DOCUMENTARY PRACTICES AND INSTITUTIONAL MEMORY
CEREMONIES OF PROFESSOR EMERITUS
Keywords:
institutional memory, digital preservation, organic information, documentary practices, university ceremonialAbstract
This expanded abstract discusses the College context of Professor Emeritus award ceremonies, in which records related to the organization of the event, institutional speeches, and tributes to the honorees are produced. It is based on the premise that not all records created during these ceremonies remain accessible over time due to weaknesses in information organization, custody and preservation processes, and these elements influence directly the constitution of institutional memory. This study seeks to discuss how documentary practices influence the preservation of the institutional memory produced through those ceremonies. It is characterized by a qualitative, exploratory approach and documentary research, developed through a survey of records produced between 2022 and 2025 and complemented by a SWOT analysis. The analyzed findings comprise 14 ceremony scripts and 11 institutional speeches delivered by the Chancellor of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte. The results reveal differences in the preservation conditions of those records, indicating that some documents are incorporated into consolidated custody routines, whereas others remain outside institutional preservation processes. The analysis also identified risks and opportunities related to information preservation management. This study then concludes that preserved institutional memory corresponds to the information effectively incorporated into processes of organization, custody, preservation, and retrieval.