Talk:Arkiv Digital

June 2024

Created the article, trying to follow all the guidelines. I've been active on Swedish Wikipedia for many years, on genealogy, history, historiography, and Latin. (Also in a large number of printed works on these topics since 1979.) I'm not a customer of or affiliated with Arkiv Digital, but the company has certainly changed Swedish genealogical research during the last decade. Houtos (talk) 17:29, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

This article was declined on 5 June 2024 by user Lovkal with the following motivation: “Most references appear to be self-published. Needs more third-party reliable sources.” I think that judgement was a bit hasty. Some comments:

• Most of the references linked to are the annual reports. As is seen in each one of them, they have been audited by an external certified auditor who has also audited the books and the management and operations of both the board and the CEO, according to Bokföringslagen (the Swedish law regulating limited companies) and Årsredovisningslagan (the law regulating annual reports). The auditor has focused on ”such measures, areas and conditions that are essential for the management of the company and where deviations and violations would have a significant impact on the company's situation.” (As it says in the auditor’s statement enclosed to each annual report.) Since digitization is what Arkiv Digital is doing, by itself or through outsourcing, that means the auditor has also checked all of these operations and all of the corresponding verifications. It’s a long process. The auditor herself/himself has to follow the Swedish Auditing Law (Revisionslag, 1999:1079). So the auditor’s statement *is* an external source. And, of course, the company board has to declare all this to the shareholders every year and face them.

(Edit, July 1, 2024: I asked Bing's AI Copilot how reliable an annual report is. It replied: "An annual report is generally a reliable source for assessing a company’s financial position and performance. It is prepared according to legal requirements and accounting principles, and is often audited by external auditors to ensure it provides a true and fair view of the company’s finances.

Here are some factors that contribute to its credibility:

– Audit: An independent auditor reviews the annual report and issues an audit report. This increases credibility as the auditor certifies that the report is accurate and complies with relevant regulations.

– Regulations: Annual reports must adhere to national and international accounting standards, ensuring a certain level of comparability and transparency.

– Public Access: Annual reports are public documents, meaning they are available to shareholders, investors, and other stakeholders. This creates an incentive for companies to be honest and thorough in their reporting.")

• Arkiv Digital is a digital library of sorts, and not something somebody would review. However, as is mentioned in the article, the company has over a decade been included in Family Tree Magazine’s annual list of the world’s 101 best websites for genealogists. The magazine is the largest genealogy magazine in North America. I have added the quote of David A. Fryxell that summarizes why it was included again in May 2024. Fryxell (who lives in Aurora, Colorado) is the founder of Family Tree Magazine. He is also the author of (among many other works) The Family Tree Scandinavian Genealogy Guide: How to Trace Your Ancestors in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway (published by Family Tree Books in 2019, ISBN: 9781440300752); thus, he knows what he's talking about.

• I doubt anyone would question a press release stating that the company has got a new CEO from a certain date. As for the other press release mentioned, the fact that the company received the Gazelle Award (Gasellpriset) by the financial newspaper Dagens industri (DI) three years in a row for its rapid growth combined with healthy finances is also mentioned by external parties. The DI articles themselves are behind a paywall, but their titles and first sentences are displayed when searching for "Arkiv Digital". I’ve added two references.

• As for the development and contents of Arkiv Digital’s image and name index databases, and the history of the company, that’s described continuously in the annual reports, year by year. Anybody could check the databases by using the days of free surfing there that the company offers once or twice each year. Everything they digitize is uploaded on their website; that's the whole point of their business.

• The genealogy handbook the company has published in five editions – I refer to it in the article – describes all their image and name index databases, with plenty of images showing them and the historical records upon which they are based, in detail; I have a copy. Its author, Håkan Skogsjö, is a well-known publisher and writer about Finnish and Swedish history and has received several awards for his works, as is described in the article about him on Swedish Wikipedia. The magazin Svensk Genealogisk Tidskrift (SGT), which keeps academic standards, describes his book in a review by the editor, Prof. Michael Lundholm (see the article about him on Swedish Wikipedia), with the following summary, in my translation: ”The handbook is in my opinion the best introductory handbook to genealogy that has so far been written.” (SGT, 2022, issue 2, page 123) I’ve added that as an external reference.

• Arkiv Digital has been established to the point that SGT nowadays accepts the company’s image IDs as part of a valid source reference, as can be seen in the magazine's guidelines for writers, previously only allowed for digitized materials from the National Archives. That's a big thing for a scientific journal that's very strict with source references. (I’m a former editor of SGT, so that much I know.) Houtos (talk) 22:52, 15 June 2024 (UTC)