and experienced what the archival
field looks like. However, we regret that we were unable to carry out collection and
communication. Through this internship, we were able to highlight the many
contributions of our internship in this place, and also the difficulties encountered during
our internship not forgetting our suggestions for solutions to these problems.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bibliography
Adjatan, S. F. (2014). Archival description according to ISAD(G) and ISAAR (CPF)
standards and open source archival software. [Benin], Benin: National Archives of
Benin.
Cameroon, Republic of (2000). Law n°2000/010 of 19 December 2000 governing
archives. Yaoundé.
Planning Committee on Descriptive Standards (Bureau of Canadian Archivists).
(1990). Rules for Archival Description. Ottawa.
International Council on Archives. (2000). ISAD(G): General and International
Standard for Archival Description (ed. Second edition). Ottawa. Accessed
September-October 2022
Direction des Archives de France. (2002). Dictionary of Archival Terminology.
Direction des archives de France : Archives Nationales. (2009). Manual for the
Rehabilitation and Restoration of Archival Documents. Paris.
International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions. (1987). ISBD
(CM): International Standard Bibliographic Description for cartographic materials.
London.
Hugo, A. (2021). Setting up a management and conservation strategy for a
collection of maps and plans: the case of the Geneva library. Geneva: University
of Applied Sciences of Western Switzerland.
Department of Arts and Culture. (2016). Recueil des textes juridiques. Yaoundé :
SOPECAM.
Ministry of Arts and Culture. (2022, September 15-20). Ministry of Arts and
Culture. Retrieved from https://www.minculture-cameroun-gov.com
Raymond, R. (2020, October 20). How to convert Excel file to word document.
Retrieved from PassFab: https://www.passfad.fr/office/convert-excel-to-
word.html
Republic of Cameroon (2014). Decree n°2014/0882/PM of 30 April to organize and
operate the National Archives. Yaoundé.
Republic of Cameroon. (2022). Annex to the Order of the Ministry of Commerce
to fix the reference prices and tariffs of equipment, supplies, works and
miscellaneous services intended for public and parapublic administrations.
Yaoundé.
WEBOGRAPHY
https://www.minculture-cameroun-gov.com/
https://www.archivesnationales.cm/
http://www.ifcameroun.com/
https://www.youtube.com/
https://www.wikipedia.org/
ANNEXES