Archival Profession: Funding, Digitization, and Key Issues

Declining Funding and the Value of Selective Archiving

The decrease in funding for libraries and archives is a result of declining appreciation for the work these institutions perform. The archival profession must affirm its significance in keeping records for the public. This can be done through selective archiving. Archiving any and all forms of information leads many potential financiers to view the profession as a simple storage service. If archivists focus on preserving information of genuine value, people will be better able to recognize the profession's significance and justify the need to fund its activities.

Advocacy and Public Perception of the Archival Profession

The collapse of the archival profession poses a serious threat to archival professionals. Advocacy is one of the most effective methods they can apply to promote their field. These professionals must be vocal about the practices involved in their work and the benefits those practices provide. Most people view the archival profession from a purely literal perspective — as a practice concerned with storing old documents and information. If professionals advocate more actively for the profession, more people will gain a clearer understanding of the actual role archives play in society. Archival professionals must also exhibit determination toward their work, since complaining and relenting only reinforces the negative public perception of the profession.

The media can play a significant role in enlightening the public about the importance of professional archivists. Media outlets should publicize archival practices and their value to different sectors of society, such as education and knowledge dissemination. The significance of archival professionals can also be communicated through exhibitions and campaigns organized by archivists and related stakeholders. This will enable more people to access information about the actual roles these professionals fulfill.

Digitization as a Preservation Medium

Digitization is a contemporary trend in the archival profession, used primarily for the preservation of archival materials. It can have either a negative or a positive impact on archival information. On the positive side, digitization helps preserve significant quantities of information in a smaller physical space. Computers and other storage media can hold far more information than traditional physical preservation methods. Digitization also enables quick access to preserved information by providing search functions through which individuals can locate specific content. This is a major improvement over traditional physical preservation methods, where individuals had to manually search through all files in the archives. Conversely, digitization exposes archival information to threats such as unauthorized access and data alteration. External parties with sufficient technical knowledge can hack digital systems and gain access to archival information without authorization.

Despite these risks, digitization is an effective preservation medium. It enables information recorded today to be retrieved and viewed in the future, and it offers multiple methods of protection. Using firewalls and password controls, institutions can restrict access to digitized archival information to authorized individuals only. Digitization also does not inherently alter the nature of the documents in which information is recorded — for instance, text documents can be scanned and stored in digital files without modification. Additionally, digitized archival data can be accessed from any location through the databases of archival institutions. These advantages make digitization a significant improvement over traditional archival preservation methods.