Research Document No. 06 Between Archival Science, the iSchools, and Computational Archival Science How our research programme gradually evolved into an epistemological intersection between distinct scientific traditions
PDS & Ged/A | Research Notes
Research Document No. 06
Between Archival Science, the iSchools, and Computational Archival Science
How our research programme gradually evolved into an epistemological intersection between distinct scientific traditions
25 March 2026
🌎 Open Science
The PDS & Ged/A Research Notes are part of an ongoing Open Science initiative dedicated to sharing research questions, emerging ideas, preliminary findings and research agendas in Digital Archival Science. Rather than presenting only completed research, we seek to document the evolution of our research programme itself, inviting archivists, information professionals, researchers, students and institutions to participate in the development of knowledge.
A seminar that changed the way we understand our own research
At the beginning of March, our Permanent Research Seminar met once again.
Unlike previous meetings, however, this session included invited researchers from several institutions who joined us remotely through Google Meet.
The discussions were exceptionally stimulating.
Yet the most valuable contribution did not come in the form of a new answer.
It emerged as a new way of interpreting our own research trajectory.
Several participants independently made essentially the same observation.
Our research programme seemed to occupy an unusual position within contemporary Information Science.
It could not be described simply as a continuation of the European archival tradition.
Nor did it fully resemble the interdisciplinary approach commonly associated with the iSchools.
Instead, it appeared to occupy an epistemological intersection between these two scientific traditions.
That observation fundamentally changed the direction of our discussion.
📓 Laboratory Notes
March 2026
During the seminar one of our invited colleagues remarked:
"Perhaps the originality of your research does not lie in adopting Artificial Intelligence or Computational Archival Science. It lies in incorporating those methods without ever allowing Archival Science to lose its central role."
The sentence remained with us throughout the meeting.
By the end of the seminar we realised that it described something we had been gradually building for many years without explicitly recognising it.
Archival Science never left the centre of our research
Over the past decades our research has incorporated new technologies, new methodologies and new conceptual frameworks.
Artificial Intelligence.
Machine Learning.
Knowledge Representation.
Semantic Retrieval.
Vector Embeddings.
Cloud Computing.
Data Science.
Large Language Models.
Computational Archival Science.
From the outside, one might reasonably assume that our research programme had gradually shifted from Archival Science toward Computer Science.
Our seminar led us to a very different conclusion.
The more computational methods we adopted, the more clearly we realised that our fundamental research questions remained archival.
How can authenticity be preserved?
How can documentary continuity be maintained?
How should provenance be understood in digital environments?
How can institutional context remain demonstrable?
How should archival governance evolve?
Technologies changed continuously.
Our archival questions did not.
Perhaps that continuity explains the identity of our research programme better than anything else.
💡 One of our research findings
As we revisited our previous publications, we realised that digital technologies had never represented the primary object of our research.
They were always methodological instruments for investigating fundamentally archival questions.
Computer Science expanded our analytical capabilities.
Archival Science continued to define the questions that mattered.
Looking back, this distinction appears to have become one of the defining characteristics of our research programme.
An epistemological intersection does not require abandoning traditions
Throughout much of Latin America, Archival Science has historically developed within a strong European intellectual tradition.
Authenticity.
Provenance.
Organic relationships.
Custody.
Institutional context.
Long-term preservation.
These principles continue to constitute the theoretical foundation of our work.
At the same time, the emergence of the iSchools introduced new research paradigms into Information Science.
Interdisciplinarity.
Data Science.
Human-Computer Interaction.
Artificial Intelligence.
Computational Social Science.
Computational Archival Science.
Our discussions led us to an unexpected conclusion.
Our research programme never attempted to replace one tradition with another.
Instead, it gradually began building bridges between them.
Rather than choosing between Archival Science and the computational paradigms developed within the iSchools, we increasingly found ourselves working at their intersection.
🔬 An unexpected outcome of the seminar
Looking across the concepts developed throughout our research programme revealed a pattern we had not previously recognised.
