Rethinking Archives

How can digital methods make archives more accessible without losing historical context? Drawing on examples from the city museum, the lecture shows what digitization changes about collections – and what it cannot do.

What it is about

Digitized holdings are found faster, but also misread faster. A photograph without provenance, a letter without a sender: what the reading room supplied as a matter of course is easily lost online.

• Metadata as narrative, not just a catalog entry

• Sensitive holdings between openness and protection

• What visitors actually search for – findings from usage data

An archive is not storage but a conversation between generations.

After the lecture, Anna Berger moderates an open discussion.