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This chapter discusses the issues surrounding the use of digital technologies by community archives. Community groups often find that the technical, financial, and logistical demands of maintaining digital resources are considerable. This tempts them to use commercial platforms whose longevity is not assured and which raise issues of privacy and manipulation. As everyone is increasingly working in a digital environment, the quality of that environment affects day-to-day life almost as profoundly as the physical environment. The health of the digital ecosystem on which we all depend affects the ability of community archives to achieve their aims of creating shared spaces of self-representation, collaboration, and memory. Every day seems to bring further revelations of the manipulation of social media, security breaches, personal abuse, and digital disinformation. These anxieties can make it seem that the vision of a digital space promoting community self-representation and collaboration is under threat.
This chapter describes the community archives and corresponding developments over the course of the 20th century. It tracks the rise of an ‘archival multiverse’, which has transformed the way in which collective memories are curated. The growth of the archival multiverse reflects many intellectual, cultural, technological, social, and political currents. The most significant of these developments is the growth of community archives and the active participation of ordinary citizens in their formation. As community archives have become more widespread and influential, the professional archive community has started to radically rethink many of its own assumptions about how archives are created, preserved, and made available. This chapter briefly considers this phenomenon, asking what the notion of ‘community’ entails within this context and how archives have ‘turned’ in its direction. Finally, the chapter looks at how digital tools have helped to shape the growth of community archives.
Community archives are often viewed as repositories of knowledge and experience that are nevertheless somehow remote from the taxpayers who often fund them. However, the idea of an archive has more recently been popularized by digital resources that allow access to established archives and also permit users to create archives of their own. This book examines the changing relationship between citizens and their notions of archives. The growing number of archives, and the evolving practices associated with collecting and curating, mean that we are now in the process of remaking the very idea of the archive. Communities have been at the heart of this exciting work and their experiences are both central to our understanding of this new terrain and in challenging the traditional histories behind the control of knowledge and power. Using a wide range of case studies, this edited collection shows how community engagement and co-creation is challenging and extending the notion of the archive.
Community archives are often viewed as repositories of knowledge and experience that are nevertheless somehow remote from the taxpayers who often fund them. However, the idea of an archive has more recently been popularized by digital resources that allow access to established archives and also permit users to create archives of their own. This book examines the changing relationship between citizens and their notions of archives. The growing number of archives, and the evolving practices associated with collecting and curating, mean that we are now in the process of remaking the very idea of the archive. Communities have been at the heart of this exciting work and their experiences are both central to our understanding of this new terrain and in challenging the traditional histories behind the control of knowledge and power. Using a wide range of case studies, this edited collection shows how community engagement and co-creation is challenging and extending the notion of the archive.
Community archives are often viewed as repositories of knowledge and experience that are nevertheless somehow remote from the taxpayers who often fund them. However, the idea of an archive has more recently been popularized by digital resources that allow access to established archives and also permit users to create archives of their own. This book examines the changing relationship between citizens and their notions of archives. The growing number of archives, and the evolving practices associated with collecting and curating, mean that we are now in the process of remaking the very idea of the archive. Communities have been at the heart of this exciting work and their experiences are both central to our understanding of this new terrain and in challenging the traditional histories behind the control of knowledge and power. Using a wide range of case studies, this edited collection shows how community engagement and co-creation is challenging and extending the notion of the archive.
This innovative book examines the changing relationship between communities, citizens and the notion of the archive.
Archives have traditionally been understood as repositories of knowledge and experience, remote from the ordinary people who fund and populate them, however digital resources have led to a growing plurality of archives and the practices associated with collecting and curating. This book uses a broad range of case studies which place communities at the heart of this exciting development, to illustrate how their experiences are central to our understanding of this new terrain which challenges traditional histories and the control of knowledge and power.
