This is according to figures from Arkivstatistikken 2020. - "We risk black holes in contemporary history if we fail to secure more digital archives from the private sector," says National Archivist Inga Bolstad.
Private archives are archives created by organizations, companies and private individuals. They are preserved through voluntary handover to a preservation institution. Until now, private archives have mainly come in physical form to the preservation institutions, and are stored physically in archive storage.
The digitally created archives that document the organization's history over the past 20-30 years, have to a very small extent been included.
Numbers from Archive statistics 2020 shows that at the end of 2020, only 454 digital archives from private actors have been preserved in Norway. These digital archives can contain anything from a few photos to entire company archives.
This worries the national archivist Inga Bolstad.
- From the 1980s onwards, we have preserved little private archive material. Digitally created archives are only available to preservation institutions to a very limited extent, and little has been systematically preserved. This is disturbing," says Bolstad.
Bolstad believes there can be many reasons why digitally created archives are not handed over.
- "They are often still in use, and we don't think about the fact that these archives also need to be preserved. But digital information is ephemeral and must be captured before it disappears," says Bolstad.
She believes that both the National Archives and local preservation institutions must work differently to secure digitally created archives in the private sector.
- "The problem with digitally created private archives is that preservation work must start now. It requires us to work in completely new ways than before to ensure that important social documentation from the private sector is preserved for posterity. The entire archive sector must ensure that there is no black hole in history from this period. We need a joint effort to make this happen," Bolstad urges.
The National Archives will eventually offer secure storage of historical data in the Digital Archive. This means that private companies, through a preservation institution, have the opportunity to store and disseminate their historical data in the Digital Archive.
- The Swedish National Archives' goal is that as many private archives as possible will be available in the Digital Archive in the future," says Bolstad.
You can read the full Archive Statistics 2020 on our website.
About the statistics:
The National Archivist's task is to collect annual statistics from institutions that preserve historical archives. The purpose is to get an overall picture of the situation for archives in archival institutions, and to measure changes over time. The 2020 archive statistics include responses from 150 institutions, 28 archive institutions, 70 museums and 52 libraries. The response rate this year was 95 percent.
