At dawn on November 15, 2018, an access viaduct of Marginal Pinheiros, in the city of São Paulo, gave way, opening a step almost two meters high. As it happened at dawn and in the middle of a national holiday, there were few vehicles and fortunately there were no fatalities.

Among the various steps taken, one of them was to locate the viaduct project documentation, which took a few days and a series of speculations, including that there would have been lost or perhaps no record existed.

Now, still with the marks of what happened with the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro, what can we reflect on this situation?

All generated material that has meaning for a society needs registration.

This registration should be done primarily by basic means, with filing in folders, annotations in a falling notebook or inscription. That is, in a simple or sophisticated way, with a lined pad and pencil or a state-of-the-art digital scanner, we document and secure the information for present and future use.

It is interesting to note that even for something practical, objective, the keeping of the documentation of a construction project that could be consulted at any time, not by an academic researcher, but as now, to evaluate the best way to make the viaduct repair. , there is a look of little interest from the point of view of public management.

And here there is no point in criticizing or pointing fingers, quoting names or making any kind of unnecessary denunciation. And we must think public management not only in public entities, but in the whole of society.

We have federal legislation, the Museum Statute, which establishes regulations and points out, among other guidelines, the importance of registration, safeguard and conservation procedures.

The archives segment has also been doing guidance and support to municipalities and state governments on the issue of Public Archives, also provided for in legislation that is implemented and managed by cities.

I clarify that we give up at this time to make citations of laws and bibliographies, but we suggest at the end of the text some keywords that can be searched and refer to other views and opinions, and thus broaden the debate.

We must consider that the work of recording, whether in a file or in a museum collection, is a continuous work process that must succeed generations.

For those who work directly, it can be a source of constant discovery and enchantment, a sense of contribution to society.

And later, these duly identified objects and documents will be analyzed again by other researchers, in a construction of knowledge that can be taken to infinite scales.

But it is a meticulous work that takes a long time and structure to do so.