How to stop the Digital Dark Ages? The role of Archives in preserving Data of Communities

Abstract

According to the Digital Preservation Coalition community, generated content in arts and heritage is classified as critical endangered cultural digital heritage. This also applies to other forms of data from private individuals, civil society initiatives, sports and cultural associations, or religious communities. Every day, data from this area is irretrievably lost. Are we therefore approaching the ‘Digital Dark Age’ (Terry Kuny, 1997)? As simple and self-evident as it is today for archives to take over paper documents from entities that do not originate from their creator institutions, the situation is unclear when it comes to digital files. Technical barriers, concerns about data security, fears of overburdening one's own archival resources, and even fundamental rejection are all part of a diffuse discourse that prevents action. At the same time, historians are increasingly demanding digital sources for their research. To this end, they often resort to holdings from non-archival contexts: YouTube videos, screenshots of social media posts, or PDF documents from websites are used as bits of information and cited with varying degrees of success. Know-how about the source-critical analysis of these documents is often completely lacking, and a methodology has not yet been developed. This article attempts to summarize the archival discourse on the archiving of documents from a private context and to make it comprehensible by means of examples. It raises the question of the extent to which advising private individuals and taking over data are becoming new core tasks for archives, and what role archives should play in this regard.