Preservation of private archives and how they are used as sources of past history. The role of archival institutions in the preservation and collection of private archives will be examined, and how and where private archives are preserved in Iceland. Access to private archives will be examined. Work in the course requires active participation. Lectures will be held and in addition students are expected to complete assignments in group work and independently. Visits are expected to depositories that preserve private archives.

The course is an exercise for students to work independent on their own project chosen by the student. Students choose a project with the teacher approval. The project should be practical and can include, for example, describing and arranging an official archive or a private one, various type of work within an institutional archive or within a private company making for example classification plan, records schedule or preparing an official notification on an electronic record management system to a public archive.

This course covers the role of public archives and archiving and record management in the past and present. The importance of the principle of provenance for archives and history. A summary of the history of administration. The activities and legal environment of public archives in Iceland will be discussed and their role in records management in public administration. What organizations are obliged to transfer their records to public archives. The evolution of archiving and records management in the 20th and 21st centuries will be examined. Methods of records managements, old and new. The sorting and cataloguing of archives.

The course is an exercise for students to work independent on their own project chosen by the student. Students choose a project with the teacher approval. The project should be practical and can include, for example, describing and arranging an official archive or a private one, various type of work within an institutional archive or within a private company making for example classification plan, records schedule or preparing an official notification on an electronic record management system to a public archive.

The course critically engages with the concept of culture, addressing predominant conceptualizations while simultaneously exploring the role, conditions and influence of culture in the present. The objective is to generate a disciplined discussion on cultural heritage, cultural politics and policy, and cultural sustainability in conjunction with questions on the practicality of presenting and communicating expressions of culture. Attention is paid to the relationship between the cultural field and other social, political and economic aspects of society and how these enable and limit the communication and dissemination of cultural resources. Questions on how cultural heritage, traditions, collective memory, ideas on authenticity and identity generate the formation and reproduction of cultural constellations are dealt with as well as how conceptualizations such as ‘cultural capital’, ‘cultural hegemony’ and ‘authorized discourse on heritage’ can be employed to understand and analyze manifestations of culture.

The course deals with describtion of Icelandic authoroties (the executive), the basic structure of the Icelandic administrative system, main tasks of public authotiries, the scope, relevance and rules of the Administrative Act. no 37/1993 and the relevance and rules of the Information Act. no 140/2012. The main emphasis is on the Administrative Act. 

Students learn and are trained in the methods of archival research, finding and evaluating sources in archives.  Practical exercises will be assigned.