Acquisition policy

The SKS has extensive archive and library collections that are highly valuable, both culturally and historically, that have been accumulated during its operations. Even from an international point of view, the archive materials focusing on tradition and literature form a unique collection that depicts the development of Finnish society and culture.

The goal for the SKS Archives’ acquisitions is to maintain the continuity of the collections, which are unique to Finnish culture, and to ensure that they will continue to depict changes in and the diversity of Finnish society and aspects of culture. For this reason, acquisition decisions are made to supplement the existing collection and to continue expanding materials on traditions and literature through changes and transformations occurring in various sectors. These materials document the everyday lives of people and communities in Finland in a timely, extensive, and versatile manner. The acquisition policy of the SKS Archives directs the expansion of datasets and ensures that the significance of the collections is continuously maintained and strengthened. In this way, the Archives’ acquisitions improve cultural self-understanding as well as knowledge of cultural heritage and history.

SKS Archive acquisitions are from gifts (i.e., donations), with the proprietary rights to the materials transferred to the Archives. The Archives does not accept materials for storage (deposition) or accept copies from the collections of other memory institutions. Decisions on acceptance are always made on a case-by-case basis. The Archives is open to the public, so the starting point for acquisitions is that the materials are freely accessible to the Archives’ customers. The materials may be subject to fixed-term restrictions on use due to legislation or the donor’s wishes, but the Archives does not accept materials that are permanently unavailable for use.

When acquiring materials, the SKS Archives cooperates with the National Archives of Finland and other individual state aid archives, while also complying with the jointly agreed-upon division of labor and acquisition policy guidelines.

The materials of the SKS Archives are cultural-historical by nature and are linked to specific periods, places, and people. The SKS has the right to extensively process personal data for archiving purposes in the public interest, as specified in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Processing for archival purposes is necessary and proportionate to the public interest goal set in terms of the data subject’s rights (Article 4, Section 4 of the GDPR). When these grounds are met, the cultural heritage and research materials may be kept with all identifiers—thus, without anonymization or minimization—as long as processing is necessary and proportionate.

The SKS Archives has always accepted materials whose personal data has been minimized by the donors or other persons processing the material (e.g., responses to ethnographic questionnaires collected with pseudonyms) or whose contextual information is incomplete when they are received. When making acceptance decisions, attention is paid to how minimization or a lack of contextual information affects the cultural heritage value of the materials. The Archives’ acquisitions focus primarily on original materials that have not been minimized. In all cases, the content of the materials must be sufficiently complete, and contextual information must be available to determine the cultural heritage value.

The SKS Archives does not principally accept materials whose target persons have been promised anonymity, as their anonymity cannot be guaranteed. For example, the interviewee in a sound recording is identifiable or the contextual information in interview transcripts, such as age and region, may lead to identification.

The SKS Archives consists of two collections: the Literature and Cultural History Collection and the Traditional and Contemporary Culture Collection.

The Literature and Cultural History Collection is enriched by materials gathered from Finnish literary figures, including authors, translators, literary associations, and researchers, as well as influencers and representatives from key sectors relevant to SKS. The collection consists primarily of personal and community archives.

The Traditional and Contemporary Culture Collection houses materials related to folklore and oral history, such as proverbs, charms, epic poems, folk songs, legends, life story narratives, ethnographic questionnaires, and direct descriptions of life and society in the present day. The collection is expanded by contributions from individuals and communities as well as from students and researchers focused on documenting cultural heritage. The topics range from proverbial traditions and local legends to societal issues. The Archives organizes annual ethnographic questionnaires to gather oral histories and current narratives on various topics.

The SKS Archives has a special task in preserving cultural heritage. When preserved in the Archives, the materials provide time-bound examples of intangible cultural heritage; because they can be permanently preserved, they do not live or evolve like living cultures in their own environments. However, these materials are of primary importance in fostering and supporting an intangible culture.

The key acquisition methods of the Archives are as follows:

The Archives works in active cooperation with donors, informing them of their activities, providing advice on the collection of materials, and answering questions related to storage and donations.

Material donations by literary and cultural figures and others working in key sectors for the SKS

The Archives’ acquisitions include the personal archive materials of writers, translators, literary researchers or teachers, literary critics, and cultural journalists who work or have worked professionally in the fields of literature and culture as well as in the SKS’s key sectors. Additionally, the Archives accepts materials created through the activities of associations, publishing houses, and newspapers operating in the fields of literature, culture, and tradition, among others.

