A History of Wolde Maskel Tariku Memorial Archive Center

Archives as institution have long history and in the ancient time people used them to keep valuable manuscripts which had administrative legal and property related evidential value. In Ethiopia the culture of maintaining and keeping archives in religious institutions governmental and noble men in a separate repository had been taken as a norm. It was because of the presence of this good tradition that Ethiopia especially men and women of noble birth used to dedicate their private house for a blessed task of up keeping precious archival materials and as repository and research center. The private house of Tsehafi Tezaz Weld Meskel Tariku which was transformed to Archives Center in 1970 under a custody of a Trustee Organization and later fully owned by Institute of Ethiopian studies (IES) of Addis Ababa University is a good case to this point. The Archives and Research center host good amount of historical documents especially land tenure related archival materials. However due to political turmoil following regime changes and even because of lack concern from the university’s authorities the archives and research center are not in a good state of existance.