tiedonarkisto

Tiedonarkisto is a Finnish term for a repository or archive that stores information materials and data for long-term access and reuse. It can be digital, physical, or a combination of both, and it serves to preserve records of information while providing appropriate access for researchers, students, staff, or the public according to policy. The concept covers institutional, thematic, and national scales, and may be used within libraries, archives, universities, research institutes, or government bodies.

A tiedonarkisto typically contains documents, datasets, multimedia, software, and related metadata. Metadata describes provenance, context, structure, and access conditions to support discovery, reuse, and preservation. Repositories often rely on standards such as Dublin Core, METS/MODS, and PREMIS for preservation metadata, and they employ persistent identifiers like DOI or ARK to maintain stable references. A preservation strategy commonly includes integrity checks, format migration, and sometimes emulation to ensure readability of older materials over time.

Operations are managed by professionals such as archivists, data stewards, and librarians. They follow retention schedules, access policies, and privacy or legal compliance requirements. Provenance and versioning practices document the history of stored items and any changes made, ensuring transparency and accountability. Tiedonarkistot may be institutional, where a single organization hosts the repository; thematic, focusing on a specific field or type of data; or national, safeguarding public records and national collections.

Access and reuse policies vary, ranging from open access to restricted availability, depending on rights and confidentiality considerations. Repositories typically offer discovery interfaces, download options, and APIs to facilitate research use, data sharing, and long-term preservation.

In practice, tiedonarkisto refers to formal data archiving systems within libraries, archives, universities, or government bodies.