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Hi all. We opened yesterday an exhibition under the name "Political Propaganda in the Reykjavik City Archives". In it we show political propaganda for parliament elections covering the years 1880 to 1999. We explain voting rights and how they developed and and we show propaganda from the various parties, how it had developed and now become much more commercial. Sometimes, it is quite comical to look at it after not so many years. We also decided to be a "election propaganda center" for all parties for the coming parliament elections, which will take place May 10th. We have collected materials from them all and set it up in neutral way. This is the only place the public has a chance to come and read or take brochures from all parties. This morning we had joint press conference of the media and several candidates from five of the six parties. The candidates and the media walked through the exhibition together and mixed discussions about politics in the past and today. The meeting was covered by two TV stations, 2 radio stations and one newspaper covering this, as well as PR people from the parties themselves. It was a risk we took to have this, because we had no idea how many would show up, but it was quite successful media event I hope you will have a chance to see this exhibition if you come to Iceland before May 12th but otherwised I wanted to present this as an example to you that archives can get noticed and mix up the past and present. Our last exhibition was about occupied Reykjavik during WWII which about 7.000 people came to see in 7 weeks. The next exhibition will be about the founding father of our archives and well as several other cultural institutions. We have a designer working with us on that one, as it is quite trickly to set up interesting exhibition about "ordinary" individual. Have a great weekend. Svanhildur Bogadottir city archivist Reykjavik Municipal Archives Tryggvagotu 15 101 Reykjavik, Iceland