Community archives

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Community archives are archives created or accumulated, described, and/or preserved by individuals and community groups who desire to document their cultural heritage based on shared experiences, interests, and/or identities, [1] sometimes without the traditional intervention of formally trained archivists, historians, and librarians. Instead, the engaged community members determine the scope and contents of the community archive, often with a focus on a significant shared event, such as the Ferguson unrest (2014). [2] Community archives are created in response to needs defined by the members of a community, who may also exert control over how materials are used. [3] [4]

Contents

Although local and regional societies, churches, and museums have collected community records for generations, community archives increased in number and popularity throughout the 1970s and 1980s, [1] which Anne Gilliland and Andrew Flinn believe may be due in part to increased interest in oral history and community representation in response to the emerging anti-war, anti-establishment, civil rights, and student activism movements of the 1960s. [5]

The work of community archives received little recognition from archival scholars until the early 2000s, when several published studies explored the relationships between communities, archives, and collective memory. [1] Jeannette Bastian’s Owning Memory: How a Caribbean Community Lost Its Archives and Found Its History [6] is considered[ by whom? ] to be one of the most significant of these publications. Bastian discusses the experience of the people of the U.S. Virgin Islands and Virgin Islanders' efforts to rebuild their “house of memory” [6] after losing local control of nearly all governmental documents and records to their historical and current colonial rulers. Bastian's work introduces several key concepts, including the notion of a "community of records" to acknowledge that communities are entities that both create records and whose input is needed to contextualize the records they create.

Methods

Community archives may be developed via participatory or autonomous practices, and can occur in both physical and virtual spaces, including through the digitization of dispersed physical materials. [7] [3] The participatory archives model was defined by Isto Huvila in 2008 to discuss how individuals actively and consciously participate in the creation of shared heritage. [8] Drawing on the idea of participatory culture (as opposed to consumer culture), the participatory collection's focus is to create opportunities for civic engagement and artistic expression, encouraging participants to share information and resources with the community to achieve a common goal. The autonomous archives framework was introduced in 2010 by Shauna Moore and Susan Pell to describe community-based collections that are constituted as intentional social and political acts by and for emerging publics, often enacted by those who have been traditionally excluded from the dominant cultural discourse. [9]

The act of bringing together dispersed records online, also called “virtual reunification,” [10] may encourage a more holistic understating of community history and strengthen community ties. However, communities that cannot support these endeavors on their own but wish to remain autonomous may face added complexity, due to the technological infrastructure required to ensure that collections are developed on a platform that can be supported and maintained over time.

Resources

There are many toolkits and best practices guidelines published by practitioners working outside of, within, and in partnership with cultural heritage organizations such as libraries, archives and museums. These include Tacoma Public Library’s Community Archives Toolkit [11] , The University of North Carolina's Charting New Courses in Community-Driven Archives [12] , The Community Archiving Workshop Handbook [13] , and The University of Massachusetts Boston's Roadmap for Participatory Archiving [14]

Challenges

In 2021, Shift Collective published its Needs Assessment to Identify Hidden Collections Documenting America’s Diverse Culture and History [15] which identified 7 key findings about the needs of community-based archives, historical societies, public and rural library archives, tribal archives, archives in small museums, and archives in community organizations such as civic and activist groups. These findings include the need for stabilized funding sources, help with collection assessment, analysis of representation of marginalized groups within collections, digital preservation planning and technical assistance, and long-term strategies for sustained development.

As the term "community archive" has gained popularity, it has been applied in a variety of ways, including as a way to denote community participation in knowledge creation and preservation in ways that may challenge existing dominant historical and political narratives. [16] [17] However, the ambiguity inherent in defining the terms "community" and "archives" complicates attempts to discuss and define what is meant by "community archives". Therefore, allowing these independent entities to label and define their organizations and missions is one important way to support their activities. [3]

Whether community archives consider their endeavors to be political, exerting control over community documentation and storytelling inherently calls attention to issues of power manifest in traditional approaches to archival creation and maintenance. [3] As the interest in, and number of, community archives increase globally, opportunities to document and share these efforts and materials with the general public may result in tension between community archives stakeholders and heritage professionals who are trained with an emphasis on legal, intellectual, and physical control of records. [3]

Since many community archives develop as independent social spaces, often distinct from mainstream narratives, their organizational champions may resist archival labels and/or intervention by trained professionals out of concern that collections may be absorbed by formal institutions and rendered inaccessible to their communities. Therefore, issues of independence and autonomy tend to be at the forefront of community archival identities, even if they seek partnerships or welcome support from traditional cultural heritage institutions. [1]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Digitization</span> Converting information into digital form

