What do we keep? What do we discard? And does the answer to these questions change in a digital archival environment? A story or an object becomes ‘archivable’ when it holds a meaning for an individual or a community, sparking an affective reaction that binds the past to the present and opens up a communal future. But archiving is never neutral as recent debates in Critical Archive Studies showcase. Contemporary studies increasingly reveal that archiving is a politically charged process, socially bound, and deeply sensitive to historical conjunctions.

Keeping/Discarding is a pilot study, a drawing board if you will, that we use to explore the possibilities of digital storytelling and visualisation to rethink some of the premises of (vernacular) archives. Some contributions start from a memory object that was taken from an official archive. Can digital storytelling change its meaning and the affects that it sparks? Other objects are unlikely candidates for entering the archive. But why is it so? When showcasing and engaging with stories they inspire, the question arises: shouldn’t they be in the archive? Twelve distinct case studies presented in our digital repository underscore and reflect upon the reciprocal influence between the medium, the maker, and their (historical) users in turning objects into meaningful stories and alternative histories.