Archives in Practice: ICA Member-led perspectives on archival practice worldwide
Archival Science, Human Rights and Artificial Intelligence: The Luisa Cuesta Repository as a Specialized Archival Service in Uruguay
By Natalia Lima-Paysal & Fabián Hernández-Muñiz
28 April 2026
In debates on artificial intelligence in archives and archival science, attention tends to shift rapidly toward tools, automation, and innovation. The Uruguayan case of the Luisa Cuesta Repository proposes a different point of departure for so-called human rights archives. From an archival perspective, what is most significant here is not an isolated technological experiment, but rather the consolidation of a specialized archival service dedicated to the treatment, preservation, administration, and access of digital information related to serious human rights violations in the recent past. The Luisa Cuesta Repository constitutes a formal structure physically housed at the Universidad de la República, created through an agreement with the National Human Rights Institution and Ombudsman’s Office in order to guarantee the storage, organization, availability, and long-term preservation of that digital information.
Its archival specificity lies not only in safeguarding a digital holdings system, but also in organizing a set of professional archival functions defined from a post-custodial approach. The institutional and regulatory framework establishes that it provides archival consultation, reference, and guidance services, as well as access to and dissemination of the information contained in its digital holdings through computer tools developed for its management and operation. Access is likewise not granted indiscriminately, but rather through a regulated procedure: applicants must obtain a username and password, demonstrate the role under which they seek access, sign a responsibility commitment, and conduct consultation on site with professional assistance. In addition to this, reproductions are available upon request, the search logs are kept, and the articulation between access to information and the protection of personal data is guaranteed. From an archival point of view, this makes it possible to understand the Repository not simply as a search platform, but as a specialized service of documental mediation, restriction management, traceability of use, and professional guidance concerning archival information on Uruguay’s recent past.
In that sense, the relevance of this particular case is not exhausted by the field of applied technology. It is also inscribed within the processes of truth, memory, reparation, and guarantees of non-repetition that run through human rights archives in contexts of transitional justice. The very design of the Repository links it to the need for access of victims and their families, the justice system, academic research, and the general public. Its function is not solely to concentrate the documentation, but to institutionalize access conditions, use, and preservation of digital information that possesses evidential, informational, and social value. Therein lies one of its principal singularities: it turns the availability of documents on illegitimate State action and State terrorism into an archival problem of organization, mediation, and institutional responsibility.
Cruzar.uy is of particular relevance here. It is an academic and interdisciplinary project of the Universidad de la Republica, established in 2017 and initially built through the joint work of the Faculty of Information and Communication and the Faculty of Engineering, later joined by other university services and social actors. Within the framework of Cruzar, a broader set of tools was developed for the treatment, analysis, and retrieval of information contained in documental images of the recent past. These include the adaptation of LabelMe for image tagging and annotation; LUISA, for the collaborative transcription of documents and the improvement of retrieval of complex texts; AMALIA, oriented toward the general recognition of image content and the search for terms and co-occurrences through different visualizations; and LUZ, designed to locate pages containing specific terms. From this perspective, artificial intelligence and computational developments do not appear as an external complement, but rather as components integrated into the archival tasks of identifying, searching, retrieving, and interpreting digital holdings.
This technological integration acquires particular importance in relation to extensive and complex documental bodies, such as the first large collection of images incorporated into the Repository, composed mainly of the so-called Berrutti Archive, although the institutional design itself provides for the progressive incorporation of new documental groupings related to the same subject matter. The archival challenge is significant, since these are documents in digital image format, often of low quality, heterogeneous in composition, and marked by difficulties of reading, description, and identification. In that context, OCR, image processing, collaborative transcription, information extraction, and semantic retrieval expand access capabilities. Their meaning, however, does not lie in displacing archival work, but in integrating into it under criteria of validation, control, and professional mediation.
For that reason, the most fruitful contribution of the Luisa Cuesta Repository to the international archival community does not consist solely in showing that artificial intelligence can be used in human rights archives. What is truly substantive is that this integration takes place within a specialized archival service, with normative grounding, clearly defined institutional responsibilities, access procedures, professional mediation, and explicit attention to the traceability of information use. Rather than reducing the case to technical innovation, it should be read as an experience of contemporary, or post-custodial, archival science, in which digital information on human rights violations is institutionalized under a logic that articulates preservation, access, description, documental control, and public responsibility.
Seen in this way, the experience of the Luisa Cuesta Repository makes it possible to think of an archival science that goes beyond traditional custody. It is not merely a matter of preserving documents, but of creating institutional and technological conditions for their socially meaningful, legally responsible, and archivally contextualized use. Within this framework, artificial intelligence does not occupy the place of an end in itself. It becomes an integrated dimension of a specialized archival service oriented toward truth, justice, memory, and public access to the documentary evidence of the recent past.
