Archivists—A Profession in Transition?

Abstract

E-government development has put pressure on public organizations to work with electronic information. Records from complex e-government services have to be captured and managed in order to be accessible both in the present and in the long term. The data and analysis presented is based on a multiple case study of nine Swedish local governments (municipalities) identified as good ex-amples of best practice of e-government. An analytical model for recordkeeping awareness in three arenas: the legal, the political and the workplace has been created in order to identify how political decisions and new technology impact on professional archivists’ practice and status. The research findings demonstrate a gap between the legal and workplace arenas in both directions caused by lack of recordkeeping awareness primarily within the political arena. Archivists´ profes-sional status seems to be limited, which opens up possibilities for other profes-sional groups to replace them.