How Can We Preserve Social Memories?: Exploration of Global Open Archives

Abstract

Until now, records re-enacting social memories have not been main targets for preservation and management in Korea. However, people have recently begun to focus on forming and maintaining their memories because these personalized records have started to be recognized as social and political issues. In this respect, this study aims to find out how to preserve social memories by comparing various global open archives. For achieving our research goal, we first established the definition of social memories and records and revealed their characteristics. After then, we selected representative open archives’ websites to examine their collection polices and compare them according to several criteria. As a result, we distilled insights based on similarities and differences of each archive and discussed considerations in preserving social memories consisting of three phases: analyzing target social memories, establishing collection policies, and collecting actual records. This study has significance in that it examines the characteristics of social memories and records and also suggests preliminary findings for advanced research to develop practical tools for social records management and archives.