Photographs are a small act of sentimental preservation. Photo albums, scrapbooks, and videos are sites of revisitation and display, and as such contribute to the legacy of the museum as a cultural archive. As an institution, the museum has always been a conservative stronghold—a constant from its privatized roots to its marked transition to a public locale. A portrait of preservation, its artefacts are protected by extensive security measures and object handling rules that safeguard these relics of history. But the rules of safeguarding have changed, and the evolution of archiving means connecting with history in an advanced technological era. So what does this mean for our relationship with the past?

In 2023, Press Gazette recorded a loss of 8,000 journalism jobs across the UK and North America, spotlighting the growing graveyard of media careers. Between 2016 and 2022, a string of articles started appearing on news platforms across Nigeria, questioning the shrinking presence of newspaper vendors in the country. Surmised more recently in a Reuters Institute study, the answer lies in the high cost, low reward rationale of traditional print media. Publications are incentivized to digitally circulate their content due to a growing online audience. The bundling of news publications through subscription-based services means getting more money for your buck. Still, these tiered levels of exclusion and strings of paywalls present key issues as it pertains to accessing news and history, particularly as platforms are being wiped clean in the bid to make space for something new. The internet as a sanctuary for information is being swallowed by its very being and years of archives within it. If history is destined to repeat itself, then we must have access to the resources to learn from what’s come before.

This has created a sense of urgency, with many people shifting towards the collection of physical media. The practice of creating and maintaining personal and introductory archives highlights media conservation as the bedrock of our present political and cultural landscapes. Despite the dwindling presence of vendors, an audience for newspapers remains—stacks of them can still be found in my family home, and my father’s day is not complete without consuming the day’s events through his newspaper. Newspapers are monuments to the past, preserving memories of connection and personal ritual.  Although the newspaper can be part of our daily lives, it is inherently ephemeral as print media. The shelf life of newspapers is extended online precisely through the efforts of organizations like Archivi.ng. 

The irony of the internet as an answer to the implosion of the internet is not lost on me, but it also presents a strong argument for preservation and conservation of physical media.

In 2009, the late former president Umaru Musa Yar'Adua removed history from the education curriculum due to a scarcity of jobs, interest, and teachers; this subject has only recently been mandated in schools once again. In a country as vast as Nigeria, with over 300 ethnic groups and languages, this barrier to learning is also compounded by recorded histories that are poorly kept—a growing issue for journalists, researchers, and people with a general need to know more. In response to this, the aim of Archivi.ng is to create a digital database of Nigerian newspapers from 1960 through to 2010. So far, their count shows over 4,000 newspapers scanned and over $20,000 USD raised to carry out this work since 2020. 

The irony of the internet as an answer to the implosion of the internet is not lost on me, but it also presents a strong argument for preservation and conservation of physical media. The decision to digitally conserve newspapers tackles one of the biggest barriers to engaging with Nigerian history: locating accessible newspapers. What I mean by this is that repositories of records are neither well-known nor easy to come by.  Esther Eze, Archivi.ng’s Operations Manager, speaks of the time involved in their work. This includes locating personal collections of newspapers by shuttered or defunct media houses, the documentarians of these stories; the travel required to the few institutions that hold these records; and the rigmarole of licensing and copyright laws to make these histories available as online archives. On a call with Eze, who is based in Lagos, she recalls “two days [spent] going to Benin to speak to The Nigerian Observer.” With the increasing costs of living in this country, archiving is a costly and time-consuming endeavour. But the work proves worthwhile for active participants in this scene. Digitizing these newspapers is their life’s work. Their motivation lies in protecting the newspapers’ legacy, with one archivist telling Eze: “they don’t treat my newspapers well.” The “they” in question refers to libraries and museums in the country, which are generally underfunded and poorly kept. The fragile state of these newspapers means they are at risk of damage by handlers. The handlers themselves are also exposed to risks—a result of dusty and inhospitable conditions.  

Much like the particulars of time travel—acting so as not to change the future by behaving out of line in the past—so intimate is the process of archiving: ensuring the conditions for the survival and continued existence of an item. And so, Archvi.ng’s approach subscribes to archival practices of object handling. The process of record collection and preservation begins with the location of records to digitally preserve. A sureness in the handling of newspapers by the Archivi.ng team involves the transportation of records to Lagos and their safe return. The deteriorating conditions of some of these newspapers involves extra care in the unbinding measures, tasked to the Archvi.ng team to ensure the upkeep and safeguarding of works. On maintenance, Eze says: “we take notes to make sure we return [the newspapers] to the owners in the same way we get them.” 

If the role of the present is to build on and develop the processes of the past, then the longevity of physical media is important. However, this intention is lost without the proper means of preserving existing information and the development of processes that support the access to this information. This is why the issue of physical media is viewed differently by Archivi.ng. Their focus on creating an online library of physical media has resulted in resources that can be converted back to physical mediums through re-printing and considered as markers of history beyond their original lifespan. This practice impacts both the Continental and the Diasporic Nigerian, who gains unmitigated access to the magnitude of Nigerian history—unfiltered, uncensored, and within reach. 

As the veil of democracy continues to fall, we as the general public are privy to the ways that censorship is dictated by media monopolies. We see this in the targeted efforts to erase and suppress voices covering the genocide of the Palestinian people.

Even as the absence of newspapers increases, it does not mean that there is an absence of news itself. As a wider result of the digital media landscape, the over-saturation of news available online has shaped the current state of news reporting. Capturing the zeitgeist has never been more possible thanks to the advent of phone portability and immense technological advancements. This means that anyone can capture moments and make them go viral. Such was the case in the 2020 End SARS massacre, where Nigeria’s state-sanctioned violence aided the killing of its own citizens. Recorded in real time, crucial moments are now publicized and cannot be swept under the rug. 

