Archival work concerning outreach and accessibility is getting increasingly more attention. As a consequence the role of archives and archivists in society has, and continues to change. A common conception is that the roll of the archivist has transformed from a passive curator towards an active mediator of information. This thesis aims to investigate how that change affects archival outreach and public programming. The purpose of the study is to illustrate how archives can use public programming to emphasize outreach and access. The study is mainly focused on two series of lectures at Stockholm City Archives which are a part of the archive´s public programming. Observation is used as a method to study the lectures where I as an observer and participator has taking part of the lectures both physically at the archive as well as online. Postcustodial theory is used as a framework and starting point for the analysis. A postcustodial era emphasizes the need for archives to work with outreach, accessibility and to focus on people rather than records. The analysis is therefore focused on exploring if and how the lectures at Stockholm City Archives can work as a way to highlight the archive as a postcustodial archive. A postcustodial archive where access and outreach is an important part of how the archive communicates with society as well as a significant part of the archive´s self-conception. Archival experiences affects the way the lectures communicate to the people attending the lectures. The lectures works as a way for people to experience the archive both as a place as well as a way to experience the archival records. What kind of experience that is emphasized varies between the different lectures. Usually experi­ence is associated with musems and not as commonly with archives. However, this study proposes that experience can play a key roll in shaping people´s idea of what an archive is. This is a two years master’s thesis in Archival Science.

In 2020, several Nordic archives and museums sent out ”question lists”, questionnaires, to collect the public’s experiences of the Covid-19 pandemic. The collections resulted in an incomparable collection of contemporary cultural history about the Covid-19 pandemic. The aim of this thesis is to follow the creation of this collection. The thesis is defined through three research questions: one asking about the initial creation of the collection projects, one about the implementation, and one about what will happen to the resulting collection as an archival material. The study is based on previous research about Nordic contemporary Mass-Observation projects and question lists, as well as health narrative studies and research about Covid-19 experiences. Aspects of the previous research are used to create a theoretical framework, based around the concept of actors in accordance with Giddens structural theory (Johansson 2003:422). The three primary terms that are used in the analysis are dialogue, (immaterial) monument, and post-custodial archives, all retrieved from previous research in the field. The empirical data is collected through semi-participatory observation and documentation of the question lists, as well as interviews with responsible personnel at the institutions. The analysis is divided into three chapters, based on the three research questions. The first chapter thus concerns the initial creation of the collection projects, with regards to the design of the question lists, and the institutions’ thoughts and aims with the projects. The term dialogue is used to analyse the interaction between and within the institutions during this process. The second chapter studies the implementation of the actual project and includes an analysis of the question lists themselves as well as the digital interface through which they are made accessible to the public. Here, too, the term dialogue is used, to analyse how the answers are made in the interaction between the institutions and the public. The third chapter studies the institutions’ plans and hopes for the collected experiences, with regards to future research projects and exhibitions as well as archiving. Here, the term monument is used to illustrate the value and usage of the overall collection. Post-custodial archives are also used to highlight discussions about how digital archival collections should be archived and made accessible. The thesis closes with a final discussion chapter, which expands on the questions about what the purposes of these kinds of collections are, as well as about what role and place archiving should have in the creation and implementation of these kinds of Mass-Observation projects. This is a two years master's thesis in Archival science.