The beginnings of the pooling of archival workers stem from an Archival Section that operated within the Historical Society of Slovenia. After the founding of the Society, its members continued to cooperate with similar and other organizations to fulfil the mission of the Society in the form of official contacts, conventions, consultations and round tables. The Society cooperated with state bodies and local authorities as well as domestic and foreign organizations in the creation of archival networks, the renewal of archival legislation, the inclusion of official contacts, the restitution of archival materials, the publication of critical editions of historical sources and the introduction of professional training for archival employees.
In addition to working closely with Slovene archives and in conjunction with related societies in Slovenia, the Archival Society of Slovenia also operates internationally. Since 1992, it has been a member of the International Council on Archives (ICA), which connects archival organizations globally. The Society, to the best of its abilities, assist archival professionals – members of the Society – in participating in professional meetings in Slovenia and abroad.
From the very beginning, members of the Society have attended international archival conventions, congresses, conferences and working meetings abroad. For the first time in 1956, when Florence hosted the Third International Congress of Archives. A year later, the International Conference of the Archives Roundtable was in Zagreb, where a representative of the Federation was a member of the Society. In 1992, representatives of the Society independently attended the 12th International Archival Congress in Montreal, Canada, and the following year met in Munich with representatives of German archival workers’ associations and other archival associations from countries in transition. The purpose of the meeting was to develop guidelines for improving the functioning of archives following socio-political changes in Europe in the early 1990s.
The Society and its members also cooperate with the archival associations and archives of the countries of the former SFRY, with which they were formerly members of the Federation of Societies of Archival Workers of Yugoslavia. In addition to our shared history, we share a connection through archival materials produced by the federal authorities of the SFRY. In 1961, the Third Congress of the Federation of the Societies of Archival Workers of Yugoslavia was organized in Bled with 200 participants from all of Yugoslavia. Slovenia also hosted several Yugoslav conferences, most recently in 1989. At the initiative of the representatives of the archives of Slovenia and Croatia, the first International Conference of Archivists of Slovenia and Croatia took place in Tuheljske Toplice (Croatia) in 2008, later joined by archivists from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Vojvodina.
Reports on affiliation with related and other organizations can be found in the journal ARHIVI .