The collection of messages laid down in front of the Bourse (Brussels Stock Exchange) of Brussels and near the subway station Maelbeek following the attacks of March 22 2016, joins in the continuity of actions carried out in other places - Paris, London, Madrid, - after similar dramatic events. Besides the will to place them at the public disposal as testimony of a milestone of our history, the action of the archivists raises question and highlights new practices of "factory of archives". It also raises the question of the status of all the collected documents. What are these documents exposed in the public place, constituting short-lived and spontaneous memorials, on which the archivists intervene to insure the conservation? Do they consist of archives or collections or documentation? Is it really about "tributes", term often used to describe these undoubtedly imperceptible documents? Beyond these questions, Frédéric Boquet (Chief Archivist in the Archives of the City of Brussels) and Marie Van Eeckenrode (Lecturer at the University of Leuven - Attached scientist to the National Archives of Belgium) point some stakes inherent to such collections.

Discover this article in the number of 'La Gazette des Archives' which concerns the initiatives of collection and archiving of the public reactions to terrorist attacks having struck Belgium, France and our European neighbors these last years.