1.3 Scope Your Vision for a Community Archive
Last updated
Last updated
This section will review 5 (five) known different levels and models of community archives and community archiving practices. We will define each level, requirements to achieve the model, and provide examples of existing community archives. While these models have shown some successes and challenges, there are always opportunities to create new formats and models that serve and support your specific community, particularly since each community has their own histories, relationships, resources, needs, and interests. The archives listed below are not endorsements, but referenced as examples to review and included due to the availability of literature around their work and collections. Check out Appendix C for a non-comprehensive list of examples for further exploration.
A post-custodial community archive practices that “records are retained by their creator with archives providing oversight and support functions” (Ham, 1981).
This approach “uses digital technology in pursuit of a more collaborative approach to multinational archival work. The model originated as a response to the rapid increase of born-digital materials produced by institutions, a way of saying “archive your own emails.” But it was quickly taken up by archivists interested in human rights and social justice as a way to shift the balance of power in archival preservation.” (Smith, 2018).
“creators retain custody of their records, consequently shifting ownership and access to the communities represented, rather than being handed over to larger and wealthier institutions” (Suárez, 2021)
Stakeholders: creator from community, archives
Creators take on record manager roles
Decentralization of material/physical holdings
Make use of modern technology to systematize centralize access. “To do this work equitably, we must think critically about the hardware and software choices that we’re making, and their impact on our digital interfaces.” (Smith, 2018)
Establish coherent and comprehensive acquisition program
“Rebalance power between colonizer/colonized, global South/global North, and repository/creator” (Carbajal, 2018).—“prioritize and fund relationships first” through the “maintenance of long-term relationships” building “equitable partnerships, especially given a national history of betrayal and exploitation, depend on trust built through long-term, personal relationships.” (Smith, 2018)
Relocate archival enterprise responsibilities, practices, and expectations—“(re)locates the work of the archivist to be neither only the institutional repository nor the site of records creation, but rather a third space that crosses borders between the two and can function in both but belongs wholly to neither.” (Kelleher, 2017)
Diversity and democratize historical records—“shift curatorial authority and access to the communities represented. In this model, archivists work side-by-side with community members to actively rectify gaps in historical coverage and proactively document the present day.” (Becerra-Licha, 2017)
The South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA)
is an independent, nonprofit, community-based organization and a website that includes the digital archive, a book, a magazine, a walking tour, fellowships for community members, events, and various projects and initiatives.
Aims: “SAADA creates a more inclusive society by giving voice to South Asian Americans through documenting, preserving, and sharing stories that represent their unique and diverse experiences.”
Materials
5,047 publicly accessible digital items
160 original essays about South Asian America in an online magazine
Types: advertisements, audio, cards, correspondence, event program, flier, invitation, in memoriam, literature, map, moving image, newsletter, newspaper clipping, oral history, photograph, podcast, poster, press release, website, etc.
is a Japanese terms that translates “‘to pass on to the next generation,’ or to leave a legacy”, and it is a nonprofit organization that strives to “educate, preserve, collaborate and inspire action for equity” rooted in the initial mission of “documenting oral histories from Japanese Americans who were incarcerated during World War II”.
Aims: “Densho documents the testimonies of Japanese Americans who were unjustly incarcerated during World War II before their memories are extinguished.”
Materials
930 oral history interviews in video and/or audio format
650 articles in an encyclopedia about “key concepts, people, events, and organizations that played a role in the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II”.
A searchable version of the WRA Form 26 register and Final Accountability Rosters (FAR), containing names and other identifiable information about the individuals held in the ten WRA camps
An interactive map of the “complex network of detention sites throughout the U.S.” that held incarcerated Japanese and Latin Americans
Types: document, still image, audio/visual, datasets, interviews, periodicals, correspondence, newspaper clippings, albums, portraits, certificates, contracts, money, program booklets, etc.
A hybrid post-custodial and traditional collecting community archive practices a mixture of both intaking, preserving, and maintaining material and digital objects from records creators.
ownership of records are transferred over to the archival organization (i.e. traditional collecting), alongside post-custodial collecting, wherein the records creator retains ownership and management and the archival organization provides records management support.
Stakeholders: creator from community, archives
Technical and social infrastructures for collecting, preserving, maintaining, and accessing different record types for different participant relationships
Release forms and administrative capacity for records of vastly differing management terms
Records include both physical and digital objects that can either be obtained by the archives or digitized then retained by the creator/contributor
The Community Archives Center (CAC) for Tacoma Public Library
is a community archives initiative that includes 19 digital collections housed in the Library’s digital repository, Northwest ORCA, community engagement events, and classroom instructions to promote the investigation of primary resources.