For historical materials, particularly those from before the 1900s, the Archives acquires various materials written in Finnish or that depict the development of literature. These include the personal archives of priests, teachers, and intellectuals. For more recent materials, especially those from the second half of the 20th century, the focus is on the professional nature, significance, or scope of an individual’s or association’s activities. The category of literature does not restrict acquisitions but also encompasses, for example, children’s and young adult literature, drama, and comics. The goal of acquisitions is to capture the entirety of the personal archive materials created through an individual’s or association’s activities.

Ethnographic questionnaires and research surveys

The Archives organizes ethnographic questionnaires independently or in collaboration with stakeholders. The topics may be related to current events, certain traditions, the field of literature and culture, or historical events. Ethnographic questionnaires represent sets of data that document the narratives of peoples’ experiences or everyday lives, which are valuable for research. They also enrich and even challenge historical conceptions.

The SKS Archives accepts questionnaire initiatives from communities, research projects, and private individuals. In most cases, questionnaires are chosen for a wide range of subjects, involving many people and covering a wide geographical area. It is also important that ethnographic questionnaires related to the same topics have not recently been implemented. On the other hand, the Archives implement repeated questionnaires to collect valuable information about changes to phenomena over time. The decision to launch an ethnographic questionnaire is made by the Archives’ collection work group, which assesses each questionnaire initiative.

The Archives also accepts prepared ethnographic materials, such as those from research projects and associations, and can also cooperate in the production of such materials. Prepared materials may be comparatively old, so their acceptance is supported by the age of the materials in addition to the suitability of their content.

Narratives, recordings, and writing related to one’s own life and environment

In addition to ethnographic questionnaires, the Archives accept other materials, including narratives related to one’s own life and surroundings or material recorded by people themselves. These materials are accepted as donations from private individuals and communities. The topics are not restricted, and the ownership of the material is not a primary concern, as the focus is on capturing personal experiences over time. The materials must be logical entities that vividly or extensively cover a subject or cultural phenomenon.

Over recent decades, the SKS’s collection activities have been guided by an understanding that storytelling serves as a medium for conveying traditions and worldviews. The Archives focus on topics that would otherwise remain unexplored and undocumented. People are invited to share in their own words what they or their relatives have experienced, thought, and felt. Age is not a factor, and the materials can range from recent to, in some cases, very old.

Materials also include private individuals’ letters and diaries. Any types of diaries, such as diaries reflecting the writer’s personal life and travel, as well as weather and dream diaries, can be included. The Archives are particularly interested in letter and diary materials that represent a cultural-historical phenomenon, a place, a period, a person’s age, or a stage in their life. Of particular interest are materials related to periods of crisis or other exceptional circumstances, to a particular period of upheaval, or to marginal phenomena for which there is otherwise little available source material. It is also important to note that materials depicting everyday lives that are seldom recorded in the Archives, may be of particular interest.

Sets of letters or diaries should be as complete and comprehensive as possible in terms of the period of time they cover. For example, individual samples from diaries or letters separated from their contexts should be avoided. This is particularly important for letters. Preferably, correspondence will have been preserved in both directions, while diaries will have been written regularly over a long period of time. These materials should include sufficient contextual information, such as details about the authors and recipients of the letters, as well as the times and places related to the materials. Acceptance of materials can be supported by the fact that the donor has arranged the materials and linked contextual information to them independently.

Research materials, documentation, and projects

The Archives conducts their own documentation projects to collect and produce materials on a specific topic. In fact, they have a long tradition of such activity.

The Archives also accepts research materials on literature, cultural history, tradition, and contemporary culture, as well as documentation from researchers and projects. Such materials can be collected and documented by anyone interested in literary phenomena, a field of literature, genealogy, local history and traditions, or the phases of one’s own lineage. The research materials must be sufficiently well organized before being donated and must be accompanied by suitable permissions and/or consent for archival from the interviewees and informants.

The SKS Archives accepts materials for their collections in text, image, sound recording, and video formats. The material can be in analog or digital form. Text materials may include responses to questionnaires, ethnographic questionnaires, writing competition materials, manuscripts, letters, diaries, speeches, or presentations. Images may be photographic prints, negatives, slides, or drawings. Sound recordings and video materials may include interviews or event recordings, among others. In principle, the Archives does not accept physical items, printed products, self-published items, or other publications.

