This is the title of a recent Council of Europe publication, the culmination of three years of research summary-report-of-pan-european-survey-on-access-to-archives carried out in collaboration with Blinken OSA Archivum. Twenty years after the first and until now only pan-European study, the researchers have once again examined in detail the accessibility of Europe's public archives, the repositories of our past and present heritage, and the institutional guarantors of our individual and collective memory.
Based on detailed data and analyses covering 46 countries and reflecting the views not only of archives but also of professional and civil users of archives, the researchers found that the situation has improved significantly in twenty years, but some practices that are objectionable in principle and law have not disappeared, especially in the eastern half of our continent. They also found that there are significant differences in the use of new technologies, the extent of digitization, the provision of remote access, and even the use of artificial intelligence.
The publication has been registered with the Archivum’s Library, so registered researchers can read it freely either in person in the Archivum's research room or the OSA Research Cloud.