{"id":25242,"date":"2026-06-30T23:40:42","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T20:40:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ra.ee\/?p=25242"},"modified":"2026-06-30T23:40:43","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T20:40:43","slug":"a-look-back-to-the-icarus-conference-in-tallinn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ra.ee\/en\/a-look-back-to-the-icarus-conference-in-tallinn\/","title":{"rendered":"A look back to the ICARUS conference in Tallinn"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On 27 and 28 May, 2026, the 36th conference of the International Center for Archival Research (ICARUS)<\/a>, titled \u201cHighlighting Heritage, Empowering Knowledge \u2014 From Archivists to Everyone\u201d, was held in collaboration with the National Archives of Estonia. Nearly a hundred guests from 20 countries, hosted in the terrace hall of the National Library, attended 36 presentations<\/a>, which were also streamed online and are available as video recordings on the ICARUS YouTube channel<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This time, the conference focused on issues related to the use of archival heritage in the broadest possible sense: how artificial intelligence can influence and support archival use; what user-friendly technologies archives and other memory institutions have developed and implemented; and how communities amplify archival use and help expand access to archives. Since the use of archives is closely linked to the reliability of archives, the keynote presentation by Laura Millar, an expert who has highlighted the irreplaceable and influential role of archives as advocates for evidence-based information and the author of several archival bestsellers, fit perfectly into the conference program. Her presentation, titled \u201cFinding Teachable Moments\u201d contrasted myths surrounding archives\u2014that archives and data \u201csimply\u201d exist; all data is digital; archives and data are someone else\u2019s responsibility\u2014with the reality of archival work, where different principles apply: data is permanently preserved only if we protect data from the moment of its creation; archives are everyone\u2019s responsibility\u2014that is, creators of archives, archivists, and users form a shared lifecycle and are responsible for the preservation of archives; and data and archives\u2014whether created a century ago or just yesterday\u2014are unique evidence of identity, memory, and history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the opening presentation, the first day of the conference featured a series of presentations, the highlight of which was a session titled \u201cArtificial Intelligence and Advanced Technologies\u201d, where cutting-edge archival tools, large language models, and applications for archival descriptions created with the help of AI were introduced. The second day of the conference focused on archival management and best practices, and presented international perspectives on cultural heritage ecosystems, collaboration, and information security. For example, Giuliano Romalli, director of the Italian Central Institute for the Digitisation of Cultural Heritage, provided an overview of Ecomic<\/a>, Italian ecosystem for cultural heritage, which supports the digital transition of cultural heritage and was created to integrate data, infrastructure, and the expertise of sector specialists. This was followed by discussions on cutting-edge technology and public engagement, where AI intersects with accessibility, podcasting, and creative approaches to presenting archives to a wider audience. The final part of the meeting focused on education and public engagement, demonstrating how archives can become powerful tools for storytelling in classrooms and communities. Among the topics covered were the National Archives\u2019 work on developing artificial intelligence as part of the ArchXAI collaborative project<\/a>, presented by Sven Lepa; trends in archival pedagogy, presented by Eliis Truuman; and the current status of EDU Arkaader, a portal that brings film heritage to schools, as discussed by Jarmo Nagel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everyone is welcome to read more about both the conference held in Tallinn and the two ICARUS conventions that took place in 2025 in the 3rd issue of the magazine Tuna<\/a>, to be published in September 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On 27 and 28 May, 2026, the 36th conference of the International Center for Archival Research (ICARUS), titled \u201cHighlighting Heritage, Empowering Knowledge \u2014 From Archivists to Everyone\u201d, was held in collaboration with the National Archives of Estonia. Nearly a hundred guests from 20 countries, hosted in the terrace hall of the National Library, attended 36 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ra.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ra.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ra.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ra.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ra.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25242"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ra.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25242\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25243,"href":"https:\/\/www.ra.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25242\/revisions\/25243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ra.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ra.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ra.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}