The ICA/SBA conference, this annual global meet for corporate archivists, was held this year at Ford Motors in Detroit. I shared my impressions in a op-ed piece for Svenska Dagbladet. Read the text in Swedish on Svenska Dagbladet - or translated below.
When the cracks reach the archives
I am back in the USA for an annual meeting of international corporate archivists. Ford Motors in Detroit is hosting. The last time we met in the USA was 2019, when Levi’s in San Francisco hosted. Then it was Trump I, now it’s Trump II. Then digitization, now AI (the new form of digitization). But in between: a pandemic, war in Europe, a new world order.
Does this affect the archives? Not at all, I want to answer. Archivists preserve everything regardless of economic cycles and conflicts. Especially corporate archivists often operate in global corporations and handle materials across national borders without letting the world’s worries get in the way. When a brand changes owners, they ensure its archives transfers too. Memory is seamlessly carried forward.
But this year a crack has appeared in the consensus.
I email archive colleagues in Montreal, a few hours away in Canada. "Are you coming?" The reply comes quickly: "We’d love to see you but not this year." A hashtag ends the message: #51stStateNoWay.
There, world politics broke in. The silent agreement that our mission stands above politics was no longer enough.
I seek comfort among those attending the conference for the first time. These meetings are often dominated by companies with a long history and extensive archival experience. Think Levi’s, Ford, Heineken, Disney, BMW, Guinness, Swedish Absolut. But now it teems with new faces, from Netflix to Nvidia. They are already global, but beginners in archive management. From my daily work at the Centre for Business History, I recognize the pattern: a company must reach a certain age before it sees that it has a cultural heritage to preserve.
Many of us spend our time with them, the next generation of memory bearers. Perhaps this is how we will bridge the cracks. We remind each other that the job is to leave honest memories for the future — irrespective of who rules which country.
Extra nice is that Arkiv Sörmland has made the trip here from Eskilstuna. The world might need a dose of classic Association Sweden. Hopefully, they will come again next year. Then we’ll be in Brussels.
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Anders Sjöman, CEO of the Centre for Business History in Stockholm.
