The rapid growth of information and communication technology can certainly bring challenges to archives and any theory/practice that is related to it. Internet-based services are capable of replicating all the functions of the archival institutions, as studied by Ivan Szekely. Most of the documents are available online in today’s world which makes them more user-friendly than ever before. Szekely’s study says that paradigm changes in various fields of archival practices have been more frequent in the last decade. It seems inevitable that the traditional archives are facing a steep decline. (93).
Work Cited
Szekely, Ivan (2017) “Do Archives Have a Future in the Digital Age?,” Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies: Vol. 4, Article 1.
Do Archives Face an Existential Threat in the Digital Age?
2 thoughts on “Do Archives Face an Existential Threat in the Digital Age?”
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Shuvro, you raise an important point about the de-materialization of physical archives as databases continue to build immaterial archival spaces. I think it’s necessary to consider what is lost and what is gained when physical, sited landscapes become digital. Such exploration might first require a look at the purposes material archives have held. For whom have archives been created and why? Curation? Historical authority? What/whose agenda do they serve? What have physical archives failed to capture, and how might digital archives prevent–or–reify erasure? To what degree do digital archives carry on the same agenda of their counterpart, and at what point is that agenda altered, distorted, or challenged?
Further, while immaterial in nature, to what degree will even digital archives require sitedness–and at what point do we get far enough away from the site (origination of the item archived) that digital archives become something else entirely?
Just a quick note to forecast just how nicely this anticipates Han’s Non-Things, which we get underway next week: “This terrestrial order is today being replaced by the digital order. The digital order de-reifies the world by informatizing it” (1). Possibly this also characterizes, albeit paradoxically, the efforts to render archival things more widely accessible by digitizing them.