Archives are repositories that collect, organize, preserve, and allow for access to the institution's primary source materials which include letters, reports, accounts, minute books, photographs, and manuscripts of the government, businesses, and members of the community.
[3] Libraries are defined as a collection of resources that are made available to the community in the form of print materials such as books and periodicals by information professionals.
Beyond books and periodicals, libraries also offer a variety of services and programs to the community in which they serve with the goal of educating and advancing society.
[5] Lorcan Dempsey may have introduced the term into popular use at the beginning of the 21st century in library and information science,[6] although others, such as Joan Schwarz, used it earlier.
[8] Helena Robinson (2012) criticized the term when she wrote, "[r]ather than revealing the essential affiliation between museums, libraries and archives, their sweeping classification as 'memory institutions' in the public sector and the academy oversimplifies the concept of memory, and marginalises domain-specific approaches to the cataloguing, description, interpretation and deployment of collections that lead museums, libraries and archives to engage with history, meaning and memory in significantly different ways.
[11] Another important factor with digitization is that it can decentralize and democratize memory institutions and social remembering practices.
Digitization projects can take a lot of time, money, and resources from institutions that are already lacking these things.