Independent Community Archives and Community-Generated Content

Abstract

This article examines recent developments in community archives and histories, and in particular the impact of technologies that encourage individuals to create and/or share their own historical content. Concomitantly, more archives and heritage institutions are experimenting with allowing their ‘communities of users’ to submit commentary and content to collection descriptions and catalogues. Some have seen such community histories and user content as challenging notions of professionalism and the authority of the ‘expert’ voice, and this article will seek to explore the ways in which this might be the case. However, the article will also argue that, technology aside, these challenges are not fundamentally new but that they reside firmly in the traditions of history from below, oral history, History Workshop and many other attempts to give recognition to less privileged voices. Ultimately, such material is surely an opportunity for archivists and historians to broaden the range of the sources that their work draws upon; whether they make use of these opportunities depends largely on their interests and the focus of their studies or collections.