ABSTRACT This special issue is the culmination of several years of research and associated workshops in which professionals and scholars came together to talk about their work in and with museum and archival collections across the Pacific, the Americas and Europe. In this introduction, we discuss the conceptual frame of this issue—‘the museum as archive’—which is geared towards ‘using the past in the present and future’. Such cultural futures perspective is in line with recent literature on historical material in archives, which theorises their contemporaneous and utopian dimensions, creative potentialities, and decolonial affordances. In contrast to the salvage paradigm of the late nineteenth century in which material collected in museums and archives served to chronicle ‘lost’ culture and cement racial and economic inequalities, this information often provides vital data for current tribal reclamation, revitalisation and social and cultural development. What is the relationship between the historical material gathered in collections and contemporary projects of decolonisation and Indigenisation? What happens when archival and museum collections are used in the present and mobilised towards the future? And what happens if we approach archives, libraries, galleries and museums, not only as mechanisms of collecting, ordering and governing, but also as dynamic-contingent processes, heterotopian spaces, and living resources for creative interventions and utopian (re)imaginations?

Sport organizations (e.g., leagues, federations, associations) often modify their rules of play to address shifts in their internal and external environments. Previous research on rule modification in the field of sport management is limited by the scope of rules considered and explanatory theoretical frameworks used. This study leverages a computational approach to analyze modifications (births, revisions, and deletions) to an archival collection of 10,277 National Football League rules between 2001 and 2022. Theories of organizational learning and performance feedback are used to generate testable relationships between plausible goals, related performance outcomes, and subsequent rule modifications. The results provide an initial account of how and why sport organizations modify their rules over time. Notably, this study finds that organizations appear to learn strategic uses for different types of rule modifications to address specific deviations in performance relative to salient goals in sport. Implications for future research on rule management are offered.

Purpose The purpose of this call to action to make occupational therapy history matter. Historical knowledge is a rich source of professional values and insights into the art, science and practice of occupational therapy. Yet there is a long track record of neglecting, devaluing and even discarding our history. Recent dispersals of archival collections during the pandemic underscore risks of losing irreplaceable heritage assets. Practical action and strategic change from institutions, groups and individuals is essential to protect our history. Design/methodology/approach The argument is based on the authors’ experience and research, combined with international approaches to identifying, conserving and making history accessible. Immediate action is imperative, underscored by historical literacy and scholarship. History is positioned as a living professional resource. It shows how tools from museum and archival practice can strengthen occupational therapy’s stewardship of its past. Findings A new, three-step framework to guide accession and deaccession decisions. The steps are to apply the precautionary principle, assess significance and action planning. It is a transparent, adaptable and practical tool for preserving tangible and intangible cultural assets. Case examples from community initiatives, higher education and digital platforms show how occupational therapy history is being mobilised through storytelling, exhibits and collaborative repositories. Originality/value This viewpoint synthesises new knowledge, presents a novel, decision-making framework, offers inspiring examples and recommends actions to counter a century of neglect. The strategic actions relate to custodianship, historical literacy and competence, scholarship, ownership of and pride in our heritage. The aim is to make history matter to ensure that current and future generations inherit the knowledge, creativity and resilience of those who came before.

The article examines the formation of the personnel of state statistical institutions in the Altai region between 1918 and 1930 within the broader context of developments taking place in Siberia. The authors analyze the economic and social preconditions underlying personnel policy in Altai’s statistical agencies during this period. The study highlights the difficulties faced in the early years of Soviet statistics, as well as the changes in staffing policy following the administrative-territorial reform of 1925. It identifies the factors that contributed to instability in staffing at various times and discusses attempts to overcome the prevailing “personnel shortage.” The article presents facts and archival documents that illustrate the historical period under review. The central focus is on the individuals who worked in the statistical institutions of Altai — their biographies, education, and contributions to the field of statistics. Particular attention is given to the most prominent specialists who stood at the origins of Soviet statistics in the Altai region. The article also offers a brief overview of the historiography of the topic and of the archival collections containing documents relevant to the study.

