ABSTRACT
The chapter explores the politics of archival appraisal in Sweden in the digital age, providing an overview of the legal, technological, political, organisational, and economic factors that intersect with archival practice, as archives seek to preserve the digital present for the near and distant future.
Archival legislation in Sweden has long been tightly connected to freedom of information legislation: the very definition of records in Swedish archives derives from Swedish legal discourse, and thus differs from definitions in standard archival theory. The chapter examines the consequences of this, in relation to digitisation and its new understandings of what a record is or might be, especially in relation to appraisal.
Regarding the effects of digitisation, both continuity and change are highlighted. As in the Nordic region more generally, there is general continuity in how non-digital and digital archiving, including appraisal, has been effected. What has changed, however, is the relative number of born-digital records. Digital preservation and appraisal are no longer fringe phenomena but the new normal, bringing unresolved challenges concerning funding, organisation, and perhaps the very concepts of archives and records.
