In July of 2022, we held a roundtable discussion as part of the virtual Archival Education and Research Institute (AERI) titled ‘Map** Records Continuum Futures’. The roundtable was prompted by a desire to reflect on and celebrate the legacy of foundational records continuum theory (RCT) creator and thinker Frank Upward, and to consider what the next 30 years of continuum scholarship might look like. Our initial intention in holding the roundtable was, on the one hand, to map existing and emergent continuum research areas, and identify any common threads and foci; and, on the other, to explore how emerging RCT scholars were creatively interrogating and pushing the boundaries of our understanding of recordkee** and archiving in the archival multiverse.

When the session actually took place, it very quickly evolved into a conversation about participatory recordkee** and people-centred design. It became clear that emergent scholars working with and within continuum thinking were concerned with the relationship of archives and recordkee** to questions of human rights, equity and equality, dignity, autonomy, ethics, and responsibility. Through the lens of the continuum, participants were undertaking rich and critical interrogations and transformations of archival and recordkee** praxes, with the explicit aim of moving towards a more human- and human rights-centred archival multiverse.

As we reflected on the roundtable, it became clear that there might be value in a special issue that explores the praxis of participatory recordkee**, and its relationship to the assertion, protection, and enactment of human rights. In our own respective research areas, we have each experienced how dignity emerges as a central pillar to uphold when imagining, designing, and creating recordkee** systems across different contexts. Through years working in the out-of-home care records research space, Joanne has explored dignity through the articulation of the memory, identity, and evidence needs of those in out-of-home care. Elliot and Violet, as emerging RCT scholars, look to new possible areas and contexts where RCT can be articulated and explored. In their work on queer/ing institutional archives, Elliot champions the need for participatory archival praxes that centre the perspectives, needs, and recordkee** rights of queer people. As a lived experience researcher and victim-survivor of intimate partner violence (IPV), Violet investigates records and dignity in an IPV context through its affective and embodied dimensions, and the role recordkee** technologies and systems that embed dignity by design might play in justice, healing, and recovery for victim-survivors of IPV.

There has been a wealth of scholarship over the past decades interrogating the ways in which records and recordkee** are a fundamental mechanism for the protection and assertion of human rights. Rights-based archival and recordkee** scholarship has established the need to move beyond passive, post-hoc and paternalistic forms of participation embedded in extant frameworks, processes and systems, and lead the development of participatory infrastructures that support social justice and equity agendas. There is increased awareness of the need to take active steps to re-distribute archival power, and increase the capacity of our evidence and memory ecosystems to ‘harbour plurality, diversity, and difference’ (Cook 2013, p. 117) and evolve a participatory recordkee** paradigm.

This raises major design challenges, not just in how individuals and communities can be supported in creating their own archives, but also how they can equitably participate in institutional recordkee** and archival systems. This encompasses the ways in which people have agency in, and control over, the recordkee** that impacts on their lives as they interact with government and organisational systems. It incorporates the power people are given in moments of records creation, along with capabilities to actively and equitably participate in the recordkee** processes associated with their management and use through space and time.

With greater awareness of how archival and recordkee** infrastructures can reflect, create, amplify and/or ameliorate major societal problems (Gilliland 2015), we are in a position to critically, proactively, and transparently consider how they might be designed and configured to better support the inherent dignity of human beings. With recognition of our non-neutrality, and increased cognisance of archival affect, we are more mindful of the need to move beyond systems that narrowly focus on the transactional and evidential, to better incorporate the spiritual and emotional dimensions of records and recordkee** (McKemmish & Piggott 2013).

Much participatory archival scholarship to date has tended to focus on identifying and ameliorating archival legacies of harm. While this work is undeniably important, there is a risk that ongoing and emergent recordkee** challenges will go unaddressed, allowing systemic barriers and structural inequities to remain, and become even further entrenched. If participatory work focuses only on redressing the past, the opportunity to (re)shape the recordkee** of the future may be missed. There is a pressing need to apply our archival expertise to the increasingly complex challenges of the digital landscape, in which the inherent instrumentalism of techno-deterministic systems and technocracies can all too easily rob people of dignity in their design, even when not the direct intent. In a data-driven, algorithmic, and incredibly fast-paced information environment, our disciplinary insights into the dynamic evidence and memory needs of individuals and communities are not just vital to preserve, protect, and advocate for human rights, but also to ensure that people are treated with dignity, fairness and respect.

We have an opportunity to lead the design of recordkee** and archival systems that embrace love, care, trust, and kindness in concert with transparency and accountability. But how do we make this a reality? In this special issue, we present seven papers exploring what we are calling ‘dignity by design’. Dignity is a rich, complex and multifaceted concept that ‘places obligations on each of us to treat others well’ (Michael 2014). Dignity can both underpin and emerge from recordkee** and archival systems design. However, it cannot be assumed and does not happen automatically; it must be done with ethical intent.

