Community-Driven Archives

Current CDA Projects in Georgia

Archives Committee of First Baptist in LaGrange 

The Archives Committee of First Baptist in LaGrange has an oral history project. We've conducted oral histories with veterans who are members of the church talking about their service, former deacon chairmen, and former pastors plus a few oral histories about church projects. We have the oral histories posted on YouTube. 

Atlanta University Center Woodruff Library

• working with Booker T. Washington High School right down the road from us here in the west end. They have a small archives and (for a while thankfully and unfortunately no longer) had a principal that bought some archival materials, so we have been going over and sorting/arranging and doing a little preservation work, hopefully training the media librarian over there to start inventory and/or train a volunteer to begin an inventory. We have also been scanning some of their earliest scrapbooks for them back at the AUC since they were the first public high school for African Americans in Georgia.

Chipley Historical Center

• The Chipley Historical Center in Pine Mountain is partnering with Historic Bethany Baptist Church in Pine Mountain, to map their cemetery, collect genealogical info, and conduct some oral histories.  This is one of the oldest black churches in Harris County.   

City of Savannah Municipal Archives

• We have partnered with both individuals and local organizations/agencies to digitize collections and host the digital collection here at the Archives to increase community access (examples: First City Network’s “Network News,” Historic Savannah Foundation’s 1960s Ward Survey Notebooks, several individuals’ personal collections of stereographs and postcards, some of which they have later donated the physical items to us)

• We regular hold community collecting events (originally called History Round-Ups, now called the Savannah Community Memory Project), methods of collecting include digitization station, mini-oral histories on the spot, reflections stations (like one question oral history cards that they answer in writing), prompt boards with post-it responses, maps they mark up

• We have the Proud Savannah History Project which is specifically aimed at Savannah’s LGBTQIA+ community, but is basically just a Savannah Community Memory Project. Most of our others have been based on neighborhoods.

• We just got a Savannah Community Memory Residency Program funded but have not yet rolled it out. This is modeled after the Artist-in-Residency concept and we will be sending out an RFP that will be open to a variety of disciplines (artists, historians, educators, environmentalists/conservationists, etc.) with the goal of collecting community history from a targeted community (defined broadly), with elements including youth education, community engagement, a final product, and collected materials sent to Archives.

DeKalb History Center

DeKalb History Center is conducting a community-driven project around the city of Lithonia and its citizens. Our collections for that part of DeKalb lack representation of people of color and their experiences, so we are seeking oral histories (and other archival material) to help close the gaps in our collections. We will share the stories and other materials on our website and social media once the project is complete. The project is ongoing, with no end date presently. 

Foxfire Museum

• The Foxfire Museum has launched a crowdsourced oral history project to collect stories from women and about women's experiences in Appalachia: https://www.foxfire.org/appalachian-women-oh/ 

• The Museum also continues to lead students in its community to collect oral histories on contemporary Appalachian culture every summer as part of the Foxfire Summer Leadership Program. These oral histories become a part of the organization's archive as well as integrated into the Foxfire magazine and Foxfire books.

Fulton County Schools Archives  

We have been filling gaps in our collection where it applies to now defunct schools – particularly those from African American communities during the era of segregation; in this case 1940s-1970s.

We simply had very little in our present collections. We are now working with an alumni group from College Park, collecting oral histories and maintaining relationships with community point-persons who are not only putting us in contact with oral history respondents, but also who are actively collecting yearbooks and other ephemera to be either donated or digitized. Our plans are to reach out to other alumni from historically black secondary schools around the county for similar results. Eventually, we will have a museum exhibit at our Teaching Museum that features these items.

Middle Georgia Archives

• Working to gather institutional/historical knowledge about the region's diverse community archives work in order to preserve and share it 

University of Georgia Libraries

• Developing a partnership with the Hog Hammock Public Library to collaborate re: on-site archival preservation, community digitization, and community-based programming, to include co-writing grants. 

• Community scanning days. 

• Travelling zine-making workshops, focused on rural communities, 2-year colleges, and small public libraries across the state. Participants are invited to interact with zines from our collections, learn about their sociopolitical function, make their own, and donate to a GA community zine collection, if they choose. 

• Collaboratively developing programming, events, exhibitions etc. with collections that community partners have decided to house at UGA SCL. 

• Discussions on how to make oral histories an option/additional resource for folks looking to house community-based archives at SCL as well, but we haven't tested it out yet. 

• And then we talked about my aspirations to develop some OER resources (ala the Sustainable Heritage Network but geared specifically towards partners in GA and the SE), which I'd love to do in collaboration with other units in UGA Libraries and with other partner institutions. There is plenty of overlap with something like the SHN, but there are also regionally specific issues, barriers, interests etc. that we could gear such a curriculum to. And I know that you all already have some digitization tutorials available. 

• I'm also really interested in developing a cohort-model ala the TDSCP, again more specifically for our partners and communities in the SE. I reviewed a lot of the feedback from participants in the WSU version for grant reporting purposes and man, creating community and location specific cohorts for folks working in smaller institutions was super meaningful. But that's very much a pie in the sky situation that would require long-term planning and robust collaboration. 

University of West Georgia

• Non custodial digitization project (we have been given Deed to scans, so will put in AS) - Tallapoosa Masonic Lodge #126, records dating back to 1888

• Cooperative project with Carroll County Genealogical Society to "archive" and yet make overtly public, GPS data to county cemeteries. Stirring up a potential project with our Geography dept to get this data into QGIS (or some opensource). I've even tested loading some of this data into Google Maps and into "Find A Grave."

• Cooperative effort with Heard County Historical Society & publisher of News and Banner to digitize historic newspapers. Got all my ducks in a row - permissions & letters of support. Searching for funding this $15k project (not eligible for the DLG grant...). 

FYI...

Also digitizing historic "Vanishing Carroll County" which was a community "scan" project here in the 1980s. This could be considered a very belated step in a community digitization project. 

VSU Archives and Special Collections

VSU Archives and Special Collections has our Community Archives Digitization, Access, and Preservation program for small community archives, from historical societies to community groups.  We are currently working on two digitization projects with a historical society and are in discussions for two more, one a genealogy project, and one oral histories from the African American community.  A real push across the bottom of South Georgia will start in January of 2024.  Right now we are working with word of mouth and local contacts and finalizing policies, forms, PR materials, and grant writing (will happen with or without grants).  This is part of the university's 5-year strategic plan, so there's institutional support at the highest level.  A final part of the program involves connecting the historical society or group to DLG or other state granting agencies for further digitization options.  This will take a lot of visits, calls, and meetings, in addition to the non-custodial digitization, metadata creation,and preservation that the archives has to do.