We’re embarking on a research project and we invite you to participate! Our Community-Centered Archives Survey: Sharing Your Content Online just went live and we are looking for responses from Community-Based Archives (CBAs) and Community-Based Organizations (CBOs) that are doing archival projects documenting the lives of underrepresented, marginalized, or disenfranchised people.
This survey seeks to understand the participation of these organizations in two online activities:
1) Contributing digital content to aggregation websites, such as the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA). Aggregation websites bring together content from different sources into a single website. Other examples are Umbra Search and Calisphere.
2) Creating online storytelling or exhibitions. Online storytelling and exhibitions present and interpret selections of digital items in a way that provides context and meaning for viewers. Examples include: More than their Labor and Black Lives in Alaska.
We’ll use the results of this survey to create a resource guide to collaboration between community-based organizations and other organizations, including regional aggregators. We hope this resource will help CBAs and CBOs share their content and stories more widely, and make aggregation sites and online exhibitions more inclusive.
If you’re a representative of a community-based organization caring for materials about your history and community, we hope you’ll consider participating in the survey. We estimate it will take 20-25 minutes to complete and doesn’t require any personally identifying information. Click here to start the survey, or email researcher Sharon Mizota at sharon@sharonmizota.com with any questions.
As a part of this study, we will also be doing some interviews with individuals from a variety of community-based organizations across the United States. The survey includes a place to provide your name and email if you are interested in being interviewed, or you can also contact Sharon directly at sharon@sharonmizota.com.
If you work with community-based organizations, we would really appreciate your assistance sharing the survey with folks in your networks. We’ve written an email and a blurb you can use to share in your newsletter or listserv. Please feel free to adapt them as needed, and if you have any questions, email Sharon at sharon@sharonmizota.com.
As you may have guessed by now, this survey is conducted by Sharon Mizota in collaboration with colleagues at the University of California Irvine and the California Digital Library and is funded by a grant from the Mellon Foundation. We’re really looking forward to learning more about how community-based archives and organizations can better share their stories online and participate more fully and intentionally in the digital sphere.