It Takes a Village...

In efforts to develop and expand their archival collections, Arizona State University is reaching out to their community for help. ASU wants to use their holdings to tell the state’s diverse history through the stories of community members, and a sizable grant has recently made this objective more achievable. This grant allows the ASU Archives to conduct free workshops over the next three years, providing them an opportunity to connect with their communities and show them how to care for their fragile items that help them tell their stories. The Arizona State University Archives especially wants to connect with local Latinos, African Americans, Asian Americans, and LGBTQ+ individuals in preserving and sharing their individual stories, which together contribute to the state’s larger historical narrative. The ASU Archives will help digitize materials and teach participants how to interview relatives and other community members, all of whom have their own stories.[1]
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In class this week, two of our main topics were advocacy and outreach, and one of the questions we raised was how to advocate for this kind of work in communities whose experiences do not reflect the largely white and middle-class experience most often reflected in archives? We all agree that these underrepresented populations’ experiences need to be preserved and shared, but how do we reach them and advocate for them to do so? Archives like the one at Arizona State University provide possible answers. Granted, how they plan to garner audiences for these workshops is not explicitly stated in this article, but considering they have the funding to conduct such workshops for the next few years, they certainly have time to develop an effective methodology. I hope that once they determine an effective formula for community engagement they will share that information with other archives who share their ambitions, but lack their economic support.

[1] Allison Rodriguez, “Arizona State University looking to expand community archives,” ABC 15 News, November 2, 2017. http://www.abc15.com/news/region-southeast-valley/tempe/arizona-state-university-looking-to-expand-community-archives.