The woes of Swedish private archival institutions
| Published date | 20 November 2017 |
| Pages | 275-285 |
| Date | 20 November 2017 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/RMJ-01-2016-0003 |
| Author | Proscovia Svärd |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance |
The woes of Swedish private
archival institutions
Proscovia Svärd
The Department of Information Science, University of South Africa, South Africa
and Södertörn University College, Sweden
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paperis to highlight the long-term preservation challengesthat the Swedish
private archivesare faced with. In as much as they offer a complement to the public archives and hence offer a
nuanced national narrative,they lack both financial and human resources to effectively deal with the digital
informationmanagement environment.
Design/methodology/approach –Participatory Action Research (PAR) was used to identify the
challenges of long-term preservationtogether with the six private archives institutions that were involved in
the collaboration.The collaboration was financially facilitated by the SödertörnUniversity. PAR is defined as
a systematicinvestigation, with the collaboration of those affectedby the issue being studied, for the purposes
of educationand taking action or effecting social change.What is distinctive of PAR is the active involvement
of people whoselives are affected by the phenomenon under study.
Findings –The private archivalinstitutions face long-term preservationchallenges such as lack of a digital
repository that would facilitate the capture, organization and management of digital records that are of
different formats and in a dispersed environment.There are no stringent legal requirements to facilitate the
creation and management of the records in a standardizedway and the institutions fear that imposing such
requirementsmight deter their clients from depositing archivalmaterials with them. The institutions will also
need to espouse the business-oriented archival descriptions where private organizations are concerned to
identify relevant archival materialsand to promote participatory archival descriptions that would allow the
creators to tag their records with metadata. Digital information requires a proactive approach, that is,
planning for the long-termpreservation of the information before it is created. Private archivesneed to invest
in education packages thatwill facilitate their clientele’s understanding of the challengesof digital long-term
preservation.
Research limitations/implications –The findings cannot be generalized to all private archival
institutions, as it was only six institutions that participated, but the issues discussed are relevant to most
archivalinstitutions.
Practical implications –A lot of research has been carried out in the area of long-term preservation, but
researchers have not paid enough attention to the woes of the private archives. To sustain a nuanced national narrative,
the private archives need all the support to be able to live up to their mission of preserving archives of the private sector
that are not captured by the public archival institutions. This is important in a pluralistic society such as Sweden.
Highlighting the challenges might enable the institutions to work towards finding common challenges.
Social implications –The private archives are part of Sweden’s national heritage. Their preservation
matters to the societyas a wholeand to enhancing the voices of the underrepresented.
Originality/value –The literature review revealed that not much research has paid attention to the
challengesbeing faced by the private archives. This paper, therefore,contributes to this knowledge gap.
Keywords Long-term preservation, Digital information, Archival repository,
Business-oriented archival descriptions, Participatory archival descriptions, Private archives
Paper type Research paper
The author would like to thank Södertörn University for the grant that facilitated the collaboration that
the author had with the six archival institutions that were involved in the discussions that led to
formulation of this article. She, therefore, thanks the members of the institutions for sharing their views.
Swedish
private
archival
institutions
275
Received27 January 2016
Revised21 May 2016
5September 2016
5 October2016
Accepted14 October 2016
RecordsManagement Journal
Vol.27 No. 3, 2017
pp. 275-285
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0956-5698
DOI 10.1108/RMJ-01-2016-0003
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0956-5698.htm
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