A distinguished panel of speakers affiliated with the International Council on Archives’ Photographic and Audiovisual Archives Expert Group (ICA/PAAG) is set to contribute to a timely and thought-provoking session examining the future of photographic and audiovisual archives in an increasingly complex digital landscape.
The discussion addresses the unprecedented scale at which images are now produced, circulated, and transformed. While many archival challenges have roots in analogue practices, the digital environment has intensified issues of selection, provenance, context, and long-term sustainability. With images no longer existing as stable, clearly defined objects, but instead moving fluidly across platform-driven ecosystems and shaped by algorithmic and AI-assisted processes, archivists are being pushed to rethink traditional frameworks.
Moderator and Speakers:
- Moderator: Katherine Rewinkel El-Darwish – AILIS
- Natālija Lāce – Latvian State Archive
- Stephen J. Fletcher – University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- Juan Alonso Fernández – Historical Archives of the European Union (HAEU)
Together, the speakers will explore how institutions navigate decision-making in environments marked by both abundance and uncertainty. Central to the discussion is the concept of “Good Enough” archival practice—positioned not as a compromise, but as a pragmatic, context-driven approach to managing scale, complexity, and responsibility in contemporary archival work.
As digital content continues to expand at an exponential rate, sessions such as this underscore the importance of adaptive, collaborative, and context-aware approaches as well as the need to engage critically with technological evolution and harness emerging tools—reinforcing the vital role of ICA/PAAG speakers in shaping global archival discourse.
This event forms part of the Library Science Talks programme, jointly organized by Zentralbibliothek Zurich, the CERN Scientific Information Service, and AILIS (Association of International Librarians and Information Specialists, Geneva).
