What’s Next for Digital Outreach and Archives: A Swedish Perspective

Many archives today are not fully utilizing available technologies to best display collection materials online. In the days of “Archives 2.0,” we have the tools to assist users by providing greater access, context, and engagement with our collections, yet many archives are falling short of incorporating these tools. In the summer of 2014, I traveled to Sweden to see what Swedish libraries, archives, and museums were doing to facilitate online engagement with their collection materials. I found that while many organizations are following the old build-it-and-they-will-come model of digital projects, some are moving beyond this. These organizations are providing users with tools to provide feedback on digital projects and have a voice in what items are digitized. I also spoke with forward-thinking innovators about this idea of “what’s next” for digital outreach and archives. These individuals had ideas for moving beyond simply providing access to collections to providing methods for insight and interpretation. This is a call to action that we, as archivists, need to take more risks, ask users what they want to see, and think creatively about providing new platforms for facilitating engagement with our resources