Community Archives

How do archives and other cultural institutions such as museums determine the boundaries of a particular community, and of their own institutional reach, in constructing effective strategies and methodologies for selecting and maintaining appropriate material evidence? This book offers guidance for archivists, record managers and museums professionals faced with such issues in their daily work. This edited collection explores the relationships between communities and the records they create at both practical and scholarly levels. It focuses on the ways in which records reflect community identity and collective memory, and the implications of capturing, appraising and documenting these core societal elements - with particular focus on the ways in which recent advances in technology can overcome traditional obstacles, as well as how technologies themselves offer possibilities of creating new virtual communities. It is divided into five themes: a community archives model; communities and non-traditional record keeping; records loss, destruction and recovery; online communities: how technology brings communities and their records together; and, building a community archive. This book will appeal to practitioners, researchers, and academics in the archives and records community as well as to historians and other scholars concerned with community building and social issues.