Archival practice in complex systems: risk, ethics, infrastructure, and evolving institutional roles, collaboration, and governance
Archives and Records invites submissions for a future special issue exploring how contemporary archival practice is shaped by risk, ethics, and infrastructure in conditions of increasing organisational, technical, and environmental complexity.
Across archives, records management, digital preservation, conservation, audiovisual preservation, and related fields, practitioners are working within large-scale systems, interconnected services, and evolving governance frameworks. These contexts raise shared questions about appraisal, access, accountability, sustainability, professional responsibility, and the ethical limits of automation and technology adoption. This includes the increase in service models where data is stored in shared environments, creating scenarios by which responsibility is distributed and governance is less clearly defined.
At the same time, the role of the archive within institutions is changing. Archival functions are increasingly embedded within broader organisational infrastructures, requiring closer collaboration with areas such as enterprise architecture, IT service management, information governance, and research data services. These relationships are reshaping how archival work is understood, designed, and delivered, positioning archives not only as custodians of records, but as active participants in institutional strategy, systems design, and risk management.
This special issue seeks reflective, comparative, and practice-informed contributions that examine how archival work is governed, justified, and sustained in environments characterised by scale, interdependence, and uncertainty. Rather than focusing on a single technology or professional domain, the issue aims to foster dialogue across disciplines and institutional contexts.
Indicative themes include, but are not limited to:
● Risk as a strategic framework for archival decision-making, governance, and prioritisation
● Ethical judgement, refusal, or non-adoption of technologies (including AI) as professional practice
● Infrastructure as a socio-technical and environmental concern in archival work
● Appraisal, selection, and context-building in complex or large-scale systems
● Access to born-digital and digital-derived records, including sensitivity review and controlled access models
● Environmental sustainability and long-term stewardship responsibilities
● Convergence and overlap between archives, records management, conservation, and audiovisual practice
● Evolving skills and training requirements for archivists, records managers, conservationists, and AV engineers in an increasing automated environment
● Professional boundaries, skills, and labour in contexts of organisational and technical complexity
● Collaboration with internal or external peers or networks that reframe an archive’s role or identify within an institution.
Submission Instructions
Articles should be no more than 8,000 words (including footnotes and references) and written in accordance with the style guide and reference guide (Chicago endnotes and bibliography) provided by Archives and Records. Shorter papers may be considered or authors may be encouraged to collaborate if they submit similar proposals. For an informal discussion about publishing in the special issue, contact Caylin Smith (cs2059@cam.ac.uk).
In the first instance, please send a 500 words (maximum) proposal to: cs2059@cam.ac.uk, by Friday May 30th. Proposals should contain a brief outline of the proposed article, up to five key words, a title and author affiliations. All submissions will be double-blind peer reviewed prior to acceptance for publication. An invitation to submit an article does not guarantee publication in the final issue. All submissions should be presented in line with the Archives and Records Instructions for Authors.
Publishing in the Archives Profession 