Translations:Value of Digital Archiving for Civil Society Organizations/19/en

CSOs collect documents, photographs, audio-visual recordings, press clippings, artifacts, and other materials not in order to archive and preserve them but rather to achieve concrete impact on a specific legal, political, or social process and event. An organization might be collecting signatures of citizens opposing a war to petition the government to stop the conflict, or a CSO might be gathering testimonies of war crimes survivors and witnesses to provide as evidence in a legal case against specific perpetrators or for providing reparations to victims. In any case, the focus of CSO activists working in a time of conflict or a violent regime rule will, very reasonably, not be on identifying and listing each item and carefully describing, arranging, and structuring the gathered material. Rather, they will be dealing with overwhelming events at hand, trying their best to keep working and collecting as much material as possible.