There is increasing interest among archives and cultural heritage institutions in collaborating directly with communities to select and describe photographs, documents, objects, or other items for preservation and access. Public scanning or digitization days and online crowdsourcing projects are outcomes of the emerging phenomenon of participatory archiving.
Aimed at library, archive, and museum professionals interested in organizing these types of events and building digital collections, this interactive 90-minute workshop provides an introduction to best practices in participatory archiving and concrete tips for getting started in planning a participatory archiving event or project. Presented by the creators of RoPA, the Roadmap for Participatory Archiving, the session will orient participants in using this new online resource to build an effective team and highlight important choices and steps in the process.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of this class, students will be able to:
Define participatory archiving and introduce participatory archiving process.
Understand knowledge gaps and common challenges to effective, community-engaged participatory archiving work
Identify necessary resources and steps for launching a successful participatory archiving project
Instructors
Dr. Carolyn Goldstein is the Public History and Community Archives Program Manager in the Healey Library at UMass Boston and has coordinated the Mass. Memories Road Show program since 2013. Carolyn also teaches public history in the university's History Department and has worked as an exhibition curator at Lowell National Historical Park and the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. She received her undergraduate education at Brown University and holds a doctoral degree from the University of Delaware.
Andrew Elder is Interim University Archives and Curator of Special Collections at UMass Boston and has been a part of the Mass. Memories Road Show team since 2011. Andrew is also Chair of the Board of Directors and a volunteer archivist at The History Project, a community archives documenting Boston’s LGBTQ+ history. He received an M.S. in Library and Information Science from Simmons University and a B.A. in English and Women's Studies from UMass Amherst.
