First Steps
There are a few things to consider for anyone thinking about community archiving.
The first step is to consider what your community has already done and what your goals are.
Is your community starting from scratch with no community events to use as a guide? Start with the Planning Committee section in First Steps and find collaborators who can help you figure out how to get started.
Are you part of a community that holds community events but has never held a community-archiving event? Start with the Assessment section in the Pre-Event Planning section and see what your community needs. Then work through the entire Pre-Event Planning process.
Are you part of a community that already has a rich collection of history but needs guidance in taking photos and collecting oral histories? Start with the During the Event section for a guide on how to collect and keep track of photos and oral histories. Then check out the Pre-Event Planning section to fill in the gaps for any event-planning needs that might come up as you chat about what will happen during the event.
Are you part of a community that has already done some digitization and oral-history collection? Start with the Post-Event Clean-Up section for a guide on how to name and format the items in your community collection for publication on a web site.
Finally, many communities will want to publish their digital community archives on a website. That’s covered in the Publishing Your Site section of the documentation. If you don’t want your community archive to be available for the general public, using the Post-Event Clean-Up section to organize your photos and oral histories might be enough.