Building a Community for Early Career Professionals
Prepared by ECaPS Committee members Gina Chacon Vargas, Laura Yturbe Mori, Lerato Tshabalala, Susannah Tindall, Oscar Zamora Flores, and Janny Sjåholm
1 April 2026
In October 2025 at the ICA Congress of Archives in Barcelona, we launched the provisional Early Career Professional Section (ECaPS). Through both a presentation and a poster, we introduced the new section and shared information about its first initiative, the Outreach Pilot Project. We made good connections and hope we sparked interest in this new space. Following the initial introduction, we would like to take this opportunity to further present the section and our vision for its first year.
Poster presentation, ICA Congress Barcelona 2025. From left to right: Gina Maria Chacón Vargas, Susannah Tindall, Laura Yturbe Mori, Janny Sjaaholm, Oscar Zamora Flores. Tuesday, 28 October 2025. Barcelona International Convention Centre (CCIB), Barcelona, Spain. Photo credit: Gina Pellicer.
Currently, ECaPS has the status of a provisional section. According to the Internal Regulations of ICA, members may form a provisional section for up to 8 years. After this time, they can request that the section be formally established by the General Assembly on the recommendation of the Executive Board.
ECaPS aims to be a dedicated space for new professionals, students, and emerging professionals. Its main goals are to advocate for and represent this community within ICA and to strengthen their engagement and participation in the association.
The idea to create this section came from Nicola Laurent, Coordinator of the ICA New Professionals Programme (NPP), who identified the need for a structured space for students and emerging professionals beyond the programme. At the same time, the NPP 2021–2022 cohort was already working on the Outreach Pilot Project to increase awareness of ICA among students and new professionals. As both initiatives shared similar goals, the cohort took on coordinating the establishment of the section. Members of this cohort now lead the section and form the core of the Section Committee, including:
To guide our work, we defined the following objectives in our terms of reference:
Vision for the Year Ahead
In its first year, ECaPS will focus on learning the ropes as a professional section, building a community, and advancing the Outreach Pilot Project.
Community Building
Our first big challenge is to build a strong community that grows and remains active for years to come. Keep that in mind: we are focusing on how to do it and on planning and exploring meaningful ways for early-career professionals to participate, collaborate, and engage within the section to achieve our goals. These efforts aim to foster long-term commitment, professional development, and sustained contribution toward achieving our objectives.
We are specifically planning:
Outreach Pilot Project
The Outreach Pilot Project serves as ECaPS’ first official initiative and the vehicle for expanding our network. Its goal is to raise awareness of ICA’s mission, resources, and opportunities among students and early-career professionals through university talks.
We have been developing the pilot project in three stages:
Getting Involved
There are different ways to get involved with ECaPS. The first step is to join the section through your ICA profile. To do so, log in to the members-only area, access your ICA Profile section at the top of your profile, select “Edit profile”, go to the “Professional sections” section, and choose ECaPS from the drop-down list.
As a member of ECaPS, you will receive news about the section and its initiatives. If you would like to be actively involved, you can join the General Committee and help plan and organize activities. You can also volunteer for our first initiative, the Outreach Pilot Project, by giving presentations and helping raise awareness of ICA opportunities and benefits.
To get in touch with us, please contact the section at ecaps@ica.org You can access our materials here for more information:
You can also explore the ICA Outreach Posters developed in a previous initiative: New ICA Outreach Posters Now Available and the ICA Welcome Kit.
Increasing Partnerships and Connections – the work of the ARA International Section
Prepared by ARA International Committee members Isabel Lauterjung, Secretary, and Chloe Anderson-Wheatley, Chair
16 January 2026
It has been almost two years ago since the UK & Ireland Archives and Records Association (ARA) established its International Section. We would like to take this opportunity to reflect on our achievements and highlight our work connecting an international community of archivists and recordkeepers. Our founding Chair Chloe Anderson-Wheatley, Corporate Records & National Archives Manager at the Jane Cameron National Archives in the Falkland Islands, decided to approach ARA with the idea of setting up a new section: the International Section.
ARA already had an international membership category but did not have much in the way of a network for international members. There is a slew of archivists and recordkeepers who have an international background and work in the United Kingdom or Ireland, or simply those who maintain an interest in international archival practice. This is where Chloe’s idea stemmed from: based on her personal experience working in a fairly remote location, she wanted to enable British or Irish professionals working outside of the UK, to British/Irish professional standards, to feel supported and provide a space to share experiences and professional challenges and opportunities.
The aim of our International Section is to provide a forum for ARA members, especially those based abroad or working abroad to UK/Irish standards, to exchange ideas and knowledge, provide training, and create a welcoming space to connect with other professionals who may have experienced similar challenges or can provide opportunities and advice. In order to achieve this, we decided to create a training series, the first session of which took place in May 2025: In Conversation: Around the World in Oral History Practice. Professionals working in the Netherlands, United States, and the United Kingdom came together to discuss oral history practice they’d encountered throughout their career. We’re excited to plan a further training session in this style for 2026!
