Building Community Archives in the Digital Age

In the post “Confronting Our Failed Care Around the Legacies of Marginalized People in the Archives,” Bergis Jules brought up a brilliant critique that sounds Macluhan-esque and yet also sharp and foreboding: “Because for digital collections, who gets represented is closely tied to who writes the software, who builds the tools, who produces the technical standards, and who provides the funding or other resources for that work.”

Building an archive often involves (or even requires) the bureaucratic backing of an established institution via funds and resources granted for such projects. As we have learned from our visit to the Morgan Library and to the New York City Public Library, for example, many library and archival collections were once part of the private possessions of the wealthiest and most influential families during the Gilded Age. The heads of those families were instrumental in obtaining precious items from archaeological expeditions and rare books that they strongly believed were important to preserve for posterity, thus creating and leaving behind their own legacy while lifting up their own social status. Much of what was selected for preservation relied heavily upon those patriarchs’ tastes, interests, and inclinations. And to be frank, their inclinations mostly arose from a desire to appear authoritative, prosperous, classically educated, and “cultured” among their immediate social circles. Oddly enough in trying to appear “cultured,” the history and legacy of other cultures faded into the background or got pushed to the margins.

We can’t really blame JP Morgan or John Jacob Astor for this, as they did value enriching and educating the public by donating their collections of books and artifacts. But we are still missing out on the stories and histories that aren’t there on the shelves, or which still need further research to refine our knowledge of those marginalized cultures. Even typing the word “marginalized” makes me feel uncomfortable and political in acknowledging that ethnic cultures such as my own and that of countless others either didn’t make it or just barely made it to the center of the page, thanks to colonialism and imperialist systems that were in place to stamp out and suppress that which seems native or not part of Eurocentric Judeo-Christian standards.

Even today as we develop and enhance our preservation practices to create, manage, and maintain digital archives, I would argue that there is a priority list of topics and cultures that are already well-researched and well-funded, and the order of priority is based on how many grants were given, from most to least. But instead of relying so heavily upon the government and established institutions to get marginalized groups’ cultural histories on the record and finally to the forefront, Jules provides us with a solution that is practical and also fosters growth: community archiving. “The evidence is abundant that people other than white men contributed to building this country,” Jules stated. “There is a lesson here for archivists about making sure our collections are about confronting truth and being comfortable about acknowledging the complexity of our history.”

Why wait for “the man” when we can build these archives ourselves by pooling our own resources, collections, oral histories, and cultural knowledge? Who better to fill in the gaps of history than us? We have the tools and the technical standards. There is bound to be someone who is well-versed in code who can develop the software, and someone trained in archiving. We can devise a series of social media and marketing campaigns to not only fundraise, but more importantly raise awareness about the issues that we find significant, pressing, and relevant to marginalized cultures. As Jules proposed, it’s time to move away from the practices of “institutionalized dehumanization” and place people of color at the forefront of telling their own ancestral and cultural histories.