This thesis investigates the organization culture and information culture in the archives of the Lutheran Church of Sweden. The church is the largest Christian denomination in Sweden. Since the year 2000 it is no longer a state church, though some legal, economic and even mental bonds to the state still exist. The main focus of the thesis is to investigate the influence of cultural aspects on a recent project concerning a general system for information management and digital archiving. A subsequent question is how these cultural aspects may affect the church’s future role as a cultural heritage actor. The thesis, as a framework, uses two models: one for organization culture (Granberg) and one for information culture (Choo). It combines them to a single model and connects them with Kirk’s studies on information use. Four semi-structured interviews, with archivists on national level and in two dioceses, were conducted and transcribed. In addition, related documents were studied. A qualitative analysis was carried out on the data. One conclusion made is that the general culture on national level and in the dioceses can be described as a relationship-based and professional culture. Another conclusion is that parallel cultures do exist within the church, especially in the dioceses. These parallel cultures affect the information use and information behaviour. The diminishing role of the church in the future may be the force which merges these parallel cultures into one. There are also major differences on what to count as the cultural heritage of the church. The author argues that the church should act more decisively to define its heritage and to claim its future role in the field of cultural heritage. This is a two years master’s thesis in Archival Science.

The archives of religious communities is a sparingly treated subject and christian community archives constitute the majority of the archives studied. The main purpose of this thesis is to investigate the relevance of James M. O'Toole's four characteristics of religious archives put forward in his article What’s different about religious archives? Another implicit purpose is to expand the knowledge of religious community archives and include archives from other world religions. The thesis's theoretical starting-point is O'Toole's characteristics which are also used as a basis for the questions that the thesis set out to answer. The main question is to what extent O'Toole's characteristics are relevant for studying archives linked to modern religious communities operating in Sweden. The method used is interviews. A total of seven people were interviewed who had knowledge of seven religious community archives. The archives were linked to the Mission Covenant Church of Sweden, the Catholic Bishopric, the Jewish Community in Stockholm, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Triratna Buddhist Community and the Baptist Union of Sweden. With the exception of interviews, the source material consisted of literature (books and articles), web pages, archive registers and email correspondence. The result is that O'Toole's characteristics are not particularly relevant for studying archives linked to modern religious communities operating in Sweden. Religion does not seem so important for religious archives as O'Toole claims. On a scale of 0–5, the relevance of O'Toole's characteristics is 1–2. For this reason, the characteristics need to be modified. There are good opportunities for future researchers to develop the subject and supplement this study. This is a two years master’s thesis in Archival Science.