The Chain of Archival Digital Custody explains documentary continuity.
Systemic Digital Preservation explains institutional architecture.
Digital Archival Ecosystems describe the relationships among institutions, technologies, people and documentary processes.
Our archival interpretation of the OAIS Reference Model integrates preservation architecture with archival principles.
Computational Archival Science provides computational methods capable of expanding our analytical capacity.
Rather than representing competing theories, these concepts increasingly appeared to form different dimensions of the same research programme.
That realisation became one of the most important outcomes of our seminar.
Computational Archival Science emerged as a consequence, not as a starting point
Perhaps this was one of the seminar's most significant conclusions.
We never consciously decided to adopt Computational Archival Science as a research agenda.
It emerged naturally.
As our investigations began dealing with increasingly complex digital records, preservation infrastructures, semantic retrieval, Artificial Intelligence, archival metadata and Digital Archival Ecosystems, computational methods became increasingly necessary.
Importantly, however, those methods did not redefine our research questions.
They expanded our ability to answer them.
From this perspective, Computational Archival Science does not replace Archival Science.
It extends its investigative capabilities.
That distinction has become increasingly important for us.
🤔 A hypothesis we partially abandoned
At the beginning of our seminar we worked under a relatively simple assumption.
We believed that digital transformation would gradually move Archival Science toward an increasingly technological Information Science.
Months of discussion led us to reconsider that hypothesis.
The more computational our methods became, the more essential archival theory appeared.
Rather than reducing the importance of Archival Science, technological complexity seemed to reinforce it.
Our original hypothesis therefore required substantial revision.
Perhaps technological development does not weaken archival foundations.
Perhaps it makes them indispensable.
Perhaps we are building an epistemological intersection
By the end of the seminar another hypothesis had begun to emerge.
Perhaps our research programme is not primarily bringing Archival Science closer to Computer Science.
Perhaps it is bringing computational methods closer to archival questions.
The distinction may appear subtle.
Yet it fundamentally changes the way we understand interdisciplinary research.
This is not about transforming Archival Science into Computer Science.
Nor is it about turning Computer Science into Archival Science.
It is about creating an epistemological intersection where computational methods expand our ability to investigate archival phenomena, while archival theory provides the conceptual framework necessary to interpret authenticity, provenance, institutional continuity, preservation and documentary evidence.
Perhaps this intersection represents the defining characteristic of our research programme.
🌱 A hypothesis under construction
When this seminar began, we believed we were studying the relationship between Archival Science and computational methods.
Today we suspect we may be contributing to something considerably broader.
A research programme capable of integrating the European archival tradition, the interdisciplinary perspective of the iSchools and the methodological innovations of Computational Archival Science, while consistently preserving the epistemological centrality of Archival Science.
It is still far too early to draw definitive conclusions.
Nevertheless, this hypothesis will continue guiding our future investigations.
We continue learning
One of the seminar's greatest contributions was allowing us to look back at our own research with greater perspective.
We realised that our work had never moved away from Archival Science.
Quite the opposite.
The more complex our research problems became, the more essential archival theory proved to be.
Perhaps scientific innovation is not achieved by replacing intellectual traditions.
Perhaps it emerges by building rigorous and productive dialogue between them.
Increasingly, we believe that this is precisely the path our research programme has been following.
💬 Let's continue the conversation
Within your own academic or professional context,
do computational methods strengthen the identity of Archival Science, or do they risk diluting its theoretical foundations?
How do you see the role of Computational Archival Science within the future of Archival Science?
We would genuinely welcome your perspective.
Perhaps your experience will help shape the next stage of this research programme.
📅 Next Research Note
Computational Archival Science? A Research Hypothesis for the Next Decade
Are we simply incorporating computational methods into Archival Science, or are we witnessing the emergence of a new international research agenda?
10 April 2026
The research continues.
And we hope you will continue this journey with us.
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