THE IMPORTANCE OF PERSONAL AND FAMILY DIGITAL ARCHIVES FOR A NEW PERCEPTION OF THE ARCHIVAL DISCIPLINE

Abstract

This paper aims to highlight how social transformation, in particular those introduced by the so-called digital revolution, have led to significant changes in the ways in which personal and family archives are managed and how this has produced a need for knowledge, skills and abilities in the archival domain – a real “archival need”, perhaps unconscious, perhaps not well identified but extremely concrete and urgent – which begins to be felt by everyone. This can be an extraordinary opportunity on the one hand to start a mass training plan on the topics of Personal Digital Archiving, on the other hand to bring everyone - even the “common” people – closer to the archival discipline and encourage the recognition of the profession of archivist. In this way the archival science would have the possibility to get out of the circumscribed ranks that have often characterized it and become a discipline recognized by all and with a well estabilished “social” dimension.