The Hellenic Literary and Historical Archives Society

AGIOY ANDREA 5 ATHENS, GREECE 10556
TEL: (011-301)32-50-378, 32-11-149
E-MAIL: alexelia@central.ntua.gr

ELIA has generously provided this project with copyright free access to information and photographs. To thank them for their help, we have provided information here on their organization.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• General Information
• Sample Publication: History of Greek Photography 1839-1960

General Information

Manos Haritatos, President

The Hellenic Literary and Historical Archives Society (ELIA) was founded in 1980 and is a non profit-making association under private law. It is administered by a Board of Management and today has one hundred and ten mambers, drawn from the scholarly and literary circles of Greece.

The ELIA's purpose is to collect, classify and record all manuscripts and printed matter which are related to the historical development, intelectual evolution and the past and present of Greece.

ELIA's Library

To date, approximately one hundred and fifty historical, literary and economic archives have been collected. The Society's library contains some 50,000 selected volumes and specialises in 19th century editions, 20th century literature, complete sets of 19th and 20th century periodicals, books printed in Greek in Egypt, and works on the folklore, education and poitical history of modern Greece. Among the most important items in the Library are sets of the illegal newspapers published during the Occupation and the National Resistance movement, diaries, the Charters of various associations, leeaflets, and theatre programmes. The Library has a vast collection of pictoral and photographic material covering the whole of the political, intellectual and social life of Greece.

Sources and Publications

The ELIA works together with the Ministry of Culture, museums, libraries, scholarly institutions and individual researchers. It maintains regular contact with many university departments of Modern Greek abraod. It organises and articipates in exhibitions and supplies material for events of all kinds, radio broadcasts and television programmes. It has published some scores of books on subjects related to the materials in its collections. Its publishing activities also "Tefchi," which contains information about its collections, and "Mandatoforos," which until recently was published by the Byzantijns-Nieuwgrieks Seminarium of Amsterdam.

The ELIA has initiated a programme to record on microfilm much perishible material, such as old newspapers and periodicals from other libraries, in order to complete its own sets. It is particularly keen to identify and acquire further archive material.

Future Plans

Among the Society's plans for the immeditate future are the publication of a bibiography of the 19th century (to books, leaflets, periodicals, almanacs and newspapers).

Funding

Institutions and private individuals, in recognition of the value of ELIA's purpose and the work it has already accomplished, provide it with financial assistance to enable it to meet its running costs and further its aims.

Sample Publication: History of Greek Photography 1839-1960, by Alkis X. Xanthakis

Alkis Xanthakis was born in Athens in 1945. He studied at the New York Institute of Photography, and in 1968 he set up the first school of photography in Greece within the Athens Cultural and Technological Institute, where he continues to teach as head of the Department of Photography.

He has worked in a wide range of areas of commercial and advertising photography, while his artistic work has been shown at a number of personal exhibitions in Athens.

Since 1976 Alkis Xanthakis has confined himself almost exclusively to teaching, writing and research into the history of photography in Greece. In the latter feild, in particular, he is regarded as the country's foremost expert. He has published three books on photography and the cinema and is a regular contributor to journals in Greece and abroad.

Alkis Xanthakis is consulting curator on photography, to a number of museums and foundations in Athens and has also served on the juries of Greek and international exhibitions. He is a member of the European Society for the History of Photography and of the Board of the Hellenic Photographic Society.

As a collector, Alkis Xanthakis takes a particular interest in cameras and their accessories, and his collection is generally considered one of Greece's most important.

The Greek edition of this book received an award from the Athens Academy as a work of importance and originality. It is in fact the first history of Greek Photography ever written.