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The paper reviews literature on the obstacles that hinder the use of information held in archival institutions. First, it highlights the importance of records and archives as sources of information. Second, the paper examines the problems which hinder archival access, mainly focusing on those that are of a professional and technical nature. Third, it presents the components of a good archival programme to enhance the use of archival information. A summary of the key findings is given and the paper concludes by noting that archival institutions need to take certain measures in order to enhance the exploitation of information in their custody.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the long-term preservation challenges that the Swedish private archives are 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 information management environment.

Participatory Action Research (PAR) was used to identify the challenges of long-term preservation together with the six private archives institutions that were involved in the collaboration. The collaboration was financially facilitated by the Södertörn University. PAR is defined as a systematic investigation, with the collaboration of those affected by the issue being studied, for the purposes of education and taking action or effecting social change. What is distinctive of PAR is the active involvement of people whose lives are affected by the phenomenon under study.

The private archival institutions face long-term preservation challenges 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 standardized way and the institutions fear that imposing such requirements might deter their clients from depositing archival materials with them. The institutions will also need to espouse the business-oriented archival descriptions where private organizations are concerned to identify relevant archival materials and 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-term preservation of the information before it is created. Private archives need to invest in education packages that will facilitate their clientele’s understanding of the challenges of digital long-term preservation.

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 archival institutions.

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.

The private archives are part of Sweden’s national heritage. Their preservation matters to the society as a whole and to enhancing the voices of the underrepresented.

The literature review revealed that not much research has paid attention to the challenges being faced by the private archives. This paper, therefore, contributes to this knowledge gap.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the leading topics and developmental trends of archival information resource research in China by visualizing the intellectual structure and evolution patterns of archival information resource research.

This study took China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) as the data source and extracted keywords from relevant articles in archival information resource research as the sample. First, the frequency and co-occurrence of keywords were calculated by using SCI2. Second, this study analyzed the co-word network indicators by using Pajek. Then, topic community detection was conducted by using a VOS viewer, as well as the visualization of intellectual structures. Next, this study developed a graphical mapping of the evolution of research topics over time by using Cortext.

The research topics of archival information resources in China were unbalanced but distinct. Researchers focus on the construction and utilization of archival information resource, which consist of five evident research directions. The phenomena of fusion and differentiation coexist in research topic evolution. There were both continuities of traditional research and innovations in emerging research. The archival information resource research tended to be systematized and extended, reflecting the vertical and horizontal extension of the research content.

Based on a large number of previous studies, this study adopted quantitative methods to reveal the intellectual structure and evolution patterns of archival information resource research in China, providing guidance for researchers and institutions to grasp research status and developmental trends.

The purpose of this paper is to present a survey carried out on a sample of Greek university students (including students of library and archival science) that aimed to map and clarify perceptions of the archive among the students as well as their understanding of the nature of archival science. Moreover, it intends to investigate the information regarding student’s opinions and expectations about their archival studies.

Two separate groups took part in this research and were asked to answer a questionnaire with 16 closed-type multiple-choice questions. The first group included 244 individuals, all of them Higher-Educational Institutions students from almost all academic fields. The second group contained 130 students from the three Information Departments of Greece.

The conclusions verify Greek society’s view of archives. Even though no consistent definition of the archive seems to exist among the sample of students on which this survey drew, there is a clear understanding of the archive as a source of information emerging from the questionnaires as a shared undisputed fact.

The research indicates that archival science is an important part of the information studies. The survey results were taken into account during the revamping of the curriculum of the Department of Library Science and Information Systems, Technological Educational Institute (TEI) of Athens.

The study has advanced the understanding of archival science as an informational discipline which has to contribute a great part in the integrated field of information.

Archival studies have long been a critical part of information education around the world. This paper attempts to provide a worldwide overview of archival education among main information schools worldwide and find out their similarity and differences to suggest measures for the development of archival education.

Quantitative research is conducted including ten elements of the iSchools' archival education which are (1) geographical distribution, (2) names of degrees, (3) names of concentration/specialization, (4) names of academic units offering the programs, (5) levels of academic units offering the programs, (6) study mode, (7) credit requirement for program completion, (8) percentage of required credits, (9) capstone requirements and (10) other accreditations. Programs among different regions are compared.

The study found that 43 out of 96 iSchool members from 13 countries/regions offer a total of 45 master's level archival education, and most of them are from North America. Both similarities and differences among the schools are identified and discussed.

This study’s findings suggest that iSchools may explore the possibility of organizing more conferences and forums to exchange ideas on archival studies and education issues. The iSchool community could contribute to this traditional field by attracting more members worldwide and cooperating with other accreditation organizations of archival education.