Digitization is the process of converting information into a digital format. The result is the representation of an object, image, sound, document, or signal obtained by generating a series of numbers that describe a discrete set of points or samples. The result is called digital representation or, more specifically, a digital image, for the object, and digital form, for the signal. In modern practice, the digitized data is in the form of binary numbers, which facilitates processing by digital computers and other operations, but digitizing simply means "the conversion of analog source material into a numerical format"; the decimal or any other number system can be used instead.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Library and Archives Canada</span> National library and archive

Library and Archives Canada is the federal institution, tasked with acquiring, preserving, and providing accessibility to the documentary heritage of Canada. The national archive and library is the fifth largest library in the world. The LAC reports to the Parliament of Canada through the Minister of Canadian Heritage.

In library and archival science, digital preservation is a formal process to ensure that digital information of continuing value remains accessible and usable in the long term. It involves planning, resource allocation, and application of preservation methods and technologies, and combines policies, strategies and actions to ensure access to reformatted and "born-digital" content, regardless of the challenges of media failure and technological change. The goal of digital preservation is the accurate rendering of authenticated content over time.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Library of Virginia</span> State library

The Library of Virginia in Richmond, Virginia, is the library agency of the Commonwealth of Virginia. It serves as the archival agency and the reference library for Virginia's seat of government. The Library moved into a new building in 1997 and is located at 800 East Broad Street, two blocks from the Virginia State Capitol building. It was formerly known as the Virginia State Library and as the Virginia State Library and Archives.

In archival science and archive administration, appraisal is a process usually conducted by members of the record-holding institution in which a body of records is examined to determine its value for that institution. It also involves determining how long this value will last. The activity is one of the central tasks of an archivist, to determine the archival value of specific records. When it occurs prior to acquisition, the appraisal process involves assessing records for inclusion in the archives. In connection with an institution's collecting policy, appraisal "represents a doorway into the archives through which all records must pass". Some considerations when conducting appraisal include how to meet the record-granting body's organizational needs, how to uphold requirements of organizational accountability, and how to meet the expectations of the record-using community.

In sociology and science and technology studies, a boundary object is information, such as specimens, field notes, and maps, used in different ways by different communities for collaborative work through scales. Boundary objects are plastic, interpreted differently across communities but with enough immutable content to maintain integrity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Irving K. Barber Learning Centre</span>

The Irving K. Barber Learning Centre (IKBLC) is a facility at the Vancouver campus of the University of British Columbia. The learning centre is built around the refurbished core of the 1925 UBC Main Library. The Centre is named for Irving. K. Barber, a philanthropist and graduate of UBC.

The Intellectual Property Issues in Cultural Heritage (IPinCH) Project is a seven-year international research initiative based at Simon Fraser University, in British Columbia, Canada. IPinCH's work explores the rights, values, and responsibilities of material culture, cultural knowledge, and the practice of heritage research. The project is directed by Dr. George P. Nicholas, co-developed with Julie Hollowell and Kelly Bannister and is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada's (SSHRC) major collaborative research initiatives (MCRI) program.

The Transgender Oral History Project is an initiative by and for the transgender community. TOHP collects interviews and produces multimedia content featuring stories of transgender-identified people, and exists to empower trans folks through sharing stories of their lives. The Transgender Oral History Project is also active in the community, hosting events in many states including Massachusetts, Illinois, Iowa, Seattle, Philadelphia, and New York City.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GLAM (cultural heritage)</span> Galleries, libraries, archives, and museums

GLAM is an acronym for galleries, libraries, archives, and museums, and refers to cultural institutions with a mission to provide access to knowledge. GLAMs collect and maintain cultural heritage materials in the public interest. As collecting institutions, GLAMs preserve and make accessible primary sources valuable for researchers.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">UBC School of Library, Archival and Information Studies</span> Graduate school at the University of British Columbia

UBC School of Information is a graduate school at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver offering a Master of Archival Studies (MAS), a Master of Arts in Children's Literature (MACL), a Master of Library and Information Studies (MLIS), a DUAL Master of Archival Studies/Master of Library and Information Studies (MASLIS) and a Doctor of Philosophy in Library, Archival and Information Studies (Ph.D.). Founded in 1961 as the School of Librarianship, the iSchool is currently located in the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre. The school changed its name in 2018, but was previously known as the School of Library, Archival and Information Studies. UBC iSchool is an internationally ranked, multi-disciplinary school, ranked first in the world for graduate education in library and information management based on 2019 and 2020 QS ranking.

