Proveniensprincipens tillämpbarhet i digitala personarkiv

This thesis concerns the principle of provenance and its applicability in the archival processing of personal digital archives. Digital archives are here understood as archives consisting of born-digital material and not analogue material that has been scanned and digitized. Personal archives are understood simply as collections of documents from private persons, as opposed to businesses or organizations. Personal archives have had a hard time integrating themselves in the family of archival theory. One reason for this is the challenge of understanding core archival concepts such as provenance and original order in a context of personal collections. Personal collections are often believed to be created in a more spontaneous way than archives from larger organizations, which are believed to be created organically. In this thesis I argue that in order to include personal collections in the family of archives, and thus also the family of archival theory, a clearer concept of provenance in personal archives is needed. I have examined the processing works of personal digital archives from four archival institutions in Sweden. Analysing these results in the light of writings on provenance by Laura Millar, Terry Cook and Jennifer Meehan I argue that provenance has to be understood as something incomplete and shifting. I also argue that this is compatible with a view of original order as a conceptual framework, as suggested by Meehan