The relevance of the article. In the context of global crises, hybrid warfare, and accelerating digital shifts, preserving national memory is crucial for cultural sovereignty and democratic resilience. Russia’s war against Ukraine has endangered archival, library, and museum collections — key elements of documentary heritage. This calls for the creation of sustainable digital infrastructures based not only on digitization, but also on full interoperability of digital archives and libraries. Interoperability — the ability of diverse systems to exchange, interpret, and integrate data — is essential for building shared, trustworthy digital ecosystems. It ensures long-term access to historical records, fosters international cooperation, and counters disinformation and imperial narratives. The purpose of the article. This article conceptualizes interoperability as a strategic technological, semantic, and organizational principle in the development of digital archives and libraries. It emphasizes international standards, semantic models, and inter-institutional frameworks that help cultural institutions preserve and communicate national memory, especially during wartime. The methodology. An interdisciplinary approach combines archival science, library and information studies, digital humanities, and cultural policy analysis. The study includes a comparative review of metadata standards and interoperability models (e.g., Dublin Core, MARC21, BIBFRAME, RiC-O, Europeana EDM), as well as case studies of international and Ukrainian initiatives (e.g., Europeana, DPLA, FamilySearch, Jagiellonian Digital Library, DigitalNZ, LivArch, Ukrainica, SUCHO, EIFL-Ukraine). Discourse analysis is used to explore conceptual and strategic frameworks. The results. The study outlines three core dimensions of interoperability: (1) Technical — metadata standards, data formats, exchange protocols; (2) Semantic — ontologies, linked open data, knowledge graphs, AI enrichment; (3) Organizational — institutional collaboration, policy alignment, legal frameworks, and workforce development. It highlights how semantic technologies transform heritage collections into integrated knowledge systems and stresses the importance of organizational coordination for sustainable digital infrastructures. Initiatives like SUCHO and EIFL-Ukraine illustrate successful crisis-time coordination and capacity-building. The scientific novelty. This is the first structured analysis of interoperability as a multidimensional framework for preserving national memory and digital cultural resilience, linking global practices with Ukrainian experience and positioning interoperability as both a technical and strategic cultural policy issue. The practical significance. The findings inform librarians, archivists, and heritage professionals, particularly in specialties B13 and B15. The study supports curriculum development in areas such as “Digital Archival Management”, “Library Systems and Metadata”, “Information Infrastructure and National Security”, and “Museology”, contributing to the preparation of experts equipped for digital transformation in heritage institutions.

The relevance of the research. The effective implementation of information links in the reference system and digitized collections on archive websites is ensured in the context of openness and accessibility of archival information. The purpose of the research is to establish the patterns of implementation of the functional structure of information links in the electronic archive system. The methodology. Content analysis provides an opportunity to identify manifestations of the conceptual and terminological apparatus in the context of the digitization of archival institutions. The method of grouping and logical generalizations is used to establish the functional structure of information links in the electronic archive system. Visualization techniques are used to reveal the typological structure of the digital archive collection, the archive reference system, and the multi-level functional structure of information links in the archive reference system. The results. The correlation between information links and the functional organization of archive activities in a set of tasks and their implementation, the typological structure of the digital archive collection, the typological structure of the archive reference system, and the multi-level functional structure of information links in the archive reference system has been studied. The scientific novelty. The correlation between information links in the electronic archive system and the functional organization of archive activities in the complex of tasks and their implementation has been proven. The practical significance. The effective implementation of information links in the reference system and digitized collections on archive websites ensures the standardization of methodological, technological and organizational solutions for structuring the electronic archives of domestic archival institutions. The conclusion. The multi-level functional structure of information links is determined by the differentiation of archival reference books in terms of the style of presentation of archival information, the breadth of coverage of the objects described, and their target and addressable purpose: information links at the stylistic level, at the level of the archive institution’s fonds, at the inter-fonds level, at the level of individual archive fonds, at the level of user search activity and archive branding, and at the level of the archive’s official activities. The functional structure of information links in the electronic archive system is implemented by directly correlating information links with the functional organization of the archive’s activities in the entire complex of tasks and their implementation. The functionality of information links is implemented in the analytical and synthetic processing of primary archival documents and the creation of secondary archival documents in the context of various directions of archival activity related to the performance of official functions and the satisfaction of the information needs of archive users.