Aims: CAC partners “with the community to preserve and provide access to stories that are missing from Tacoma's local history narrative” by (1) acknowledging, identifying, and mitigating significant representational gaps; (2) “uncover, preserve, and share materials that begin to reveal Tacoma missing stories”; and (3) “develop partnerships with communities whose contributions to Tacoma have been under-represented or under-investigated”.
Materials
Types: oral history interviews, photographs, documents, family and personal papers, written reflections, journals, zines, scrapbooks, audio/video recordings, organizational records, etc.
An independent grassroots community archive is a volunteer-run organization with “collections of material gathered primarily by members of a given community and over whose use community members exercise some level of control” (Flinn, Stevens, and Shepard, 2009).
It is common for these archives to be interpreted as non-professional archival initiatives and as “projects and endeavors which are actively engaged in radical or counter-hegemonic public history-making activities” (Flinn, 2011). \
Stakeholders: archives, volunteers/activists as archivists and creators
Often “allied to a progressive, democratizing, and anti-discrimination political agenda” (Flinn, 2021).
Collaborations to form equitable partnerships with social movements (Flinn, 2021).
Primarily volunteer-run
Strives for community empowerment, social change, or what is known as archival activism (Flinn, Stevens, and Shepard, 2009).
“Offer an important and empowering assertion of community resistance to otherwise exclusionary and (often) marginalising dominant narratives” (Flinn, Stevens, and Shepard, 2009).
is an all-volunteer organization, “a social space, exhibition venue, an open stacks archive of movement culture”, podcast, and publisher of comics, booklets, posters, and other printed materials.
Aims: Through “open stacks archival collection, publications, a study center, and public programs including exhibitions, workshops, talks, and screenings”, they “explore the relationship between cultural production and social movements[...] encourag[ing] critical and creative engagement with the rich history of social movements.”
Materials
All records are physical and require in-person access
Types: posters, flyers, publications, zines, books, T-shirts and buttons, moving images, audio recordings, subject files, etc.
Lesbian Herstory Archives (LHA)
“is an all-volunteer organization, collectively run, with the coordinators making policy decisions by consensus”. It is “funded by individual Lesbians, LGBT and feminist organizations, allies and nongovernmental funding sources” and claims to “remain an independent entity housed in its own building in the community, not on an academic campus.” All records are “by and about all Lesbians, acknowledging changing concepts of Lesbian identities.” The LHA space “welcomes all to come visit, explore the collections and do research” at no charge. Alongside the Archives, the organization offers traveling exhibitions, monthly events about sharing stories, collection highlights, courses about Lesbian lives, volunteer workdays, book sales, and arts workshops.
Aims: “to gather, preserve and provide access to records of Lesbian lives and activities” and is “committed to the political struggles of all Lesbians and their communities”.
“to uncover and document our herstory previously denied[...] by patriarchal historians in the interests of the culture that they served”
“enable current and future generations to analyze and reevaluate the Lesbian experience” by “building intergenerational bridges among Lesbian communities to deepen the understanding of what Lesbian experiences mean in different contexts and in different historical periods”.
Materials
Types: books, magazines, journals, news clippings (from established Feminist and Lesbian media), bibliographies, photos, herstorical information, T-shirts, tapes, films, diaries, oral herstories, poetry and prose, biographies, autobiographies, notices of events, posters, graphics, zines, unpublished papers, organizational records, memorabilia and references to our lives
A community-institutional partnership community archive is a collaboration between a community organization and a larger institution whose mission is to preserve records for long term access.
Each organization holds individual missions and entities, but the institution becomes a support in processing, preserving, and maintaining the collection of records. The community organization is an established organization with the pre-existing mission to preserve community members while the institution exists to support those existing efforts.
Stakeholders: community organization, community members as creators/contributors, institutional organization
Collaborative outreach between community archives organization and archives institution
It is important for “archivists to build trust and show a true commitment to the community; when asked what this commitment looks like, respondents said that the archivists respond to their specific needs, and forge an ongoing relationship with the archivist in order to demonstrate that their collection was being documented in the most honest, sincere, and thorough way (Quoted DiVeglia, 2010, p. 92 in Krensky, 2011).
Mutually beneficial partnership
Allot for time and space for detail-oriented negotiation around ownership, access, and consider “the fact that grassroots people and academic people don't always speak the same language” (Krenksy, 2011:33).
Institutional organization will provide resources and stability that the community organization does not have access to and the community organization will provide intimate, grassroots collections that the institution “never would have received otherwise” (Krensky, 2011: 35)
ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at USC
is “the largest repository of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer (LGBTQ) materials in the world”. Housed at the University of Southern California Libraries since 2010 when the ONE Archives Foundation, an independent community partner, “deposited its vast collection of LGBTQ historical materials with the USC Libraries”.
Aims: “To collect, preserve, and make accessible LGBTQ historical materials while promoting new scholarship on and public awareness of queer histories.”
