The major tasks of the employees of the Institute of Church Archives, Libraries and Museums, laid down in the statute, include providing methodical and professional care of church archives, libraries and museums in Poland (diocesan and monastic ones) and conducting their own research. The Institute does not have any jurisdiction over the church institutions mentioned above. In order to perform statutory tasks, the ABMK Institute has undertaken its work at three basic levels:
- publishing its own organ – the semi-annual journal ‘Archiwa Biblioteki i Muzea Kościelne’ has been released since 1959. Rev. Prof. Stanisław Librowski was its founder and long-time editor (from 1991 onwards, he published 60 volumes). The semi-annual journal ‘Archiwa Biblioteki i Muzea Kościelne’ is on the list of the scientific journals of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education and is indexed in the most important research databases.
- microfilming/digitalizing archival, library, museum collections – in 1960, after organizing its own microfilming equipment, the Institute began microfilming valuable archival materials which were most frequently used (the records of church and parish visitations), library materials (antique books, for example synod records; library manuscripts, for example prayer books, hymnbooks), as well as museum materials – less frequently. Since 2005, the Institute has been digitalizing the cultural collections of the Catholic Church. In 2017, the employees of the ABMK Institute published the catalogue covering its all digitalized/microfilmed collections.
- training activity – the Institute organizes training and annual conferences to improve qualifications of its staff and to prepare them for taking care of church collections. The conferences are devoted to the most important problems related to the functioning of the institutions which store church collections and to the proper care of these treasures. The issues under discussions focus on the theory and practice of collecting, preserving, describing, computerizing collections and making them available. The conference materials are published in the journal ‘Archiwa Biblioteki i Muzea Kościelne’.