The (scarce) historiography on the history of Italy’s local televisions has largely outlined an adventurous story, often based on anecdotes and hearsay, and predominantly underscoring their evolution from being “free” TV stations to becoming private broadcasters. Whereas both RAI and Mediaset have actively engaged in efforts to systematize their archival collections, the possibility of undertaking an in-depth reconstruction of the history of Italy’s hundreds of local TVs is cut short by the lack of reliable sources and limited access to archival resources. The present article moves from these considerations with a dual intention: to complicate common understandings on the commercial evolution of Italy’s private television in the course of the 1980s; to propose a multidimensional approach to researching Italy’s local TV, combining a variegated ensemble of oral sources, audiovisual material, specialized TV magazines and national newspapers, public and private documents, as well as commercial and political archives. To these ends, the article focuses on the case-study provided by TeleRoma56, that is Rome’s first over-the-air TV station. During the 1980s, TeleRoma56 was owned by the Radical Party, consequently operating as a sort of “hybrid” local TV, combining its commercial exigencies with enduring instances of bottom-up political engagement. As a result, its story challenges any linear or easy interpretation of the progressive commercialization of Italian local TV, encouraging to look for unexplored historical trajectories and archival research pathways.

Purpose This paper aims to examine the efforts of librarians in Northeastern University Library’s Digital Production Services department to employ Gemini, a pre-trained multimodal large language model, for generating descriptive metadata for an archival photographic collection. Design/methodology/approach The project comprised three phases: 1) researching and selecting a multimodal LLM that was both accurate and cost-effective for generating descriptive metadata for photographs; 2) developing an application to batch-submit photographs to the chosen model’s API and convert the results into a human-readable spreadsheet and 3) evaluating the output for completeness, accuracy, consistency and potential bias. Findings Insights from model research guided the development and deployment of an application that queried the Gemini model to generate titles, abstracts and other key metadata. Iterative testing showed that although accuracy, completeness and consistency were imperfect, the output quality demonstrated strong potential for future implementation. Analysis of application results indicates that ongoing errors and biases may be reduced through strategic prompt engineering and systematic quality control measures. These testing methodologies will inform future efforts to operationalize computer vision workflows for processing archival photographs. Originality/value While computer vision holds significant potential to improve cataloguing workflows for archival photograph collections, few case studies have explored methods for evaluating and operationalizing these workflows to produce suitable metadata records. This paper presents an evaluation process to assess completeness, accuracy, consistency and potential bias in the generated metadata. Crucially, this workflow is adaptable and can be repeated as the application, prompts and models evolve, ensuring ongoing reliability and improvement.

Analysing a significant body of documents from the collections of the State Archives of Pskov Region, the author aims to examine the development of regional collaborationism during the Nazi occupation of Soviet territories, particularly Porkhov District of what is now Pskov Region; this issue remains understudied. The concept of «collaborationism» is defined in historical scholarship as the cooperation of a certain segment of the population with the enemy, in the interests of the enemy state and to the detriment of their own homeland. What is topical for study currently, is the administrative form of collaborationism expressed in the creation of various political entities by military administration and transfer of non-military powers to individuals of local origin. Having occupied significant areas of European Russia, in order to both facilitate the administration of the captured frontline territory and implement their criminal goals, the German command, hoping to establish itself there «seriously and permanently,» recognised the need to find a loyal segment of the population that could be granted certain powers. The so-called new local government bodies — special administrative institutions embodied in town and district councils, headmen, and local officials — were thus brought to life. What is topical for historical scholarship, is examination of functioning of township apparatus for organising life, using the example of the occupied town of Porkhov as an example; also, investigation into the nature of the relationship between the local population and civil authorities depending, in fact, upon the Nazis.

