University of Lapland (ULAP) is located at the Arctic Circle in Rovaniemi, and is the northernmost University in the EU. It was founded in 1979 and has four faculties and three multidisciplinary research institutes. The University has 5,000 under- and postgraduate students and 6,400 students in adult education. Faculty of Art and Design is one of the four faculties, design being one of the strategic spearheads of the university. The University of Lapland also focuses on Arctic and Northern research, approached from the perspectives of people, society and the environment, as well as art, design and media. The University has been awarded the national-level responsibility to promote expertise on Sámi law and Sámi related social scientific research. The headquarters of the EU Arctic Information Centre Initiative, a network of 19 leading Arctic research and outreach institutions from EU Members States and EEA countries, are currently located at the University’s Arctic Centre.
The University of Oulu is an international science university which creates innovation for the future, well-being, and knowledge through multidisciplinary research and education. Future innovation is about seeking, utilizing and applying new knowledge. The University of Oulu researches people and culture in a changing living environment, as well as opportunities that new technology provides for improving the well-being of people and the environment. The University of Oulu is a multidisciplinary expert in Northerness. Center for Machine Vision and Signal Analysis of the Faculty of information technology and electrical engineering will be participating the Sámi project. The research unit will be responsible for 1) developing core technology for integrating digital content containing cultural data from several databases; 2) creating searching and browsing functionality improving accessibility to the material through web browsers; and 3) integrating to the system a graphical user interface developed by the University of Umeå with enhanced user experience functionality developed by the University of Lapland.
Umeå University (Swedish: Umeå universitet) is a university in Umeå in the mid-northern region of Sweden. The university was founded in 1965 and is the fifth oldest within Sweden’s present borders. As of 2015, Umeå University has nearly 31,000 registered students (approximately 16,000 full-time students), including those at the postgraduate and doctoral level. It has more than 4,000 employees, half of which are teachers/researchers, including 368 professors.
Sámi Archives was founded in 2012 and is part of the National Archives of Finland. Sámi Archives is located in Inari in the Sámi culture center Sajos on the shores of Juutu River and Lake Inari. Main goals of the Sámi Archives are preserving the cultural heritage of the Sámi, taking part in the Sámi related research, to share knowledge about the Sámi people and culture for all people and to promote the digitalization of the archive materials. Sámi Archives has received many private archive donations since it was founded and National Archives of Finland has also repatriated materials from the archives in Oulu and Helsinki. Most notable of these is the Archive of the Skolt Sámi village of Suonjel which made it to the UNESCO´s Memory of the World Register in 2015. It is the oldest surviving document in Finland about the Skolt Sámi rights to their fishing and reindeer herding territories.
The Sámi Archives (Norway) collects, preserves and makes available archival material from the Sámi community. The purpose of this is to ensure a written historical source material that could shed light on Sámi history and making this available to the public. This is an important basis for work on Sámi language, history and culture. The Sámi Archives are situated in the new building Diehtosiida in Kautokeino, where we share our reception with the Sámi University College library. Project Sámi archive began in 1988 as a joint project between the then NAVF (Norges almenvitenskapelige forskningsråd), the Nordic Sámi Institute and the National Archival Services of Norway (Arkivverket), to make a written source material to Sámi history. Foundation Sámi arkiiva / Sámisk arkiv was created on 1 January 1995. From 1 January 2005, management responsibility for the foundation was taken over by the Director General (Riksarkivaren). The Foundation are incorporated as a department of the National Archival Services of Norway. The Sámi Archives are financed from the National Budget. The Sámi Archives contains archives of individuals, organizations, institutions and companies. It contains also deposited public records of importance to the Sámi society, history and culture.