This blog is co-authored by Salomé Rohr, Concepción Pérez Carrasco and Olivia Mandica-Hart at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN).
This year's World Digital Preservation Day theme, "Save our Stories (SOS): Our Digital Heritage in Danger ", invites us to reflect not only on archives threatened by conflict, neglect or technological obsolescence, but also on collections whose value remains insufficiently recognised. Administrative records are sometimes among the most vulnerable heritage assets precisely because they are seen as less significant than scientific or technical records.
At CERN (the European Laboratory for Particle Physics) our archives document scientific breakthroughs that transformed our understanding of the universe, such as the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012. Our historical materials also record the meetings, negotiations, correspondence, budgets and decisions that made those breakthroughs possible. Yet too often, the latter remain overlooked; some of the most important records for understanding CERN’s history are also among the least visible.
Since its creation in 1954, CERN has provided a framework through which member states have collaborated across political divides in pursuit of shared scientific goals. Behind every scientific achievement lies a story of international cooperation, shaped by nations learning to work together in the aftermath of the Second World War. The CERN Archives therefore document not only the history of physics, but also the history of diplomacy, governance and international cooperation.
To ensure that the history of multilateral cooperation is preserved and made accessible, CERN is partnering with the Centre for Digital Humanities and Multilateralism (CDHM) at the Geneva Graduate Institute. The CERN-CDHM collaboration has two objectives. The first is to foster the digitization of archives. The second is to develop digital humanities projects that connect and enrich these archives and open up new forms of access to the record of international cooperation and multilateral governance.
A first major step in the collaboration is already underway. Approximately 300 boxes from the CERN Archives, documenting the Organization’s founding, its establishment in Geneva, and its relations with member and non-member states, are now being shipped for digitisation. The material will be digitised and described throughout 2027. The resulting digital material will then be made accessible for research, marking an important milestone in the development of the CERN digital archives.
CERN Archives. © CERN
To complement collections of CERN Council meeting minutes and audio recordings that have already been digitized, the chosen collections include reports, memoranda, letters, and other records that tell the story behind the scientific achievements. The collections of former Directors-General and senior managers preserve the working record of CERN’s development across different periods. Other collections illuminate CERN’s role as a meeting place across political boundaries. For example, records documenting CERN’s East-West scientific relations reveal how researchers and institutions fostered international cooperation across political divisions.
The World Wide Web (WWW) collections offer another striking example. In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee invented the Web while working at CERN, creating an automated information-sharing system between scientists in universities and institutes around the world. The collection includes correspondence, presentations and drafts concerning the early development of the World Wide Web, which will allow historians to follow the technology before its significance was obvious: the exchanges surrounding its development, the occasions on which it was presented to new communities, and the people and institutions that began to support it.
On this World Digital Preservation Day, the CERN-CDHM collaboration aims to ensure digital access to the heritage of the various actors that have shaped scientific international cooperation over the last century. By making these collections available digitally, the project will also make it easier for researchers today to discover, access and study material that has until now required consultation on site.
“Save Our Story” means recognizing and preserving the many overlooked stories contained within the CERN Archives collections, stories that reveal what lies behind the Organization’s science, innovation and international cooperation.