The cloud, the public square, and digital public archival infrastructure

Abstract

The increasing volume and importance of digital communication has prompted a major development in digital infrastructure for its storage and overall management—the cloud infrastructure owned for the most part by giant tech companies such as Amazon. Many governments have chosen to store their records in the cloud rather than invest in the increased digital infrastructure now required to manage them. Non-governmental institutions and private individuals are also using the cloud instead of their own infrastructure. The implications for public archives of this historic shift away from the publicly owned infrastructure long employed by them are profound. Yet, archivists and archival perspectives have not been much involved in public discussion of this change. They are largely absent from the public square. The shape of the emerging infrastructure underpinning the management of digital communication may well be the most significant lasting feature of the digital environment for societies and their archives. This article discusses why that development requires archival voices in the public square to address it.