Building on the rich body of existing literature, the authors of this special issue provide fresh insights into the practical implementation of participatory, human- and human rights-centred recordkee** systems and practices across a range of contexts, scales, and degrees of technological complexity and sophistication. The seven papers included in this special issue consider the ways in which dignity in archival and recordkee** systems can be felt, experienced, and actively realised.

Kirsten Thorpe explores the importance of archival systems that are designed to support Indigenous ways of knowing, being, and doing. Through a case study of the In Living Memory exhibition, which draws on photographs created by the former New South Wales Aborigines Welfare Board, Thorpe articulates the need to design archival systems that do not reproduce harm, but instead support the holistic needs of Indigenous people through principles of trust, benefit sharing, and reciprocal relationships. Thorpe shares a working definition of Indigenous wellbeing, sovereignty and archival sovereignty that can enable and empower First Nations people to control their cultural heritage and knowledge with dignity and respect, and to return love to Ancestors. 

Mike Jones and Rebe Taylor present a rich discussion of the Stories in Stone project, a guide initially created to provide digital access to the Tasmanian collections. Reflecting on their positionality as white-settler academics, they explore the changing landscape of First Nations politics and heritage, including human rights frameworks, Indigenous data and archival sovereignty, new technologies, and the importance of governance and relationship-building. Moving beyond an institutional- and archival-centric approach to archival access, which often restricts and disempowers Indigenous ways of knowing and being, Jones and Taylor assert the need for co-design, working with the Palawa community and returning archival control to help facilitate Indigenous self-determination and dignity.

Through a case study of a website from the small island-nation of St. Kitts and Nevis, Jeannette Bastian and Stanley Griffin explore the role of the internet in restoring archival dignity to communities within a decolonising paradigm. Bastian and Griffin articulate how enabling access to both community knowledge and memory, and official archival collections, empowers communities to re/configure their narratives with their own voice.

Presenting the findings of a pilot study, Martine Hawkes, Joanne Evans and Barbara Reed explore the complexities and challenges of recordkee** in the context of child protection systems. Drawing on interviews and surveys conducted with social work students and curriculum developers in Australia, and practitioners currently working in the Australian child protection service system, the authors articulate the possibilities for transformation in current practices, with a focus on child-centred recordkee** practices that prioritise the rights and dignity of children who experience child protection systems.

Proscovia Svärd and Sheila Zimic articulate the importance of participatory recordkee** systems to protect the rights of children and young people placed in Swedish residential care homes. Following a detailed explication of the current recordkee** paradigm through two case studies, Svärd and Zimic assert that person- and child-centred recordkee** praxes are vital to sense-making and the formation of identity for children with experience in care, and are therefore an ethical imperative and an articulation of dignity by design.

Victoria Lemieux, Amber Gallant, Panthea Pourmalek, Hoda Hamouda, Nicole Johnston, Samantha El-Ghazal, Jon Unruh and Niloufar Vahid-Massoudi present the results of a survey examining the design and implementation of recordkee** systems for organisations supporting conflict-affected individuals displaced from their homes, lands, and property (HLP). Drawing on participatory and rights-based approaches, this study articulates the tensions between the affordances and risks of recordkee** technologies within a human rights framework, and makes clear the necessity and complexity of undertaking dignity by design within the context of recordkee** for HLP claims. 

Gregory Rolan and Antonina Lewis advocate for participatory consent in recordkee** practices. Drawing on a case study of the AiLECS Lab’s development of a data acquisition and management system, and the consented use of human image data in the law enforcement research context, Rolan and Lewis articulate the ethical and archival imperative for consentful technologies, systems, and practices of data/record re-use. Explicating the ethical implications of data de-contextualisation and downstream use, Rolan and Lewis present the principles-based VALID framework as a tool for data users and data custodians. Through their presentation of the case study, Rolan and Lewis provide a compelling example of consentful recordkee** in practice, and provide both thoughtful reflections and useful tools for the consentful and rights-based design and use of recordkee** practices and systems.

Reflecting on Frank Upward’s legacy during the roundtable at AERI in 2022 and through this special issue allows us to honour and acknowledge the paradigm-shift in archival science that has since seen the understanding of the archival multiverse expand exponentially, exploring the role records and archives play in our very human lives, and the messiness, complexity, and challenges this inevitably brings. As archival and RCT scholars, the human-ness of records is core to our work, and to honour this human-ness requires an articulation, understanding, and embedding of dignity by design. Looking to the future, we hope this special issue sparks inspiration for new areas of focus that might emerge from the conceptualisation of dignity by design. We recognise that the explorations of dignity and records are by no means ‘complete’ and acknowledge the absences within this issue that pave the way for new possibilities and research areas.

Dignity is not an abstract concept that happens ‘over there’, but a felt human experience. How we as researchers, practitioners, and, indeed, humans engage with dignity by design begets an area of enquiry that we hope reverberates through the archival multiverse as we imagine a world where the inherent dignity of each and every one of us is actualised, with a felt sense of respect, kindness, and love.