Decisions on acceptance are determined by acquisition criteria according to which materials are assessed as a whole. The focus of the criteria varies on a case-by-case basis, and in each case, the Archives makes the decision on the basis of the overall assessment.

Topics and content

The topics and content of materials should be part of the SKS Archives’ acquisition areas, which are specified in Section 3.

Age

The age of materials should be such that the materials are not in active use (i.e., the donor no longer needs them). In exceptional situations, these conditions can be relaxed. For example, respondents to ethnographic questionnaires can loan photographs related to their writings to the Archives for digitization.

Originality and authenticity

Materials, such as letters or diaries, should not be photocopies or duplicates. The content of the materials, such as interviews, should be authentic, regardless of the recording medium.

Integrity and comprehensiveness

Materials should be intact, meaning that they remain unchanged. The authenticity of materials arises from their integrity, which means that they should be original in terms of content (i.e., in the form in which they were originally made) and that they should not have been modified without authorization or changed unintentionally. Materials are extensive when their scope is sufficient. For example, a diverse and extensive personal archive depicts a person’s actions and living environment in a more comprehensive manner than individual documents.

Scope

Personal archive materials including images and AV materials, as well as separate image and AV material collections, are generally accepted as a whole. For large sets of materials, images and AV materials can be accepted as material-specific samples. The purpose of this is to ensure that the Archives can maintain and put to use the materials they have accepted.

A lack of scope of materials, together with their poor condition, lack of metadata, and difficult accessibility, may lead the SKS to issue a statement that the Archives do not have the resources to properly process, maintain, or put the material into use. In such cases, materials are accepted as limited samples or not at all.

Clear copies are removed from the materials. In some cases, original content may also be removed. Digital materials, in particular, often contain multiple images of the same situation, and the Archives will assess whether it is necessary to retain all duplicate copies.

Cultural–historical value of content

Materials should include valuable source materials for research or for other actors interested in them.

Access rights

The goal of the SKS Archives is to offer materials as freely as possible to anyone interested in common cultural heritage. The use of materials is limited by existing legislation, in addition to which the Archives complies with their own rules of use. Fixed-term restrictions on use can be agreed upon with donors, when necessary, for reasons such as the sensitive nature of the materials. However, the purpose of the Archives is to maintain and offer materials for use, so materials that may not be used at all or only under strict conditions cannot be accepted. The duration of restrictions on the use of materials is always agreed upon in transfer agreements.

Condition

Materials must be in decent physical and technical condition at the very least. However, poor condition is not a basis for rejection, especially in the case of unique material, but in some cases, such as mold, it may prevent the acceptance of material. If materials are badly damaged, their preservation requirements may exceed the Archives’ resources and prevent the materials from being accepted.

Technical format and accessibility

The Archives is in a good position to accept and process materials that arrive in various formats, but the data format may limit the acceptance of materials. The Archives is unable to maintain equipment for all data formats. For example, in the case of old and rare digital materials or video and tape formats, the Archives may collaborate with other partners if necessary. Donors may be advised to contact these parties. Material formats that require the use of specific devices, such as digital recording mediums from the past, may lead to the rejection of materials. Only in exceptional cases will the Archives to accept materials that cannot be maintained in the long term or for which they are unable to provide support.

Contextual information

The value and reliability of cultural heritage materials increase if there is good contextual information about the date and history of the materials as well as about the actors and places related to them. Information concerning materials should support their interpretation and scientific research. A lack of contextual information may make it difficult to identify or interpret materials and may thus reduce their cultural-historic value. Inadequate or a complete lack of contextual information for materials may prevent them from being accepted. For example, extensive photo materials for which there is no information on when, where, and by whom the photos were taken or cassette tape materials with no contextual information may not be accepted because there are no prerequisites for determining the value of the materials. The Archives makes special consideration in the case of extensive sets.

Previous donations, supplementing

The Archives enhance previous donations, which often make a significant contribution to the existing collection.

Donors’ wishes and cooperation with the Archives

In cases in which materials could easily be offered to other memory organizations, the donors’ wishes are complied with.

In cases in which the content of materials is suitable for archival but the resources required for managing it prevent the material from being accepted, the SKS will try to find solutions together with donors to implement archivals. Donors are welcome to help in identifying and arranging their materials and improving their accessibility, which also promotes the Archives’ opportunities to ensure their materials’ storage and provision for use.

Approved at the SKS board meeting on 11 December 2023.

Photo: Emma Suominen, SKS.