However, the violence of hoarded wealth continues to extend itself to the realm of privatized information. As the veil of democracy continues to fall, we as the general public are privy to the ways that censorship is dictated by media monopolies. We see this in the targeted efforts to erase and suppress voices covering the genocide of the Palestinian people. The censorship of these events includes  the erasure of media reports taking place prior to October 7th, 2023. Societal pillars like libraries, which act as heralds of digital and physical archives, are facing similar threats to the accessibility of information. Libraries continue to protest the banning of critical texts, hence the importance of campaigns like Banned Books Week and the Freedom to Read Day of Action. As institutions, libraries are being underfunded and library workers face dismissal for speaking up against the genocide in Palestine. The announcement of a ceasefire in January 2025 does not prevent the continuous violence towards the people of Palestine, but rather highlights how biased reporting is an oppressive practice. In light of this, how are we meant to learn and engage with our present state of affairs if we have limited viable resources to understand the past that it is informed by? How are citizens meant to access their history among an excess of content when there is an added layer of inaccessible and incomplete archives?

Onyeka Igwe’s No Archive Can Restore You documents the state of film preservation in Nigeria. The filmstrips shown in Igwe’s video piece depict the poor upkeep of the Nigerian Film Corporation building and the rotting and cobwebbed archives within it.  No Archive Can Restore You presents a visual reminder of what’s at risk when we fail to preserve our recorded narratives. The lack of protection for archives that Igwe depicts highlights how much history we’re at risk of losing. Such is the case of the 1976 film Shehu Umar, which is an adaptation of a 1933 novella by Nigeria’s first prime minister, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa. The film, thought to be lost for years, was found and restored between 2015 and 2016 via negatives and prints held in the Nigerian Film Unit. The film serves as a significant account of slavery in the continent and frames Nigeria in its pre-colonial state. This is a harrowing indictment on the state of historical preservation and raises concern not just about the potential loss of stories told but also about the ways that the vehicles that transport these narratives are treated.

We see the protection of textual and film history starkly contrasted by the institution of luxury fashion. The Met Gala facilitates fundraising efforts to actively platform and fund the preservation of fashion and design, recognizing these art forms as crucial to advancement and development.  Despite the constant use of references in pop culture and media as evidenced in practices of sampling in music or homage in fashion, it’s the active efforts of organizations with the resources to conserve history that make sure there are references to herald in the first place. Conserving art and history contextualizes them within an interconnected web of occurrences spanning multiple sectors. 

Elizabeth Akpan knows this well. The founder of archiving.fashion, Akpan leads a small community-led initiative that platforms the female fashion experience in Nigeria.  Describing the project as “a digital experiment documenting fashion history and theory,” she explores the functionalities of clothing design and the legacy of fashion creation and execution as a form of historical documentation. Who are we in the clothes we wear? What stories do our garments tell? What theories of identity are sewn into the inseams of our attire? archiving.fashion undertakes an anthropological perspective of what’s in vogue and creates a learning framework for fashion history which cannot be divorced from Nigerian culture. Recognizing these topics as “fashion-related or not is an integral part of global history, as Akpan puts it.

In her essay “Give the Corsets and Shine Shine a Rest!”, Akpan discusses the virality of Nigerian weddings and the impact of social media on the current state of fashion and design in the country. Akpan spotlights the issue with “Nigeria to the world”—a globalization mechanism that treats Nigeria by way of Lagos as a mecca for diasporic reconnection and growing tourism interests. This isn’t necessarily a negative in and of itself, but the virality of moments like Nigerian wedding fashion is not without consequence. As Akpan writes: “the distinction between online commentary on individual fashion choices and [on] curated celebrity images has become increasingly ambiguous.” This trend is exemplified in recent conversations pitting Lagos girls as mean and in the heightened influencer presence in the country, impacting Lagos fashion and discourse around women’s bodies. 

Amidst all these conversations, it’s also worth noting that the focus on aestheticism is in stark contrast to the direness of the country. We are currently living through one of the most expensive times in Nigerian history, a point made by Archivi.ng charting the price of petrol per litre. Between 2023 and 2024, the price of petrol jumped from 195 Naira—a monumental spike from 8 Kobo in 1975—to 1,025 Naira in 2024. Economic trends can be traced throughout Nigeria's history to our current political climate through the actions and tastes of Nigeria’s citizens. Stories like these are recorded in the media by journalists and show the role of the past in informing the present.

Sitting at the intersection of technology and history, Akpan utilises “versioning,” a software engineering concept that describes the process of creating and managing product updates, essentially making different versions of the same thing. We can think of versioning as we consider the evolution of archiving.  Applied to the humanities, the concept of versioning can encourage us to interrogate our experiences within the context of history and how our history is communicated. In viewing Western magazines from the 70s and 80s, Akpan speaks of crucial research on the evolution of women’s fashion. During our interview, she remarked that these magazines were not “written for a Nigerian audience” and that they failed to acknowledge the craftsmanship and intention sewn into Nigerian garments.  This emphasizes the importance of safeguarding our own histories, framing them in the context of Nigerian experiences. In contrast, Akpan’s creation of a digital and interactive repository of the past allows viewers to interact with the legacy of Nigerian fashion through the lens of Nigerian culture and to consider how it continues to impact us today.

The internet is a paradox; an electronic graveyard that simultaneously preserves and erases the histories of time past. Projects such as Archivi.ng, archiving.fashion, and No Archive Can Restore You contextualize Nigerian history and create a collaborative approach to learning and engagement. These are new ways of preserving history, not without faults inherent in the realm of the internet, but these projects each exemplify a utilitarian approach that might just save us all.