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Documents can be in paper form of various sizes and types, e.g. letters, maps, drawings and summaries. Paper has been the dominant form of preservation of public documents for the last centuries. Paper documents shall be delivered to the National Archives when they have reached the age of 30.

Electronic data can be of various types, from simple text files and digital photographs to databases. Electronic data of parties who are required to submit shall in general be returned to the National Archives once they have reached the age of 5 years.

Data delivered to the National Archives may be in a form other than electronic or on paper. Such examples are rare and are irregular. Examples of data in other forms are, for example, older audio and video recordings.

Public data is data that is created by the activities of the parties that are required to deliver it according to the provisions of the law on public archives. These can be documents of institutions, municipalities and private parties that carry out public projects or are owned by the public sector.

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Public entities in Iceland are defined as deliverables according to the law and therefore have a duty to deliver to public archives. Public entity archives comprise the majority of the collections of the National Archives of Iceland. According to the law on public archives, the following public entities have an obligation to deliver their documents for preservation to the National Archives:

• The Office of the President of Iceland

• Courts

• The Administrative Board of Iceland, together with all administrative committees and institutions under its authority

• Municipalities and their institutions and committees

• The National Church

• Legal entities performing public tasks

• Legal entities that hold 51% or more of public sector shares

Furthermore, the following parties are subject to a delivery obligation with restrictions:

• Registered religious associations

• Liquidators of estates and bankruptcy estates

• Persons who hold documents subject to a duty of delivery without having a legal claim

Private documents are the data that are created by individuals, families, companies and associations. Such data is not mandatory to return to the National Archives, but one of the roles of the museum is to preserve private documents as important sources of history of the nation.

The National Archives of Iceland maintains the largest collection of private documents in Iceland, but also the district archives and the National Library’s manuscript department are the main institutions that take private archives into custody.

Private documents are sources of national history and are no less important sources of history than public documents. They can even open a new perspective on the history of the past.

There has been a tradition in Iceland to classify private archives into the following categories:

• Individuals and Families

• Company

• Social organizations

Private documents can be very diverse, such as diaries, letters, diplomas, property documents, contracts, manuscripts to any kind of writing, minutes, accounting documents and all kinds of accounts, and so on. The subscriptions of documents and manuscripts of others, even printed books, are also considered as private documents. Photographs and video clips are also considered as documents.

The data can be in various forms and the National Archives also includes the preservation of private archives that are in electronic form. Almost all data that are created today are in electronic form and it is necessary that they are also preserved for the future.

The website is a result of a collaboration between the National Archives of Iceland, the district archives and the National Library of Iceland - University Library. The website now contains information on more than 7,000 private archives that are kept in 19 depositary institutions.

The library's experts provide assistance and advice on all matters relating to the completion and preservation of private documents and their availability after they have been delivered to the library for preservation.