Archives have a significant role in preserving our society’s past. Archives are organizations dedicated to preserving the documentary heritage of any particular group not limited to a city, a province, a university, or even a country. Examples of archives include the Law Society of Upper Canada Archives, the National Archives and Records Administration in the United States, or the City of Vancouver Archives. Archives consist of many artifacts and items found in libraries, however, there are considerable differences as materials in archives are generally the only copies available, they cannot leave the building, and archives are not open to the general public. However, why are archives important and why are they separate from libraries? Archives are important because they provide evidence of activities and tell stories about individuals and institutions while also preserving our collective historic material.
Archives store artifacts and documents from many different time periods and these stored artifacts and documents must regularly be managed and stored to preserve them for current and for future use. However, our world has been becoming digital at a rapid rate over the last two decades, and has been changing how we do things over time, including how archives are stored and maintained. Digitizing archives is done by scanning and taking photographs of documents and objects to convert them into a digital medium which can be later made accessible and viewed on computer monitors. Digitizing is generally done to protect artifacts from any disaster, theft, or damage. The advantages of digitizing include improving general accessibility for more groups of people, which also in turn makes research more accessible while increasing usability and utility for the collection. However, digitizing artifacts is not always possible and comes at a cost, which raises the question to which archives should be digitized, and how will digitization change the nature of archives?
Digitization has already changed the nature of archives to an extent; for example, one can read any version of the Constitution of Canada on the internet in contrast to having to go to a library to do so just three decades ago. Archives such as the United Kingdom’s National Archives have laid out long term plans, such as a five-year one and hiring staff to manage and collaborate the transition. While digitizing makes artifacts more accessible, it makes presenting these materials difficult. Another concern archivists such as the National Archives digital director John Sheridan share, is how can these digitized artifacts and documents be removed from the system when the next system comes in place? It is a concern given that there is no possible way currently to remove or recreate items that exist in the digital system. The industry is also learning how to maintain the digitized data. This data is not permanent one it has been uploaded, and must be maintained on a regular basis and make sure these files are not corrupted. Organizations are working to make sure that digitization also prevents institutionalized forgetting of marginalized groups in history while doing so ethically, showing that there is a lot of work and effort that goes behind digitizing.
Archive digitization is a massive industry with many people working on it around the world. However, digitizing archives does not just involve computerizing materials, but knowing what to digitize, how to digitize it without damaging the artifact, how to do it ethically, while maintaining said records. In addition, the process of digitizing the world’s artifacts will not be a quick process, but rather one that will take many years to come. As a result, the archival industry has been adapting and changing accordingly to these changes in terms of digitizing archives. However, digitization is not permanent and in a few years, the approach to storing archives might differ and change. So it leaves me wondering, how would archives approach the next change, and what would be the future of archive digitization?
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