ABSTRACT In this article, we examine how settler colonization and gendered violence against Indigenous women are remembered and recorded in two archival registers: 18th‐century records from the Massachusetts Archives Collection (MAC) and a 21st‐century corpus of posts using the hashtag MMIW (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women) on X (formerly Twitter). These archives are shaped by distinct temporal logics and contain multiple projections of settler and Indigenous futurity. The MAC is dominated by the colonial logic of recursive dispossession; a temporal perspective of declension that acknowledges Indigenous lands only after they are taken, and Indigenous people only after they are “disappeared.” A close reading of these documentary sources also reveals how Indigenous peoples worked within this system to maintain social relationships and connections to place. We contrast settler visions of futurity with contemporary social media articulations of vibrant and emancipatory Indigenous futures grounded in hope and presence. Through this comparative discussion, we demonstrate how different documentary modalities encode time, define events, and shape informational flows in ways that enable and constrain Indigenous futurity.

The article examines the issue of international legal regulation of relations related to the free use of objects of copyright and related rights as a tool for ensuring public interests. In the context of the development of social relations, there is a need tofurther improve the provisions defining exceptions and limitations at the level of international legislation.In particular, the norms of international treaties and draft documents considered at meetings of the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights regarding the study and development of proposals for the international legal regulation of thefree use of objects of copyright and related rights were analyzed. At the same time, the conclusion of international treaties is a rather complex and lengthy process, which necessitates the search for other ways of legal regulation. There are differencesbetween the views of various groups of countries on the format of further international legal regulation of relations concerning the free use of objects of copyright and related rights. Thus, some countries mostly advocate for the development of an international treaty that would harmonize legal regulation regarding the free use of copyrighted works, while other countries advocate that only general principles of free use should be agreed upon at the international legal level.Based on the legal analysis and the identified issues, the main trends in the further development of international legislation to achieve the goals of ensuring an effective balance between the interests of rights holders and society have been identified. Proposals have been formulated and substantiated regarding Ukraine’s participation in relevant discussions and rule-making work within the WIPO in the context of external aggression against Ukraine considering that there is a particularly acute need to ensure public interests in the digitization of library and archival collections, museum collections that are under threat of destruction, and access to works for the remote education of pupils and students in frontline regions or those temporarily abroad.

This study examines the influence of corporate governance mechanism, specifically ownership concentration and board size on green innovation and its subsequent impact on firm performance. The research aims to understand how corporate governance structures can support Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through green innovation adoption, particularly within the Indonesian oil and gas industry. The sample comprises 10 Indonesian oil and gas companies from 2015 to 2024. This research uses archival data collection, especially secondary data from Annual Report, Sustainability Report and Corporate Social Responsibility Report. The analytical tool used in this research is EViews with the Generalized Least Square (GLS) technique. The findings indicate that corporate governance mechanism, as measured by ownership concentration and board size, have no effect on green innovation. This suggests that these governance factors may not be primary drivers of green innovation in this sector. Furthermore, the study reveals that green innovation negatively impacts the firm performance. This implies potential challenges or costs associated with green innovation implementation in the firm.

The paper provides a comprehensive description of the collections of the Scientific Archive of the Federal Research Centre Komi Science Centre, Ural Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, dedicated to the study of the Ust-Tsilma region of the Komi Republic. The study of archival collections in the context of contemporary challenges associated with the development of the Arctic zone of the Russian Federation aims to preserve historical memory, advance of science, and ensure the sustainable development of the European Northeast of Russia, which is of strategic importance for the future of the country. The paper reflects the efforts of representatives of various scientific fields, whose research, recorded in documents, represents a valuable source for further study of the history of science and the development of the northern territories of Russia. Archival materials allow us to trace the evolution of scientific approaches, evaluate the contribution of individual scientists and teams of the Federal Research Centre Komi Science Centre, Ural Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, to the study of this territory, and identify promising directions for modern research.

Background of the study: Metadata plays a critical role in ensuring the accessibility, interoperability, and long-term preservation of digital manuscripts within archival collections. However, inconsistent practices across institutions present significant challenges for standardization and archival sustainability. Purpose: This study aims to identify key challenges in manuscript metadata management within archival contexts and to analyze differences in practices across selected national and international repositories. Method: A qualitative descriptive approach was employed through literature review and document analysis of approximately 50 metadata records. Data were collected from five repositories—Khastara (National Library of Indonesia), BRIN Digital Repository, the British Library, Europeana, and UNESCO Memory of the World—and analyzed thematically to identify recurring patterns and gaps. Findings: Repositories highlight different metadata priorities: Khastara emphasizes descriptive details, BRIN focuses on administrative and technical identifiers, the British Library provides strong provenance and historical context, Europeana prioritizes rights and interoperability, and UNESCO underscores heritage significance and preservation. These variations illustrate the archival challenges of achieving consistent metadata standards. Conclusion: The study highlights the importance of cross-institutional alignment in strengthening sustainable archival metadata practices. Theoretically, it situates metadata as both a technical and cultural construct; practically, it offers insights for archival institutions to improve strategies. Future research should expand repository coverage and involve user perspectives on archival access and use.

