Community Conversations: Who Decides What We Keep?

What gets saved, what gets discarded, and who gets to decide?

Presented in conjunction with Mary Kavanagh’s 'Opera Obscura', this Community Conversation brings together professionals working across archives, museums, collections, and emerging technologies to explore the often-invisible decisions that shape our collective memory.

From the careful work of preserving objects and records to the difficult choices surrounding deaccessioning, digitization, and access, archives are not neutral repositories—they are continually shaped by decisions about what is considered valuable, relevant, and worth carrying forward.

As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly embedded in the ways we create, organize, search, and interpret information, those questions are becoming even more complicated. Can AI help us care for and access our archives, or does it introduce new risks of distortion, erasure, and misinformation? And in an age when more of our cultural record is born digital, what does it actually mean to preserve something?

Join us for an accessible, lively conversation about care, memory, technology, and the choices that determine what survives for the future. No specialized knowledge required—just bring your questions and curiosity.