Introducing our Wednesday keynote: Amina Shah

ARA Conference Keynote speaker: Amina Shah – National Librarian and Chief Executive of the National Library of Scotland

Fittingly for the first day of our conference in Glasgow our keynote speaker, Amina Shah, is from a Scottish institution. She is National Librarian and Chief Executive of the National Library of Scotland where she has worked since 2021. Amina has 30 years’ experience working in the library sector, in both public and academic libraries and she also worked as Head of Programmes for the Scottish Book Trust. She has non-executive roles at Dundee University and Scottish Library and Information Council and is a Visiting Professor at Strathclyde University and Robert Gordons School of Culture and Business Studies.

Although she has not yet finalised the topic of her presentation for the conference, she is looking at the theme of authenticity from many different angles – asking the question of how can we serve democracy through archives and libraries, and what does ‘authenticity’ mean in that context?

Amina says:

“I think the role of archives and libraries is particularly important in supporting democracy and the empowerment of communities and individuals. We are public servants and when we look at our collections, how we collect, what we choose to focus on for preservation and access, we have to consider why we make those choices and ask if we are reflecting the full range of stories and experiences.”

In considering this she also reflects on the tension between preservation and access and also the challenges of the current age where threats to both come as much from cyber attacks as physical ones. She says:

“Libraries, archives and heritage organisations all face these attacks, and it is no surprise when you consider the role we play in supporting ideas of nationhood and identity – by attempting to delete the memories of a people or a nation, or prevent access to them – the attackers are really attacking their past and their future.”

Whilst we might consider this in terms of both hostile agents attacking via cyber-attacks or cultural institutions being specifically targeted in actual war zones, these are not the only ‘attacks’ our institutions face: “I think we could also look at institutional neglect and under funding as a kind of attritional attack – a long term siege if you like – and when you consider the role that records play in supporting justice and human rights – it is hard not to see some insidious motivation there – perhaps subliminal and perhaps not – to, if not destroy those records, at least make them hard to find and hard to access.”

The National Library of Scotland has the largest Gaelic collection in the world. Centuries of suppression of this language by English monarchs and governments has put the language on the endangered list and the preservation of both written and oral histories in original languages is something that speaks deeply to Amina.

Amina hopes to answer some (or all?) of these questions when she comes to speak at the ARA Conference on 5 August in Glasgow.

Find out more about our conference and register by 13 July to attend: https://conference.archives.org.uk/

The conference takes place at the Radisson Blu Hotel, Glasgow from 5-7 August 2026.