Kenth Sjöblom

Kenth Sjöblom is working as a Senior Research Officer in the National Archives of Finland since 2005. In this position he has also been actively involved in the co-operation of the National Archives of the Nordic countries within the field of private archives. He represented Finland in a working group that was working with a benchmarking project on private archives. Sjöblom is also a co-ordinator for certain international affairs in the National Archives of Finland.
He is currently the Vice-Chair of the Section on Sport Archives (SPO) within the International Council on Archives (ICA), a permanent section of the organization since 2008. As Chair of the section he was also a member of the ICA Executive Board until 2016.
He has been President of the Society of Finnish Archivists 2008-2018, having acted as its board member and Secretary-Treasurer already in the early 1990s.
Prior to his work in the National Archives of Finland, Sjöblom worked as a researcher (archivist) in the Sports Archives of Finland during the years 1988-2004, one of the reasons why he originally became a member of the SPO Bureau (steering committee).
Kenth Sjöblom was also one of the founder members of the Finnish Society for Sport History, inaugurated in 1992, and for which he was Secretary-Treasurer 1992-2004. He is a Fellow of the European Committee for Sport History (CESH). He has presented papers during numerous congresses on sports history and arranged sessions on sports archiving. He is also the author of several books and articles on Finnish sports history, for instance co-author of the 100 year history works of the Finnish Football Federation and the Finnish Olympic Committee.

Already as the Section on Sports Archives (SPO) started to function within the International Council on Archives (ICA) in 2004, it set up as one of its missions to create a directory on sports archives.
The directory should function as an instrument to spread information worldwide about centers/institutions that are working with sports archives (storage, treatment, access and diffusion). So, the directory has been compiled by the ICA Section on Sports Archives (SPO). The directory also provides the public website URL for associations and institutions that has one.
It is the members of the Bureau (Steering Committee) of ICA SPO who are mainly responsible in managing the directory. However, every archive, museum or center that provides information is responsible for their respective information that they send for the directory.
The Directory on Sports Archives will be updated every year, but during its kick-off year it will be possible to provide information every month.
The main objectives of the Directory will, consequently, be to funtion as an information point about sport archives around the world, to distribute basic information for researchers and other interested about how to contact holders of sports archives and to function as a web reference to collections.
This presentation of the Directory is intended to give a brief understanding of what kind of information will be included.