Participatory & Community Archives

Utilizing the VFP curriculum in support of veterans and personal military records falls squarely within the emergence of participatory and community archival projects during the past decade. While many make the connection between the development of social media and other online technologies and the rise of these projects, the origins of participatory and community practice are informed and shaped by traditions of antiquarian collecting and “serious leisure,” research activity, volunteering in archives, and an abundance of archive-focused communities of practice and group organizational endeavor [1]. Some of the earliest examples of participatory and community archives, in fact, significantly pre-date the twenty-first century. For example, the use of members of the Tennessee Society Daughters of the American Revolution in hand copying and transcribing a variety of archival materials [2]. In another early example, the Indiana Archive used relief workers from the Works Progress Administration to index personal names in pre-1851 state records [3]. With all this in mind, the rapid explosion of participatory and community archives, does, in fact, owe a debt to the rise of social media and the internet in the early twenty-first century.

Similarly, the engagement of communities is part of a larger archival postmodern movement. As noted in Benoit & Eveleigh:

Through engaging users, participatory archives attempt to integrate new perspectives into their collections within description, development of new collections, archival funding, and even outreach. Howard Zinn infamously caused quite a stir in the 1970s through his lambasting of archivists’ reinforcement of the status quo and social control of the political elite. Zinn called on archivists to, ‘take the trouble to compile a whole new world of documentary material, about the lives, desires, needs, of ordinary people,’ and, ‘to begin to play some small part in the creation of a real democracy.’[4] Zinn’s comments, along with others, initiated the postmodern turn in archives, and a concerted effort to increase the breadth of voices included in all aspects of archival collecting and practices. Many archives since 1980 focused on filling the gaps created by decades of adherence to outdated definitions of records and value through translating postmodernism into new archival practices such as documentation strategy and functional appraisal.[5] Cook describes this as the shift ‘from the “nature” residue or passive by-product of administrative activity to the consciously constructed and actively mediated “archivalisation” of social memory.’[6]

Overall, the participatory and community archival movements align with others in the postmodern turn, such as those focused on social justice issues. None of these are mutually exclusive and often overlap. Benoit & Eveleigh further state:

The use of participatory models also challenges traditional thinking of archival authority through the potential for introducing new voices that ‘muddy the network, reducing authority and authenticity, and perhaps, value.’[7] It is viewed as a method of decentralising authority and moving from static to dynamic spaces.[8] In doing so, participatory advocates argue participants ‘should be treated as peer collaborators…rather than outside interlopers’[9] Eveleigh summarises both the potential and criticisms alike. She states:

On the one hand then, online user participation is heralded as an opportunity to democratise professional archival practice; promising liberation from the straitjacket of traditional cataloguing practice and promoting the active participation of archives users in co-creating historical meaning. On the other hand, participatory culture carries the potential, at least, to subvert not only the hierarchy of the catalogue, but also the power relationships between records, researchers and archivists. User participation initiatives in archives are haunted by a fear that a contributor might be wrong, or that descriptive data might be pulled out of archival context, and that researchers using collaboratively authored resources might somehow swallow all of this without question or substantiation.[10]

Institutional Mediation

As the profession moves into what Cook describes as the community paradigm of archives, there is evidence of the democratization of archival power. This is quite clear in the many iterations of participatory archives. Though many participatory archives include professional and institutional mediation, countless others are independent and autonomous archives that are run by their participants and community members. First are mediated projects, those participatory archives where at least some amount of control is held by a mainstream museum, library, or archival institution. While many mediated participatory archives may share similarities, there is by no means a one-size-fits-all approach to these projects and programs. For some projects, mediation is very visible, and the mediating institution mainly guides the project. In other cases, the mediating institution has a more hands-off approach. Archival literature on mediated projects includes those based on shared heritage or self-identification of community. Others, like the Home Movie Day events, are based on the type of archival record.
Many participatory archives are formed and operate with a mission of social justice. These include both mediated and non-mediated participatory archives. Non-mediated archives include an often-fluid nature that can begin as non-mediated and transition into institutionally supported. Much of the existing literature on non-mediated participatory archives is on how such archives are established, organized, reorganized, and sustained. Additionally, there are event-focused non-mediated archives that seek to document shared memories of individual events. Finally, non-mediated projects also include thematic archives, which include multiple approaches to collecting and documentation but are based on a main theme.

Archivists and other cultural heritage workers interested in assisting veterans need to consider which of these models would work best for their own interactions with military members. For a more detailed exploration of the different types of mediation, see Benoit & Roschely’s chapter in Participatory Archives: Theory & Practice.

Participatory & Community Projects and Personal Military Records

With these definitions in mind, how can community and participatory projects support the long-term preservation of personal military records? As we will discuss in the next section, there are many different approaches you could take in designing and implementing a project. One could focus entirely on analog records, another on digital materials, or yet another focused on preservation and conservation aspects. No matter the content of the individual projects, through interacting with veterans and military members, you will help them incorporate an archival approach to personal military records. Some may see this in and of itself as a moral good—providing veterans with the skills needed to preserve their memories, even if the projects do not immediately lead to new donations or the creation of a digital archive. Over the long-term, informing archival practice within the personal will help steward those records into the future for the veteran’s family or loved ones—or possibly future donations to repositories. Regardless of the short or long-term benefits, the projects will ensure that archival descriptions and hierarchies reflect the priorities, sensitivities, and aspirations of community members.

Next Part

NOTES

[1]Robert Stebbins, Serious Leisure: A Perspective for Our Time (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 2007).

[2] The American Archivist, ‘Shorter Notices,’ American Archivist 1, no. 3 (1938):157.

[3] Christopher Coleman, ‘Indiana Archives,’ American Archivist 1, no. 4 (1938): 213.

[4] Howard Zinn, ‘Secrecy, Archives, and the Public Interest,’ Midwestern Archivist 2, no. 2 (1977): 14-27.

[5] Helen W. Samuels, ‘Improving Our Disposition: Documentation Strategy,’ Archivaria 33 (1991-1992): 125-140; Helen W. Samuels, Varsity Letters: Documenting Modern Colleges and Universities (Chicago: SAA, 1992).

[6] Terry Cook, ‘Archival Science and Postmodernism: New Formulations of Old Concepts,’ Archival Science 1, no. 1 (2001), 4.

[7] Terry Baxter, ‘Going to See the Elephant: Archives, Diversity, and the Social Web,’ in Kate Theimer (ed.) A Different Kind of Web: New Connections between Archives and Our Users (Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2011), 286.

[8] Isto Huvila, ‘Participatory Archive: Towards Decentralised Curation, Radical User Orientation, and Broader Contextualisation of Records Management,’ Archival Science 8, no. 1 (2008): 25; Eric Ketelaar, ‘Cultivating Archives: Meanings and Identities,’ Archival Science 12, no. 1 (2012): 29; and Eric Ketelaar, ‘Being Digital in People’s Archives,’ Archives & Manuscripts 31, no. 2 (2003): 12–13; Palmer and Stevenson, ‘Something Worth Sitting for? Some Implications of Web 2.0 for Outreach,’ in Kate Theimer (ed.) A Different Kind of Web: New Connections between Archives and Our Users (Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2011), 6.

[9] Joy Palmer, ‘Archives 2.0: If We Build It, Will They Come?,’ Ariadne 60 (2009), http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue60/palmer.

[10] Eveleigh, ‘Welcoming the World: An Exploration of Participatory Archives,’ 1.