Materials
Over 4,000 paintings, drawings, works on paper, photographs, and sculptural objects
3,500 posters; textiles, such as t-shirts, banners, and flags; and memorabilia such as buttons, matchbooks, dolls, and other three-dimensional objects
4,000 films, 21,000 videos (such as recorded lectures), and 6,900 audio recordings
10,000 distinct files (i.e., newspaper clippings, journal and magazine articles, brochures, and other printed materials)
13,000 titles of periodicals, such as magazines, newspapers and newsletters
30,000 volumes of books and monographs
Types: periodicals, books, films, videos, audio recordings, photographs, artworks, organizational records, and personal papers, etc.
June L. Mazer Lesbian Archives & UCLA
is a volunteer-run organization, in partnership with the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). It is a community 501(c)(3) nonprofit collaboration with a large state university institution.
Alongside the UCLA Center for the Study of Women and the UCLA Library, the Mazer Lesbian Archives had 80 collections processed by UCLA and they developed a “guide entitled, ‘Making Invisible Histories Visible’ which describes the scope of the work, the people involved and the lesbian and feminist women’s collections that were processed.” The guide is the culmination of a “a three year project to arrange, describe, digitize, and make physically and electronically accessible two major clusters of Mazer collections related to West Coast lesbian/feminist activism and writing since the 1930s.”
Aims: “To collect, preserve, and make accessible lesbian, feminist, and women’s history as a means of providing a link between multi-generational lesbians” by way of creating “social activities based on Lesbian/Feminist history and future possibilities”, developing educational programming, and “providing research and resource facilities to the community”.
Materials
More than 2300 titles consisting of Fiction and non fiction materials
80 collections, including finding aids
A resource guide on the process of the partnership
Types: personal letters and scrapbooks, artwork, manuscripts, books, records, newspapers, magazines, photographs, videotapes, flyers, papers of lesbian organizations, private papers, and even clothing, such as softball uniforms
An institutional housed and built community archives includes collaborations between large organizations with the mission for long term preservation initiatives, such as university libraries and community and/or nonprofit organizations alongside individual community members or community groupings. The institution will own, retain, preserve, manage, and steward access of records created by community members, while community members will initiate the priorities in the records collection management policies.
A large stable institution, such as a university library, in close collaboration with community members submitting records to the university holdings.
Provide sustainable systems for the community archival efforts.
While it is common for the institution to hold ownership of the records, it is common for institutions to offer varying terms of agreement with records creators to obtain co-ownership of the records they contribute to the archives.
Institution provides support in community access to funding, whether that is through direct support, co-sponsorship, or indirect administrative support.
University of California, Irvine Libraries, the Southeast Asian Archives
is housed under the Special Collections & Archives and in the Orange County & Southeast Asian Archive Center “broad and interdisciplinary” documentation of “the social, cultural, religious, political, and economic life of members of the Cambodian, Hmong, Laotian, and Vietnamese diaspora. Collection strengths include Southeast Asian American experiences of resettlement and community formations since the Vietnam War, Cambodian Genocide, and geopolitical turmoil in the former French-occupied "Indochina" in the latter half of the 20th century.” The archives also includes various in-person only and online exhibits.
Aims: To “surface the historical records and cultural heritage of the Southeast Asian diaspora for research, even materials not held by the UCI Libraries.” The archivists “are actively engaged in and seeking ongoing non-custodial, equitable partnerships to ensure sustained preservation and access to these histories, especially related to social justice and communities under-documented in the historical record.”
Materials
Over 1,500 images and 4,000 textual documents
Hundreds of audio/video oral histories with transcripts in English and Vietnamese
Thousands of images, audio, video, and documents
Types: oral histories, digitized images, photographs, paintings, posters, texts, books, articles, clothing, household objects, diaries, state files, meeting minutes, general and executive board meeting agendas, correspondence, memoranda, newsletters, reports, clippings, pamphlets, grant applications, research data, and program materials, etc.
is less of an archival organization and more of an “advocate of human rights technology” who collaborates with “developers, social media platforms and technology companies” to “help eyewitnesses document abuses more safely before they share their stories”. In short, they supply resources and a platform for citizens, activists, and all peoples to “harness the power of video” and “use video and technology to defend human rights. Anyone can be a witness.”
Aims: “WITNESS trains activists to archive and preserve their video so that human rights abuses cannot be denied or forgotten over time.” By developing digital tools, advocating for just technological practices” as well as curating and raising “awareness to citizen footage, WITNESS identifies critical situations and teaches those affected by them the basics of video production, safe and ethical filming techniques, and advocacy strategies.”
Materials
Instructional and good practice audio/video clips and guide packets for all people to become activists, archives, and advocates for human rights.