As part of our second AGM in July 2025, we invited Kirsten Wright, Program Manager of the Find & Connect Project at the University of Melbourne, to speak about international collaboration on trauma-informed practice. This built off the work started with the ICA, and provided a great insight into how the international community, and our members, can promote and implement this practice into their own institutions. This is a topic of interest that we would love to expand upon in further training and conversation around cross-cultural trauma-informed practice.
A further training opportunity we were excited to be involved in was organised in collaboration with ARA Northern Region (the group of the Association’s professionals in the north of England): ‘Regional Archive Bodies in the UK and Europe’ was an informative event between the Northern Region’s Chair, the German archival association (Verband deutscher Archivarinnen und Archivare) and the Catalonian association (Associació d'Arxivers-Gestors de Documents de Catalunya (AAC-GD)). It was a great insight into the opportunities of challenges of regional archival bodies in different national systems and how best to utilise the group’s reach.
Global distribution of ARA International Section membership.
To inform our future training and event planning, we created a membership survey to gauge our members’ professional background, challenges and opportunities of their jobs, and what they would need from us. At the time of the survey, we had 75 members across 5 continents, demonstrating a need for ARA members to connect at a global scale. This has increased by 20 people since this survey was conducted. The survey identified several ideas around future engagement opportunities: international exchange around the difference in archives education. Some respondents noted that in their geographic location, there was not a requirement for an official archival or recordkeeping qualification. It would be fascinating to have further conversations around how this informs professional practice in different countries. Furthermore, we would like to look into how established archival practices help inform and challenge existing standards, e.g. around Indigenous knowledge keeping and records.
2026 is shaping up to be an exciting year for us – plenty of ideas around training and international recordkeepers’ exchange that will need organising! We would also like to create a space for a more informal exchange for our membership – consistently attending hour-long training sessions and meetings isn’t feasible and is a lot to ask of our membership, so another informal space would be great to encourage conversations and exchange. Our section is distinct from the ICA in terms of our membership, which is open for all members of the UK & Ireland Archives and Records Association – you don’t need specifically international membership, but you can merely be interested in international archival affairs! We are keen to continue to collaborate and connection with internation professionals to support our sector promote archival practice.
Unlocking the African Community Archives at a Time of Crisis: Shaping Inclusive Archival Futures in Africa
Tshepho Mosweu, Villy A. Magero, Florence Dedzoe-Dzokotoe Plockey, Maureen Mnyazi Kenga and Juliet A. Erima
11 December 2025
Recognizing the importance of community archiving practices in Africa, archivists and Librarians from Botswana, Kenya, Ghana and Tunisia joined the “Catalyzing African Community Archives for Social Good” project. This collaboration spans 2024–2025 and aims to shape inclusive and sustainable futures.
A Partnership for Change This initiative brought together the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, African archivists, and international knowledge management organizations. The main goal was to shift the power dynamic in knowledge preservation. The project fostered communities of practice, empowering African partners to use their knowledge and records for social good. It also worked to decolonize and diversify preservation resources that have been centered in the Global North. The team dedicated a full year to regular meetings to develop the core training modules, culminating in a one-week-long workshop at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, to finalize all project deliverables.
Team in Illinois. Photo credit: Tshepho Mosweu.
The New Curriculum for Community Archiving
The key outcome of this collaboration is a comprehensive curriculum or training manual for community archives. It is designed as a simple, yet thorough, guide for training and development in the area of Community Archiving.
The developed modules include:
All project materials, including the modules, are now publicly available. You can read more about the project at <https://cacasg.library.illinois.edu/about/> and explore the training modules directly here: <https://cacasg.library.illinois.edu/modules/>.
A Call for Local Ownership and Context
African archivists in the project issue a strong call to action for the Global South to remember the lost narratives in conversation, behavior, and character of their communities. Instead of relying on external resources to tell their stories as is often the case, the project is founded on the belief that Africans can and should develop resources that are specifically applicable to their own environment and people. This local focus is a highlight of the curriculum, with most examples drawn directly from the African context, such as the Speru dance from the Basubiya community in Botswana, or Kalenjin artifacts from Kenya.
With the Catalyzing African Community Archives for Social Good project, we hope to reignite a long-needed conversation in the digital preservation of Community Archives and Heritage in Africa. The work ensures that future generations will be able to connect their culture and heritage to a tangible source, helping them understand why certain traditions and practices exist depicting the original nuances. These training modules will also complement existing preservation efforts, leveraging tools like the Digital Preservation Coalition toolkit. This project plays a critical role in shaping the evolving concepts, practices, and technologies of archival work within an African context. We encourage institutions and local communities across Africa to utilize these materials for the wider community good.
The researchers are grateful for the support of funding of The Catalyzing African Community Archives for Social Good project from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Chancellor’s Call to Action Research Program, which advances academic and community-based research addressing systemic inequities and social injustices. Further gratitude goes to the project coordinators and the team from the University of Illinois led by Prof. Chris Prom.