The purpose of this article is to analyze the features of training police personnel during the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945). The objectives are as follows: to examine the characteristics of the leadership staff of schools and courses of the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs of the USSR; to analyze the changes that occurred in the activities of educational institutions during wartime. The source material for this article is the business documents from the f. 9401 “The Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR (MVD USSR)” collection of the State Archive of the Russian Federation (Moscow). The study utilized systemic historical and comparative historical methods. The author concluded that police training in the Soviet Union changed significantly during the Great Patriotic War. The educational institutions of the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs of the USSR restructured their operations to accommodate wartime conditions, significantly shortening cadet training and increasing the length of the workday. Practical training was prioritized. Interregional police schools became the largest category of educational institutions. Between 1941 and 1945, some police educational institutions ceased operations.

The study of the Romanian archive at the Zographou Monastery on Mount Athos has long been a coveted aspiration of our national culture, one finally fulfilled with the publication of the volume of documents in 2019. This long-standing desire was mainly due to the firm and enduring presence of Stephen the Great and Holy in the history of the Zographou Monastery. For this reason, the bibliography concerning the relationship between the Romanians and this Athonite lavra is quite extensive, although it was based on a limited number of documents from the monastery’s archive and on the hope that more would be discovered once the archive was opened. For the fifteenth century, eight Romanian documents were known – all originals – dating from 1420 to 1499. After examining the Romanian archive, it was found that their number remained the same: four were deeds of donation issued by the rulers of Wallachia and Moldavia to the Zographou Monastery, and four were internal acts issued by Alexandru the Good and Stephen the Great for members of the princely family, boyars, and monasteries in Moldavia. To these we add the exceptional document of August 22, 1416, which records the beginnings of the relations between the Zographou Monastery and the Romanian principalities, as well as the “travelling” document of January 31, 1500, intended for the now-disappeared Kaprule Monastery (in Karyes, near the Protaton), both of which were eventually hosted by the Zographou archive. Towards the late 19th century, several photographs of original documents from the Zographou archive reached the Library of the Romanian Academy from various sources, along with summaries and Greek-language copies of several dozen Romanian documents from the archives of the Athonite monasteries. They also included acts from Zographou, later published by N. Iorga in the Hurmuzaki Collection. In the twentieth century, based on those photographs, numerous Romanian historians (Ioan Bogdan, St. Nicolaescu, M. Costăchescu, etc.) published the Slavic documents in their respective volumes or in the collection Documents Concerning the History of Romania (Documente privind istoria României – DIR), Series A and B. Their most recent edition appeared in the national collection of historical sources, Documenta Romaniae Historica (DRH), Series A. Moldavia, and Series B. Wallachia, as well as in Moldova in the Age of Feudalism (vol. VI, Chișinău), which included the dedication act of the Căpriana Monastery, published from a photograph preserved in the remarkable collection of the Russian historian P. Sevastianov. In the twenty-first century, the oldest Slavic document from this archival collection was published by Георги Р. Парпулов and Ралф Клеминсън, based on a photograph reproduced in the volume by Mihail Kovacev (Михаил Ковачев), and it has since appeared in two Romanian editions. At the same time, the historian Cyril Pavlikianov edited the Slavic documents, publishing them in 2018 – though, for the most part, not from the originals but from earlier editions. That volume included thirty-seven documents, comprising Slavic acts from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as well as from the seventeenth century (1601-98), many of which were previously unpublished.

