Czy (i komu) potrzebne są wstępy do inwentarzy archiwalnych?

The author of this article ponders over the usefulness of archival inventories for users of archive scientific laboratories. These discussions concentrate on two groups of inventory users – on the one hand archivists, i.e. potential authors of inventories and their entries, and on the other users of the latter, i.e. scientists or other people interested in their content. Additionally, this article includes principles that must be followed in order to make a correct entry to an inventory, considering all its ‘components’. The question raised by the author in the title of this work implies that inventories, and at the same time their entries, are made less and less frequently by state archives employees. The author, however, concentrates his analysis mainly on the rationale for creating inventories and their usefulness for users of scientific laboratories and the Internet. For that reason he attempts to analyse the job characteristics and tasks of a historian and archivist, taking into account, in particular, the most creative nature of the latter’s activity as well as the needs of researchers and other users of scientific laboratories and archives. Finally, the author tries to justify the rationale behind creating entries to inventories in contemporary archives from the archivists and historians’ point of view.