https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8295-9634
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ABSTRACT
In this paper, we present the results of a Europe-wide survey on the implementation of CoE Recommendation R (2000)13 on a European policy on access to archives conducted in October 2022 on behalf of the Council of Europe (CoE). It shows that overall great progress has been made in improving access to their public Archives. It also shows that there are still deficits in some instances, for example in the availability of finding aids for classified holdings or in the granting of access corrections for otherwise inaccessible archive holdings. We also highlight several challenges to the accessibility of archives, many of which are related to the ongoing process of digitalization. On the one hand, there is the growing expectation of users that collections be digitized and made accessible online, while at the same time the available resources of the Archives remain scarce. Finally, digitalization and the adoption of the GDPR also exacerbate the tension between data protection and freedom of information — often at the detriment of accessibility.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. Körmendy, ‘Changes in Archives’ Philosophy and Functions.’
2. Gruodytė and Gervienė, ‘Access to Archives in Post-Communist Countries’.
3. According to definition in the CoE Recommendation the word ‘archives’ has the following meanings: ‘i. when it is written with a lower case ‘a’: the totality of the documents … transmitted to the Archives for permanent preservation … ii. when it is written with an upper case ‘A’: the public institutions charged with the preservation of archives.
4. Majtényi et al., Az Elektronikus Információszabadság [Electronic Freedom of Information]; Tyacke, Van Den Boeck, and Steendam, ‘Archives in a Democratic State.’
5. The Council of Europe was the first pan-European institution and has its headquarters in Strasbourg, France. Since Russia’s withdrawal in spring 2022 the CoE has a total of 46 members. Two further countries are accession candidates, six mainly non-European countries have an observer status.
6. Council of Europe, ‘Measures to Dismantle the Heritage’.
8. Kecskeméti and Székely, Access to Archives.
9. Hofman, ‘Rethinking the Archival Function in the Digital Era;’ Székely, ‘The Four Paradigms of Archival History’.
10. Friedewald, Székely, and Karaboga, ‘Access to Archives’.
11. The questionnaire is available online at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7676589
12. According to the groups mentioned explicitly in the Recommendation we included civil society organizations that see themselves as ‘pressure groups’ or ‘watch dogs’ and that are committed to the protection of human rights, freedom of information and against surveillance and censorship. As it is difficult to find a single organization that is representative of a country’s civil society, 2–5 organizations per country were typically selected. To address the historians among the users, we aimed to contact them through their professional associations, the national science academies and the International Committee of Historical Sciences (ICHS). We had hoped for a word-of-mouth or avalanche effect, but this did not materialize. The responses came exclusively from those who had been contacted directly.
13. Respondents included (mainly national) Archives from the following countries: Andorra (AD), Austria (AT), Belgium (BE), Bulgaria (BG), Croatia (HR), Cyprus (CY), Czech Republic (CZ), Denmark (DK), Estonia (EE), Finland (FI), France (FR), Georgia (GE), Germany (DE), Greece (GR), Hungary (HU), Iceland (IS), Ireland (IE), Latvia (LV), Liechtenstein (LI), Lithuania (LT), Luxembourg (LU), Moldova (MD), Monaco (MC), Montenegro (ME), the Netherlands (NL), North Macedonia (MK), Norway (NO), Poland (PL), Portugal (PT), Romania (RO), San Marino (SM), Serbia (RS), Slovakia (SK), Slovenia (SI), Spain (ES), Sweden (SE), Switzerland (CH), Ukraine (UA), and the United Kingdom (UK).
14. Between 20 January and 7 February 2023, we conducted six one-hour interviews with representatives of a regional and a national Archive, academic experts from Archival Science and Digital History, a civil rights lawyer and a data protection commissioner.
15. Kecskeméti and Székely, Access to Archives, 23f.
16. Čtvrtník, ‘Closure Periods for Access;’ Valge and Kibal, ‘Restrictions on Access to Archives’.
17. Valge and Kibal, ‘Restrictions on Access to Archives’.
18. Similar observations have been made for the USA, cf. Dressler and Kearns, ‘Probing Archivists’ Perceptions.’
19. András Sipo, Interview with the authors on 26 January 2023.
20. European Archives Group, ‘Guidance on Data Protection for Archive Services’.
21. Andrea Hänger, Interview with the authors on 7 February 2023.
22. Freund and Toms, ‘Interacting with Archival Finding Aids’.
23. Kecskeméti and Székely, Access to Archives, 29.
24. Ibid., 30.
25. Ibid., 30.
26. Szekely, ‘Do Archives Have a Future?’.
27. European Archives Group, ‘Archiving by Design;’ similarly Székely, ‘Do Archives Have a Future?’.
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Notes on contributors
Michael Friedewald
Michael Friedewald is a senior research fellow and head of the research group on ‘Innovation and Digitalization’ at the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI in Karlsruhe, Germany. He holds diploma degrees in Engineering (1992) and Economics (1995) from RWTH Aachen University of Technology and earned a doctoral degree in History of Technology (1999) from the same university. His research areas include technology foresight and technology assessment with a focus on societal and economic impacts of digital technologies. He has been involved in numerous national and European research and consulting projects dealing with privacy and data protection, surveillance, (cyber)security and self-determined living in the digital world. He is author and editor of more than 20 books, including Surveillance, Privacy, and Security: Citizens’ Perspectives (2018, Routledge).
Iván Székely
Ivan Szekely, social informatist, CSc in sociology, is an internationally known expert in the multidisciplinary fields of data protection and freedom of information. Former chief counsellor and a founder of the office of the Hungarian Parliamentary Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information, Szekely is presently Senior Research Fellow and Counsellor at the Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives at Central European University (Blinken OSA Archivum), a senior member of the management, leader of international projects, and course director. Szekely was member of the Committee on Archival Legal Matters of the International Council on Archives (ICA); he participated in the preparation of the Recommendation of the Council of Europe on access to archives and was the head of the project monitoring its implementation. He is co-author of the Handbook on access to archives of the Council of Europe. His research interests and publications are focused on openness and secrecy, privacy, identity, surveillance and resilience, memory and forgetting, and archivistics.
Murat Karaboga
Murat Karaboga is a political scientist, completed his doctorate on the emergence of the GDPR and has been working at Fraunhofer ISI since January 2014. He has been involved in researching the privacy and data protection implications of numerous new technologies (e.g. IoT, smart cars, blockchain). Most recently, he led a study to investigate the privacy and societal implications of voice, speech and facial recognition technologies. He is currently leading a study investigating the impact of deepfakes on Swiss society.