THE SELECTION PROCESS OF ARCHIVAL MATERIALS FOR DIGITISATION: THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS

Abstract

The article examines the selection of materials for digitization as a value-laden process with ambiguous and far-reaching consequences for the composition of documentary and historical memory. Digitized materials gain considerable advantages in visibility and accessibility, while non-digitized materials effectively fall out of active scholarly circulation. Digital absence thus operates as a form of practical exclusion, structurally analogous to physical loss in its consequences for historical representation, regardless of a document’s actual preservation status or scholarly significance. In the absence of explicit criteria, selection relies on tacit institutional defaults that risk perpetuating hierarchies of documentary significance shaped during the Soviet period. Drawing on archival theory, analysis of the current regulatory framework, and international digitization guidelines, the article demonstrates that selection in digitization is structurally analogous to primary archival appraisal and requires dedicated methodological approaches. Despite the well-developed state of appraisal theory, its connection to digitization selection practice remains insufficiently explored in Ukrainian literature on the subject. It is established that current Ukrainian legislation comprehensively regulates the technical standards of digitization, yet the criteria for selecting materials from analogue holdings for retrospective digitization remain outside the scope of legal regulation. Particular attention is given to wartime conditions in Ukraine, under which the documented destruction and seizure of archival materials from occupied territories renders digitization selection decisions a matter of cultural survival: documents that do not exist in digital form at the moment of physical destruction of the original are irretrievably lost. It is argued that the subjectivity of selection cannot be eliminated, but must be acknowledged, documented, and subjected to reflexive methodological treatment; the expert commission model enshrined in the Law on the NAF is considered a viable institutional basis for such an approach, as applying analogous multi-perspective deliberative structures to selection decisions would render subjectivity collective, accountable, and transparent.