For this call, within the terrain of solidarity and interdisciplinarity, while being grounded in my ongoing PhD research, I propose a ‘Leisurely Confrontation,’ a dialogue in an archival encounter. In the archival collections at the Imperial War Museum, a page in the sketchbook of an anonymous WWI British officer in India carries a drawing of a day in Jeddah in 1917 where male Indian officers from the 28th P. I perform Kathak, a classical and traditional dance, while the British officers watch, casually leaning against the wall and smoking a pipe. This sketch embodies a complex world. It is as fragmented as my institutional, intergenerational, archival encounters, where everyday life, leisure and the ordinary are in charge of the political – I have engaged in a leisurely, confrontational and performative dialogue with this sketch, animated, embodied and enacted it within spaces of power or of the powerless in London. It has taken a multidisciplinary form of a video performance essay/film. The aim is to leisurely, effortlessly, Take up Space, in solidarity. Leisure, I believe sustains an incognito urgency, like the everyday, where things can dissolve yet persist to arrive when no one is watching.To give some context my PhD project introspects and enters with a personal and familial archive. A World War 2 scrapbook and photo album of a South Asian Indian Muslim soldier (my grandfather) traveling across continents to fight the imperial war as a soldier in King George’s Own Central India Horse Regiment. Recently I wrote a mission statement for my ongoing PhD project: My contribution is in identifying the persevering, everyday, quotidian, slow burning of power that arrives into my skin from an imperial legacy of leftovers, a generational toil - the resistance, complacency and silent activism that is urgent to respond to, not in acts that are spectacular but by scrapping and extending quietly ‘in, out and from’ the methodology of the oppressor, I respond with leisure, humour and the everyday; it is a provocative, intimate and temporal excavation.

This article presents a critical survey of Jewish scholarly journals on Islamic and Oriental studies preserved in the Tun Ahmad Sarji Library (Perpustakaan Tun Ahmad Sarji, PTAS) at the Institute of Islamic Understanding Malaysia (IKIM). Drawing upon journals such as the Palestine Exploration Quarterly, Israel Exploration Journal, Journal of Semitic Studies, Journal of Palestine Studies, and American Jewish Archives Journal, the study offers both a bibliographical overview and a thematic assessment of the contributions of predominantly Jewish, non-Muslim scholars to the study of Islamic civilisation. These journals, many of which date from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, span a wide array of disciplines including archaeology, Semitic philology, historiography, religious studies, and cultural history. The article highlights the value of these journals not only as academic resources but also as instruments of inter-civilisational dialogue, shedding light on underexplored dimensions of Muslim history and intellectual heritage. By foregrounding this unique archival collection, this study highlights its relevance to the development of Islamic studies in Malaysia and advocates for its fuller integration into scholarly discourse within the region.

Abstract Recent conferences and publications on slavery and slave trading in the Indian Ocean and Asia ( IOA ) highlight the need to identify hitherto unknown, neglected, or underused archival collections that will allow scholars to reconstruct enslavement and the slave experience in that region of the world in greater detail and comprehensiveness. The five papers by distinguished Europe-based scholars in this special issue, presented originally at a symposium in Paris in 2024, discuss their current research, make innovative use of new sources of information about enslavement in the IOA , and address important questions about the structure and dynamics of the commerce of enslavement in this oceanic world and, by extension, elsewhere in the globe.

Abstract This article summarises and reflects on the ‘Mapping Indigeneity’ Map Room Conversation that formed part of the RGS‐IBG Annual International Conference 2024. As debates continue to gather pace regarding the colonial legacies of geography and how researchers can work with/work against these legacies, the theme of this Conversation was timely and inspired an engaging and thought‐provoking discussion. The paper is organised into three sections. Firstly, the maps from the RGS‐IBG collections displayed during the Conversation are presented and their relevance explained. Secondly, the authors offer a summary of the key points/themes raised during the discussions. Topics included the decolonisation of archival and museum collections; the repatriation of Indigenous objects and artefacts; and the inclusion/exclusion of Indigenous peoples within academic research. Finally, reflecting on their experience of taking part in the Map Room Conversation, and considering how the points raised pushed them to (re)consider their own approaches, the authors conclude by offering some suggestions as to the shape of future geographical research that combines Indigenous‐focused studies with historical map collections.