A window to new opportunities?

Abstract

In this article we examine the present and future roles of archives and archivists in relation to contemporary institutional pressures to entrepreneurialise. We investigate them where they meet the public, where the information sector meets entertainment in a reading of the Swedish reality-TV show It’s in the Walls, where archives play a prominent role. We claim that the most likely archival entrepreneur would be a go-between, communicating the value of archives. In our exploration of what such go-between entrepreneurs might look like, we conceive of seven different possibly productive, possibly problematic, roles in which ALM-professionals, that is all who are working with the materials and matters of the institutions of Archives, Libraries and Museums could be cast. Focusing specifically on archival professionals, we name these, in the (entrepreneurial) spirit of a playful inquiry: The Entertainer, the Expert, the Explorer, the Emotion Facilitator, the Educator, The Evidence Provider, and the Knowledge Organiser. The TV show in our analysis serves as a window through which may be spotted new opportunities and we aim to contribute to a critical discussion of what the introduction of initiatives and discourses of entrepreneurship might do in, and to, the everyday lives and roles of ALM-professionals.

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