Course 15: Introduction to Archives and Digital Preservation

Tobias Wildi · FH Graubünden

Lecturer

Tobias Wildi is a Professor and leading expert in archival science and digital preservation, formerly Full Professor for archival studies at FH Graubünden (2021–2024) and now active as a lecturer and trainer across Swiss academic institutions. He studied history and computer science at the Universities of Zurich and Lausanne, holds a doctorate in history, and co-founded docuteam AG, a specialized archival services company where he led the historical archive of ABB for fourteen years. Wildi is a member of the Experts Group on Archival Description (EGAD) of the International Council on Archives (ICA) and has contributed to the development of the Records in Contexts ontology (RiC-O). He served as president of the Swiss Federal Commission for the Protection of Cultural Heritage from 2016 to 2023.

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Lecture Overview

Overview

Wildi introduces archives as institutions of long-term evidence, memory, and accountability. He explains how archives differ from libraries, how archival collections are structured, and why digital preservation is now a central archival task.

Main Points

Archives preserve selected records because they retain evidential value and future research value.
Public archives play an important democratic role by enabling long-term traceability of administrative and governmental action.
The lecture distinguishes archival records from copyrighted works and explains why this matters conceptually and institutionally.
Two core archival principles structure collections: provenance and original order.
Digital preservation is defined as keeping digital information usable across changing generations of hardware, software, file formats, and systems.

Examples Mentioned

The Swiss Federal Archives
City, economic, and specialized archives
Hierarchical archival description
Long-term preservation of records from databases and records management systems

Source transcript: transcripts/Course 15_Wildi_Archives.txt

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