Guest Editors: Hermann Rotermund, Wolfgang Hagen and Christian Herzog
(Leuphana University Lüneburg)

Reminder of the deadline for the submission of full papers: 31 July 2016
The issue is scheduled for publication in Spring 2017.

Digital media has initiated the transformation of archiving practices with implications for audio-visual archives, written archives and libraries. The substitution of finding aids, including paper cards, by databases is in most instances seen as beneficial and an advance.
However, the digitization of archival holdings poses a lot of questions that have not yet been thoroughly discussed. The physical nature of the sources is no longer an obstacle to their universal accessibility. Is digitization thus leading to the disappearance of the emphatic notion of the archive, because digitized materials are becoming mere elements of the constantly growing and flowing mass of data in electronic circuits? Will digital techniques replace the archive as an institution? Do we have to envision archives without records and without a documentation strategy – and documentarists as hackers who build ad hoc collections from randomly commented links?

With regard to broadcast archives, it can be observed that the form and comprehensibility of metadata, access and usage regulations have not kept pace with digitization. How can this asynchrony be dissolved? How can the means of digital technology and the Internet be used to create comprehensible and accessible metadata? How can archives be connected are there historical examples we could learn from?

Articles for this special issue, ‘Archives of the Digital’ could, for example, address ideas and visions for the reconfiguration of archives, or the epistemology of the archive (and its notions), treat exemplary case studies of (interdisciplinary) practices for the interpretation of archival content, or elaborate on the impact of digitization for scholars working in the archives/with archival holdings.

Submission guidelines

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