Most research on archival education focuses on just regional or country-based issues, and scant research explores a global view.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the Records in Contexts proposal of a conceptual model (RiC-CM) from the International Council on Archives’ (ICA) archival description and to propose an OWL ontology for its implementation in the semantic web.

The various elements of the model are studied and are related to earlier norms in order to understand their structure and the modeling of the ontology.

The analysis reveals the integrating nature of RiC-CM and the possibilities it offers for greater interoperability of data from archival descriptions. Two versions of an OWL ontology were developed to represent the conceptual model. The first makes a direct transposition of the conceptual model; the second optimizes the properties and relations in order to simplify the use and maintenance of the ontology.

The proposed ontology will follow the considerations of the final version of the ICA’s RiC-CM.

The analysis affords an understanding of the role of RiC-CM in publishing online archival data sets, while the ontology is an initial approach to the semantic web technologies involved.

This paper offers an overview of Records in Contexts with respect to the advantages in the field of semantic interoperability, and supposes the first proposal of an ontology based on the conceptual model.

The purpose of this paper is to report the findings of a research project that analyzed records management (RM) and electronic records management (ERM) course syllabi from North American archival studies’ programs. By identifying the convergences and divergences of the topics and literature found within the syllabi, the authors sought to understand the relationship between the two courses and gain insight about how these courses continue to serve as an integral component of archival studies education.

The paper is based on a qualitative analysis of 23 RM and 12 ERM course syllabi from 26 academic institutions from North America. The research examined three different aspects of the syllabi: textbooks, required articles and weekly topics. The syllabi were analyzed as separate data sets (RM syllabi and ERM syllabi), which was followed by a comparative analysis of the two types of syllabi.

The findings of this study reveal that RM, ERM and (to a lesser extent) DA (digital archives) knowledge as represented in archival education converges in some course contents but diverges in others. Archival educators should pay close attention to overlapping areas so that the courses can better complement each other and advance knowledge representation within archival studies.

This study only considered graduate-level programs in the USA and Canada. The study did not include syllabi or instructional guides from associate-level programs or professional organizations such as the International Certification of Records Managers or Association of Records Managers and Administrators (ARMA) International.

The results of this study lead the authors to present two different approaches for how RM and ERM knowledge may be incorporated into archival curriculum.

This is the first research project to analyze RM and ERM syllabi with regards to the enhancement of records and information management education and archival curriculum development.

The aim of the article is to investigate what characterizes the information constructs that the archival discourse and the open data discourse communicate in text, and what their similarities and differences are. This article proposes that it is possible to see the open data initiative and modern archival practice as two discourses that have used different terminology to express and communicate their messages in the literature. In this article, we have applied a hypothesis-like assumption that the information constructs used in open data are actually nothing other than records, as they are in the archival discourse.

This article is based on a mixed method approach. A quantitative text analysis (word count) was carried out in a large set of documents representing the open data discourse and in the archival discourse. This was followed by a qualitative text analysis.

It was found that both discourses did focus on records. However, the opendata discourse very seldom used the term record, but used information and data much more frequently. The archival discourse used the term information almost as often as record. A possible adaption of communication strategies can be identified, targeting a much wider audience through a user-centered approach. This could be an indication of a change in the archival discourse, which seems to be moving from a discourse that is very much regulated by law toward a discourse that is more focused on benefit and usability.

This research indicates that it is possible to interpret both the open data and the archival discourse as one united discourse, an effect derived from working with e-government. There is an ongoing harmonization of the words used, and in the studied archival discourse, a more user- and business-oriented focus can be seen.

The purpose of this paper is to examine user studies as well as user education within the context of public services offered by archival institutions. It highlighted some of the key aspects that constitute both concepts drawing from history in order to provide a better understanding in the context of current professional discussions.

The review analysed peer-reviewed articles ranging from the late 1970s to the present time to illuminate debates in the archival professional underpinning the current understanding of user studies and user education.

The paper outlined the different paths used in user studies to ensure data collection is exhaustive and provides a nuanced assessment of user needs. It also outlined the two related paradigms of structuring user education programmes, highlighted the points at which they differ and the rich discussions resulting from comparative analysis.

The paper demonstrated that there is a rich corpus of professional literature on both user studies and user education, expounding on different aspects that would ensure both are designed and implemented effectively.

The greatest challenges with which digital systems present us are the creation and maintenance of reliable records and the preservation of their authenticity over time. It is vital for every organisation that its records be able to stand for the facts they are about i.e. that their content is trustworthy. To meet these challenges the international community of records professionals must develop appropriate strategies, procedures and standards. In this article the author explores the concepts and principles derived from archival diplomatics that should guide the management of electronic records and therefore these developments, as well as drawing conclusions about the nature of the research work required