As with last year’s IAW2020, ICA is once again offering for International Archives Week 2021 #IAW2021 a full programme of webinars where professionals and experts from the archival and record management sector will share their views on #EmpoweringArchives and the three pillars that have guided the conversation in our 2021 social media campaign:
Accountability and Transparency
Collaboration and Networking
Diversity and Inclusivity
The IAW2021 webinars will be scheduled between June 7th and June 11th. This year, the programme of webinars will open the discussion on topics ranging from the role of archives in ensuring accountability and transparency, how digitisation affects whose stories we tell, how networking and collaboration can strengthen the work of archivists and archival organisations, and how we can better approach Artificial Intelligence in our archival practice.
For IAW2021, we have organised two special webinars for celebrating the International Archives Day on June 9th: Building Digital Bridges: Digitisation for Collaboration and Networking, a webinar co-hosted with UNESCO, which will focus on the digitisation of UNESCO Constitution documents for UNESCO’s 75th anniversary; and What I wish I knew about digital preservation: Collaboration and Networking Edition, co-hosted with the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC), which will be centred around discussing experiences and the importance of collaboration and networking in achieving digital preservation goals.
These webinars will be hosted in English, French and Spanish, with the support and cooperation of the following ICA groups and institutional partners: Association of Latin American Archivists (ALA), UNESCO, DPC, the Information Sciences Department of the Geneva School of Business Administration HES-SO (University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland), the ICA Section on Archives and Human Rights, the Active New Professionals, among others.
We invite you to have a look at the summaries of the twelve webinars prepared for this special week and to stay tuned as more details are released in the coming weeks!
IAW2021 Webinars Summaries
Monday 7 June 2021
Introducing #EmpoweringArchives webinar series 2021!
Language: English
We are celebrating the third International Archives Week and we would like to share with you all the events, talks, and activities that the ICA and its networks of partners have prepared for the archival and records management community. Join us in this webinar where we are going to talk about how to advocate for #EmpoweringArchives in this week of the year.
25th Anniversary of the International Committee for Blue Shield
Language: English
The International Committee for Blue Shield is celebrating its 25th Anniversary and was created by four non-governmental organisations: ICA, IFLA, ICOMOS and ICOM, which represent professional organisations in the field of archives, libraries, museums and monuments and sites. In 2016, the four non-government organisations were joined by the Associations of National Committees of the Blue Shield to form: The Blue Shield. The Blue Shield is committed to the protection of the world’s cultural property and is concerned with the protection of cultural and natural heritage, tangible and intangible, in the event of armed conflict, natural- or human-made disasters. Join us on the day to celebrate this unique and important organisation!
#EmpoweringArchives. Transparency and Accountability
Language: Spanish
Archives are important cultural heritage institutions, but they also play a vital role in ensuring accountability and transparency, enabling citizens to assert and protect their rights, while holding governments responsible for their decisions and actions. Archives are a key enabler of democracy, justice and human rights, and this webinar will explore this with interventions from representatives from the ICA Section on Human Rights, National Institute for Transparency, Access to Information and Data Protection (Mexico), and ALA’s Group of Experts of the Iberoamerican Network of Archival University Education. These perspectives will open a discussion on how we can better empower and value the role of archives in accountability and transparency.
Tuesday 8 June 2021
Whose Stories Do We Tell?: A New Professionals Picnic Blanket on Digitisation Strategy
Language: English
Come meet this year’s New Professional cohort and celebrate International Archives Week. We will be introducing our new survey on digitisation before it goes out to the wider community. Our survey looks at discussing how digitisation affects whose stories we tell, and how marginalised groups are often overlooked when organisations consider their digitisation strategy. We will be welcoming some guests to take part in the discussions and there will be a chance for everyone to ask questions and take part via the chat.
Wednesday, 9 June 2021 – International Archives Day!
