Resilience+Workshop+2012



===Information and Memory Infrastructure Development: Supporting Resilient Communities and Community-based Scholarship Through Community-centric Recordkeeping and Archival Research, Education and Practice=== 2 -5.30pm 6 November 2012

Facilitators: Anne Gilliland and Michael Wartenbe, UCLA, Sue McKemmish, Monash University Australia, Kelly Besser, UCLA Library

The rapidly developing Community Archives movement, with its focus on community-centric information and memory infrastructure, has important areas of overlap with Community Informatics. New approaches to archival research, education and practice that support community-based scholarship provide an alternative lens for looking at Community Informatics research, education and practice. Community Informatics researchers will gain new insights into the characteristics, motivations and interests of diverse, often underrepresented communities that are particularly relevant to community-centric approaches to information management. Consideration of these characteristics, motivations and interests may also yield useful approaches for Community Informatics.

Recordkeeping and archiving are fundamental infrastructural components supporting community information, self-knowledge and memory needs, thus contributing to resilient communities and cultures and pan- or trans-community endeavors. With a particular focus on Indigenous, LGBTI, im/migrant and refugee communities, this workshop will address how community-centric recordkeeping and archival research, education and practice might empower communities in support of such desirable objectives as democracy, human and civil rights, self-determination, sustainable development, and social inclusion.

Workshop participants will review community characteristics, the roles that recordkeeping and archiving play in supporting community information, self-knowledge and memory needs, and the issues that these characteristics and roles might present for community-centric approaches. They will be presented with frameworks, community protocols, and strategies that have recently been proposed in a variety of community and national contexts, and will be encouraged to contribute their own insights and experiences in order to critique and expand upon those frameworks and approaches, or suggest alternatives.


 * PROGRAM**

2.00-2.30 Introductions

2.30-3.45 Frameworks, protocols and strategies for developing community information and memory infrastructure drawn from collaborative research in im/migrant and refugee, Indigenous, and LGBTI communities, including discussion of the VIA Framework, Voice, Identity, Activism: A Community-centric Framework for Approaching Archives and Recordkeeping

3.45-4.00 Afternoon coffee

4.00-5.30 Critiquing, extending or modifying frameworks, protocols and approaches based on insights and experiences of participants


 * WORKSHOP RESOURCES**

VIA Framework, Voice, Identity, Activism: A Community-centric Framework for Approaching Archives and Recordkeeping

The draft VIA framework has been developed by Anne Gilliland based on analyses of several sources: the mission, scope and activities of community-based archives in the United States; partnership projects, case studies and service learning conducted by faculty and students at UCLA’s Department of Information Studies (IS) and elsewhere over the past decade in multiple grass-roots, identity- or issue-based, and activist communities; and characteristics and themes emerging out of the work of scholars of these fields and movement leaders.

The table identifies, although not exhaustively, factors and considerations that can come into play relating to recordkeeping, documentation and archives from the standpoint of and in accordance with the interests of communities and groups seeking to organize, to project or protect their identities, issues and rights, to pursue social justice agendas, and to have their beliefs and experiences acknowledged.

The framework has been developed from the following stance:


 * The interests, needs and well-being of the community are central. Robust and recognized recordkeeping and archives are as critical to the empowerment and profile development of grass-roots, identity- and issue-based, and activist communities as they have traditionally been to high-power organizations and bureaucracies such as governments, corporations, religious organizations and academic institutions, even if their manifestations may not take on the same forms as those found in more “mainstream” settings. They are, therefore, a fundamental component of social justice, civil rights, and democratic movements and have direct impact upon the lives and well-being of communities and their constituents.


 * That community records and heritage materials should not simply be approached by government archives and collecting institutions as collectibles, “rescue” or “salvage” projects, or means to diversify or “round out” existing documentary sources.


 * That a community-centric framework for approaching archives and recordkeeping recognizes that there are important and constantly evolving community interests, epistemologies, demographics and emotions that must be addressed in recordkeeping and archives activities and that these will present challenges necessitating a re-thinking of “mainstream” archival practices as well as heightened understanding of those of the communities in question.

Not all factors and considerations are present in each context, and the framework is not meant to be a checklist or to conflate distinct concerns that exist within individual communities. Rather, the framework seeks to raise consciousness of the presence of such factors and considerations within communities, within archivists and archival researchers from non-community institutions seeking to partner with those communities, and within students who are preparing for professional careers where they may be working with community archives. The VIA framework is also being used in ongoing research that is contemplating how key professional concepts and practices, e.g., record, recordkeeping, archives, creatorship, appraisal, description and access could be pluralized in ways that could take into account the needs, beliefs, practices, and concerns of grass-roots, identity- or issue-based, and activist communities.

Please also refer to the attachment,