Title
Roadmap for Participatory Archiving: Planning a Successful Scanning Day in Your Community
Session Type
Workshop
Start Date
17-4-2023 1:00 PM
End Date
17-4-2023 4:00 PM
Abstract
There’s 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, archives, and museum professionals interested in organizing these types of events and building digital collections, this interactive 3-hour workshop will guide each participant in planning a participatory archiving event in their community.
The workshop will begin with an overview of participatory archiving and an introduction to RoPA, the Roadmap for Participatory Archiving. RoPA is an online resource that guides libraries and cultural organizations through the process of collaborating with community members to plan engaging and inclusive participatory archiving events and to create digital collections.
The session will orient participants to this new online resource, help them build an effective project team at their home institution, and empower them to work with colleagues, partners, and community members to produce a successful event and a unique digital collection. During the session, the facilitator will outline best practices in participatory archiving and provide concrete tips for getting a project started. The facilitator will also guide participants in drafting a plan for engaging the community and responding to its members’ interests and priorities, managing event logistics, and preserving and processing a resulting digital collection. Each participant will complete a pre-event planning workbook that touches on all aspects of their project and everyone will come away with a practical set of next steps to implement with their project team before, during, and after the event.
All participants should come to this workshop with a clear idea about a community that they intend to collaborate with to plan a participatory archiving event (i.e. digitizing or scanning day) and build a digital collection. Community partners are welcome to participate as well as library, archives, and museum professionals.
Learning objectives
● 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
● Develop an understanding of what is required to build a team and how to use RoPA as a tool to design and implement a participatory archiving project tailored to your institution and/or community
Roadmap for Participatory Archiving: Planning a Successful Scanning Day in Your Community
There’s 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, archives, and museum professionals interested in organizing these types of events and building digital collections, this interactive 3-hour workshop will guide each participant in planning a participatory archiving event in their community.
The workshop will begin with an overview of participatory archiving and an introduction to RoPA, the Roadmap for Participatory Archiving. RoPA is an online resource that guides libraries and cultural organizations through the process of collaborating with community members to plan engaging and inclusive participatory archiving events and to create digital collections.
The session will orient participants to this new online resource, help them build an effective project team at their home institution, and empower them to work with colleagues, partners, and community members to produce a successful event and a unique digital collection. During the session, the facilitator will outline best practices in participatory archiving and provide concrete tips for getting a project started. The facilitator will also guide participants in drafting a plan for engaging the community and responding to its members’ interests and priorities, managing event logistics, and preserving and processing a resulting digital collection. Each participant will complete a pre-event planning workbook that touches on all aspects of their project and everyone will come away with a practical set of next steps to implement with their project team before, during, and after the event.
All participants should come to this workshop with a clear idea about a community that they intend to collaborate with to plan a participatory archiving event (i.e. digitizing or scanning day) and build a digital collection. Community partners are welcome to participate as well as library, archives, and museum professionals.
Learning objectives
● 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
● Develop an understanding of what is required to build a team and how to use RoPA as a tool to design and implement a participatory archiving project tailored to your institution and/or community
Comments
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. With Andrew Elder and Sarah Collins, she is the co-creator of RoPA, the Roadmap for Participatory Archiving. 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 in History from the University of Delaware.