Empowering cultural change: government archives responses to implementing the Tandanya-Adelaide Declaration
Language: English
In October 2019 the International Council on Archives and its Expert Group on Indigenous Matters issued the Tandanya-Adelaide Declaration to challenge archives to “re-imagine the meaning of archives as an engaging model of social memory; to embrace Indigenous worldviews and methods of creating, sharing and preserving valued knowledge; and to decolonize our archival principles with Indigenous knowledge methods, to open the meaning of public archives to Indigenous interpretations, is to bring new dynamics of spirituality, ecology and Indigenous philosophy into the European traditions of archival memory.”
With this challenge in mind, three government archive institutions of the Council of Australasian Archives and Records Authorities have commenced the process of responding to the Tandanya-Adelaide Declaration and will share their progress, as well as sharing some of the challenges they face in making the necessary changes.
Building Digital Bridges: Digitisation for Collaboration and Networking (UNESCO)
Language: English and French
Digitisation presents exciting new opportunities, but it is also a complex, resource-intensive process. Digitisation poses fundamental questions about global imbalances, deep-rooted systemic processes, and ownership of archival holdings. However, it can also be a mechanism to help build collaborative relationships and facilitate dialogue. The webinar will focus on the digitisation of UNESCO Constitution documents for UNESCO’s 75th anniversary, and will feature speakers from various national archives as part of an exploration of the challenges and opportunities of digitisation for empowering archival communities around the globe.
What I wish I knew about digital preservation: Collaboration and Networking Edition (DPC)
Language: English
The Digital Preservation Coalition and ICA are reprising the successful webinar ‘What I wish I knew about Digital Preservation’ focusing on collaboration and networking. The webinar will be a roundtable discussion bringing together experts from around the world to discuss what they knew about digital preservation, in particular about their experiences about the importance of collaboration and networking in achieving digital preservation goals.
ALA Seminar #EmpoweringArchives
Language: Spanish
The Association of Latin American Archivists (ALA) invites its members and extended community to join their ALA seminar where three panelists will talk about each of the topics discussed in the ICA 2021 social media campaign #EmpoweringArchives: Accountability and Transparency, Collaboration and Networking, and Diversity and Inclusion. Each panelist will present their views on the meaning, need for and impact of talking about empowering archives in these three main areas.
Thursday, 10 June 2021
ArchiLab: Cooperation at the heart of our archival education
Language: French
ArchiLab was developed by the Information Sciences Department of the Geneva School of Business Administration HES-SO (University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland), as a laboratory to train students in the different phases of the digitisation process. The initiatives brought together colleagues from across the HEG to develop this innovative and timely offer to its students. This session will provide an introduction to ArchiLab and its goals, along with a discussion of the importance of collaboration and networking in strengthening archival training and education.
Collaboration and Networking: A view from the public, private and associative sectors
Language: French
Building allies within our organisations and amongst allied professional bodies is for empowering the position of archives and the profession and for deconstructing stereotypes about archival work. In this session, we are looking at how networking and collaboration can strengthen the work of archivists and archival organisations from different sectoral perspectives to enable participants to see common approaches and sector specific strategies.
Friday, 11 June
Archives and Human Rights
Language: English
Organised and hosted by the United Nations Library & Archives Geneva, this event is inspired by the recently published book ‘Archives and Human Rights’, developed by the ICA Section on Archives and Human Rights and edited by Jens Boel, Perrine Canavaggio and Antonio González Quintana. The book examines why and how records can serve as evidence of human rights violations, in particular crimes against humanity, and help the fight against impunity. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, who contributed the foreword to the book will join the co-editors in a moderated discussion on the topic that will highlight case studies from different regions of the world.
Artificial Intelligence and Diversity: A turning point in archival practice
Language: English
Artificial intelligence marks a turning point for the records and archives profession, and how we identify, select, preserve and make accessible data and records. The volumes of information and the nature of the digital record mean that we can no longer physically look at, manage, care for or physically handle materials, and digital records require different approaches to help us understand them, AI being one of the mechanisms. Artificial intelligence has the capability to facilitate our work, but it can also entrench perspectives and biases of our practice. In this webinar we will introduce a new multidisciplinary and diverse project entitled the Hub for Artificial Intelligence Research as well as challenge the profession to consider its practices and biases moving forward.
For more information, please contact us at programme@ica.org