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Collections management involves the development, storage, and preservation of cultural property, as well as objects of contemporary culture in museums, libraries, archives and private collections. The primary goal of collections management is to meet the needs of the individual collector or collecting institution's mission statement, while also ensuring the long-term safety and sustainability of the cultural objects within the collector's care. Collections management, which consists primarily of the administrative responsibilities associated with collection development, is closely related to collections care, which is the physical preservation of cultural heritage. The professionals most influenced by collections management include collection managers, registrars, and archivists.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">California State Federation of Colored Women's Clubs</span>

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Queer community archives are a subset of the larger body of community archives, which are archives and personal collections maintained by community groups who desire to document their cultural heritage based on shared experiences, interests, and/or identities. As such, queer community archives are collections that exist to maintain the historical record of the LGBT community and broader queer community. The term queer community archives, also called gay and lesbian archives, refers to a diverse array of community projects, organizations, and public institutions that maintain these histories.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">56a Infoshop</span>

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Indigenous librarianship is a distinct field of librarianship that brings Indigenous approaches to areas such as knowledge organization, collection development, library and information services, language and cultural practices, and education. The Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences states that Indigenous librarianship emerged as a "distinct field of practice and an arena for international scholarship in the late twentieth century bolstered by a global recognition of the value and vulnerability of Indigenous knowledge systems, and of the right of Indigenous peoples to control them."

Sudan Memory is an online archive and cultural heritage project, provided by an international group of partners with the aim of conserving and promoting Sudanese cultural heritage. In the course of the project, digital reproductions of books and newspapers, photographs and films, visual art and architecture, as well as of other cultural objects in Sudan were created and published on the project's website.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Currents of archival thinking. Eastwood, Terry, 1943-, MacNeil, Heather. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Libraries Unlimited. 2010. ISBN   9781591586562. OCLC   422757095.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  2. ↑ "Documenting Ferguson". digital.wustl.edu. Retrieved 2018-02-08.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 Flinn, Andrew; Stevens, Mary; Shepherd, Elizabeth (2009). "Whose memories, whose archives? Independent community archives, autonomy and the mainstream". Archival Science. 9 (1–2): 71–86. doi:10.1007/s10502-009-9105-2. S2CID   144712917.
  4. ↑ Duranti, Luciana; Franks, Patricia C. (2015-06-17). Encyclopedia of Archival Science. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN   9780810888111.
  5. ↑ Gilliland, Anne; Flinn, Andrew (2013). "Community Archives: what are we really talking about?" (PDF). CIRN Prato Community Informatics Conference 2013– via Keynote Speech.
  6. 1 2 Allis., Bastian, Jeannette (2003). Owning memory : how a Caribbean community lost its archives and found its history. Westport, Conn.: Libraries Unlimited. p. 13. ISBN   9780313320088. OCLC   57492142.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  7. ↑ Ormond-Parker, Lyndon; Sloggett, Robyn (2012). "Local archives and community collecting in the digital age". Archival Science. 12 (2): 191–212. doi:10.1007/s10502-011-9154-1. S2CID   143799913.
  8. ↑ "Participatory archive | Isto Huvila". www.istohuvila.se. Retrieved 2018-03-15.
  9. ↑ Moore, Shauna; Pell, Susan (June 2010). "Autonomous archives". International Journal of Heritage Studies. 16 (4–5): 255–268. doi:10.1080/13527251003775513. S2CID   203647486.
  10. ↑ Punzalan, Ricardo L. (2014-07-01). "Understanding Virtual Reunification". The Library Quarterly. 84 (3): 294–323. doi:10.1086/676489. ISSN   0024-2519. S2CID   62703466.
  11. ↑ "Tacoma Public Library's Community Archives Toolkit" . Retrieved 2024-03-02.
  12. ↑ "Charting New Courses in Community-Driven Archives" . Retrieved 2024-03-02.
  13. ↑ "Community Archiving Workshop Handbook" . Retrieved 2024-03-02.
  14. ↑ "Roadmap for Participatory Archiving" . Retrieved 2024-03-02.
  15. ↑ "Needs Assessment to Identify Hidden Collections Documenting America's Diverse Culture and History" . Retrieved 2024-03-02.
  16. ↑ ML, Caswell (2014). "Inventing New Archival Imaginaries: Theoretical Foundations for Identity-Based Community Archives.". Identity Palimpsests: Archiving Ethnicity in the U.S. Canada. ISBN   9781936117857.
  17. ↑ "South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA)". South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA). Retrieved 2018-02-08.
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