About the Department of ALM

Do you aim at becoming an archivist, librarian or museum employee? The department of ALM offers a two year master's programme in archive, library and museum studies. The common core of the ALM disciplines is the study of information processes: acquiring, selecting, arranging, describing, preserving, and communicating different kinds of information and cultural heritage.

About ALM

The abbreviation ALM stands for archives, libraries and museums. During the 1990s, the term ALM began to be used in connection with various projects aimed at practical cooperation between archives, libraries and museums. A user looking for information about a certain phenomenon is often keen to know everything - regardless of whether the information happens to be in an archive, in a library or in a museum. This requires measures that facilitate the exchange of information between different ALM institutions.

From the practical work fields of archives, libraries and museums, three corresponing the academic subjects have emerged: archival science, library & information science and museum & cultural heritage science. The core of the ALM subjects is the study of information processes: how information in various forms is acquired, selected, arranged, described, preserved, made available and communicated.

The department of ALM at Uppsala University first saw the light in 1995, when the unit for culture and the unit for library studies were merged. Initially, a master's degree in library science was given, after which the museum orientation came in 1998 and the archivist orientation in 2000. The department's first PhD student was amitted in 2000, and the institution moved to it's current premises in building 4 on the Engelska parken campus in 2004. The three ALM subjects were merged into one main area in 2012, when a joint master's program with three specializations was also established. Today, the master's program in ABM is given with the specializations archival science, library & information science, and museum & cultural heritage studies. Since 2018, an international master's program in digital humanities has also been offered at the department. Read more about our programmes and our research on their respective pages.

About CDHU

The Centre for Digital Humanities and Social Sciences at Uppsala University (CDHU) was initiated 1 January 2021, and expands upon the activities of the Forum for Digital Humanities (2015–2017) and the Research network DH Uppsala (2018–2020). The centre is located within the department of ALM, but their mission is to aid research in the humanities and social sciences. Read more about CDHU on their webpage