Timeless Archives, Timely Connections

Marking 20 years of the Endangered Archives Programme, the conference will highlight the Programme’s achievements and explore common themes and topics crucial to safeguarding documentary heritage and cultural legacy.

EAP facilitates the digitisation of archives around the world that are in danger of destruction, neglect or physical deterioration. Thanks to generous funding from Arcadia, a charitable foundation that works to preserve cultural heritage and promote open access to knowledge, EAP has provided grants to 500 projects in over ninety countries worldwide, in more than a hundred languages and scripts. These archives broaden understandings of our shared histories, enabling access to and connections between underrepresented yet transformative stories and perspectives.

Conference Goals

This international conference will bring together many of the institutions, individuals and activists in documentary heritage preservation. There will be sessions on EAP, preservation strategies from key organisations and funding opportunities, and the sharing of case studies of cultural heritage protection against risks caused by climate change, conflict or war. Attendees will also be able to engage with their peers on the most urgent and incipient challenges and opportunities in the field, including the comparative costs of protecting the physical archive versus digitisation, new risks in the digital world, designing strategic approaches, and how to engage more diverse audiences with the protection of documentary heritage.

Target Audience

• Cultural heritage professionals 
• Archivists and librarians
• Digitisation specialists
• Lecturers and students in archival studies/information science
• Historians
• NGOs  
• Conservators
• Artists interested in working with documentary archives
• Individuals with a general interest in the topic 
• Potential applicants to EAP: we particularly welcome attendance from people who have not previously received EAP funding and are interested in the Programme.

Themes

• Endangered Archives Programme
• Working together
  • Peer organisation engagement
  • Peer-to-peer networking
  • Funding models and opportunities
• Sharing knowledge, bringing stories back to life
  • The use of archives in research
  • Diversifying audiences
  • User engagement
• Threats
  • Climate change
  • War and conflict
  • Cyber security
• Preservation
  • Preservation of physical archives
  • Digitisation
• Artificial intelligence

Tickets and accessibility

We will be welcoming attendees both in-person and online over two days. Tickets for in-person attendees are £70 (with a percentage reserved for students at £35), and tickets for those joining online are free. For in-person attendees, lunch and refreshments will be provided over both days at no extra cost.

Conference events held in the British Library’s Pigott Theatre will be recorded. These recordings will be made available for in-person and online attendees following the conference.

We aim to make this conference as accessible as possible. Events in the Pigott Theatre will include BSL/ English interpretation. The stream will be captioned. All floors have step-free access and entrances have button-assisted opening. If you have further accessibility questions or requirements, please reach out to international@bl.uk.