The rapid development of technology in the past twenty-five years has dramatically altered how information is relayed and experienced. Ideas can be transmitted globally through the Internet and through social media platforms, and information can be built upon from opposite sides of the world in real time through collaborative software. Virtual reality, interactive sites, and immersive technology allow the public to physically experience previously inaccessible situations, and interact with them in new ways. This explosion of possibility, innovation, and interconnection necessitates new means of preserving and storing information, which intersects many aspects of society. One especially important, albeit overlooked, sector deals with the preservation of cultural heritage — the need to archive multimedia cultural heritage artifacts presents new challenges to longstanding modes of archiving focused on the preservation of physical objects. It is essential that archival practices adapt to innovations in media in order to preserve important aspects of culture in the long term.
I define multimedia cultural heritage artifacts here through their combination of multiple forms of media (e.g. video, audio, sculpture, painting, virtual reality), and their relevance and importance to the ongoing ‘narrative’ or story of a culture. Post (2017) notes that physical objects, such as paintings, sculptures, and photographs, can be obtained, described, and preserved through established requisition and maintenance practices that document an artifact’s lifespan and can extend it; however, the technology endemic to recent multimedia artifacts complicates this process. Technology is unstable by nature, as it changes rapidly and quickly becomes obsolete. The preservation and upkeep of artifacts, then, becomes increasingly complex as original technology becomes outdated and incompatible with the latest advancements; archivists must adapt artifacts to new technologies while preserving the ‘essence’ or ‘intention’ of the original work, thus making the ability to reinstall and access previous artworks more and more complicated. Furthermore, as multimedia artifacts combine multiple types of media that can span physical and virtual spaces, each component of a piece requires specific and different documentation practices that, if not accommodated, can fragment relationships within a composition and obstruct the collective preservation of a complete piece (Post, 2017).
However, as the instability of technology poses issues to documenting multimedia artworks, the same technological advancements also afford new means of interacting with and preserving cultural heritage pieces. For example, the Popwalk app enabled users to virtually access and experience site-specific art through augmented reality (AR) software. The creation and maintenance of the pieces within a digital platform prevented decontextualization, degradation, and vandalism, which served to better preserve artist intent and allowed users improved access to the ‘original’ or intended experience (Lindsay & Weaver, 2024). This project is indicative of an extended discussion regarding the potential for virtual and augmented reality to offer immersive experiences of multimedia heritage through the digital realm — for example, virtual reality could allow a user to experience a work of performance art as an audience member, or as a member of the cast. The possibilities of VR and AR could improve accessibility to cultural heritage pieces, bringing experiences of performances, artifacts, and installations directly to members of the public that may otherwise be inaccessible. Social media serves as another point of interest in sharing and documenting multimedia artifacts due to its capacity to allow for personalized and widespread interaction, coupled with its free-to-use, intuitive user interfaces. The design of these platforms democratizes knowledge sharing, facilitates large audiences, and encourages collaboration and community-building beyond the means that physically-bound collections facilitate. Many community-based platforms outside of social media mirror this structure in allowing users to ‘post’ multimedia input alongside digitized artifacts, encouraging collaboration, community engagement, and diverse interpretation. For example, the platform Ara Irititja, used in Indigenous archiving, “allows users to add their own narratives through audio recordings onto previously created records” (Shiri et al., 2022)(p. 100).
Despite these innovations, digital archival initiatives still fall short, especially due to legal ramifications, a lack of accessibility, and a lack of resources. Among many issues, social media in particular is challenging to archive long-term due to user intellectual property rights and data control by major corporations. There is much debate as to whether publicly posted information can be ethically and legally retained long-term, as it may violate “the right to be forgotten” as well as a user’s rights to distribution and retention over their own work (Milligan, 2024; Shiozaki, 2025). Web scrapers and crawlers, which are often used to collect digital information for storage, are also unable to mine data on many social media platforms due to access restrictions, which makes data extraction increasingly difficult despite the wealth of cultural heritage data that is being recorded and circulated through these platforms’ use (Shiozaki, 2025). Furthermore, crawlers do not operate on the basis of informed consent, which amplifies legal barriers (Milligan, 2024). Digital cultural heritage preservation initiatives also lack adequate funding to continue long-term; increased partnership between communities and institutions, as well as across sectors, must be facilitated in order to better distribute resources and support archival progress (Goudarouli et al., 2026).
The duality of technology in posing challenges to current archival praxis as well as motivating and supporting novel solutions informs an understanding of why and how archival praxis must be revolutionized. The technology embedded in our cultural heritage artifacts continues to change and rapidly becomes obsolete. Utilizing technology to create frameworks that combat these issues and that are able to adapt to rapid change becomes increasingly crucial for archivists that seek to share and preserve multimedia heritage pieces. Current legal ramifications, resource insufficiency, and access problems challenge this goal, and demonstrate that there is still much work to be done in effectively archiving multimedia cultural heritage artifacts.