During the Event

This page and its sub-pages provide a step-by-step guide for running a community digital archiving event, including how-tos and tips at each stage of the process. Each community collaboration will be unique in scale, scope, themes, and highlighted artifacts/objects. You should tailor your plans and documents to specific community partnerships.

Stations and Roles

The number of organizers needed per role/station will depend on the size of the community event and partner capacity. The following stations are listed in-order of the process. Contributors will visit each station.

  1. Check-in
  2. Digitization/Capture
  3. Interviews
  4. Check-out
  5. Guides

Greeters (Check-In/Check-Out Stations)

Greeters will welcome contributors by introducing the event, helping contributors sign-in, and assigning a guide and identifiers. For this role, the volunteer should be comfortable with interpersonal communication, comfortable using laptops, computers or tablets, and have experience with spreadsheets.

Guides (All Stations)

Guides will walk contributors through the process, from check-in through checkout. They will need to be familiar with the whole process and will have prompts for the different stations. For this role, the volunteer should be comfortable with interpersonal communication.

Digitization Technicians (Photography Station)

Digitization Technicians will photograph objects of interest either in a lightbox or on stands/mounts for flat objects using a combination of personal (i.e., smartphone) and provided equipment. For this role, the volunteer should be detail-oriented and have experience using smartphones as cameras.

Oral History Interviewers

The oral history interviewers will ask the contributors pre-determined questions about the object they are contributing to the community archive. They will use either a personal device like a smartphone or provided equipment (i.e., recorders) to do this work. For this role, the volunteer should be comfortable with interpersonal communication.

Overall Event Support

Event coordinators should also be on-site to make sure the overall process is working, to help troubleshoot issues, assist at the stations, and provide any other support that may be needed. Often, the even coordinators are also running stations. If you have trained volunteer, who can serve as a floater (regularly checking in on all the stations) for back-up, we recommend you designate this role.

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