The aim of this thesis is to examine the archivist's professional role in public authorities and discuss if, and in what way, the profession is effected by the new swedish process oriented archival description system. The study focuses on swedish authorities and does not make any international comparisons with other institutions. Neither does it investigate archivists workingin the private sector, but centers on public institutions.The survey is performed in five swedish public authorities, using interviews and observations. Grounded theory is used as a method initially in the purpose of keeping an open mark towards the object of study. The initial results led on to questions about how well the archivists perceived that communication within the authorities served, and how this in turn prepossessed their work situation and the professional roles in which they found themselves. To answer these questions, theories from the subjects of sociology and social psychology, among other things the idea of sensemaking as it is put by Karl Weick, was used to analyze the material.The result of the analysis shows that the implementation of a new archival system has generated a change in the archivists work tasks. The archivists in the studied authorities did in some cases, out of this new situation, manage to find a professional role in which they felt comfortable, and in some cases not. The difference between these two categories seemed to stem from a difference in the ability to make sense of their situations in their workplaces respectively. In the cases where the archivists ideas of their responsibilities and provinces did not correlatewith their employers a lack of sensemaking occured and led to confusion and conflict. This discrepancy between the archivists and the employer's expectations, the thesis argues, comes from the change in the archival profession that is taking place due to the changes in society at large. The employers' traditional image of an archivist clashes with the archivists new professional role. From this it is suggested that if consent is not reached around the archivists place in the organizations, and in society, much knowledge is at risk of being lost, and much competence going to waste. This thesis is a two years master's thesis in archival science.

This thesis has focused on digital born personal archives; how they are different from analog paper archives and possible ways to overbridge these differences. It is also studied how archivists and librarians are dealing with digital archives, what they think about new proactive solutions when collecting private papers and collections and positive and negative effects with this way to work. The thesis is delimitated to only private collections and digital created material. It do not concern digitized material or electronic documents in government or business organizations. The challenges in digital curation and administration are discussed in aspect of the Records Continuum Model. The empirical material is also put in relation to research in Personal Information Management and identity theory. Two qualitative methods have been used, a case study of an authors personal electronic archive and five deep-going interviews with archivists and librarians working with personal collections in university libraries. This study shows that many difficulties and problems displayed in the electronic archive could be solved in the future with a more proactive approach and early cooperation with the collector. By educating and informing creators of personal records about file formats, archival structure and the need of them to engage in their own collection, more personal digital records could be preserved. Librarians and archivists are imagining more proactive work in the future but are also asking for other solutions. A lot of the challenges united with electronic personal archives are associated with lacking continuity which is a reason to use the Records Continuum Model to explain and work with personal digital collections. This is a two year master’s thesis in archival science.