Starting from Scratch: When Students and Communities Create Digital Archives

In spring 2019, students at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts created the North Adams History Harvest. The Harvest is an open, digital archive of historical artifacts gathered from the North Adams, Massachusetts, community, initially based on the University of Nebraska's original History Harvest program. After an inaugural event at the North Adams Public Library, where a few community members donated items, prominent community institutions, like Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (Mass MoCA) and MCLA's college archives, began to participate as well.

Once students and institutions digitized the items and collected metadata on them, students edited the metadata; uploaded the items to Omeka, an online archiving tool; created an online exhibit for a community audience based on the items that they upload from the History Harvest; and advertised their exhibit and the website to the community. They explored essential questions in archiving and public history about the meanings of objects, the reliability of sources, and presenting controversial histories. The project also raised questions about relationships among students, their coursework, and community institutions.

After overviewing the North Adams History Harvest website and student work, this presentation will explore those questions, asking whether community-based, student-developed archives need to meet professional archival standards to serve community institutions creating and accessing historical knowledge. It will also consider whether it is ethical to assign students work for institutions for credit rather than monetary compensation. Finally, it will provide techniques for designing a projects-based methods course that is accessible for all students and that balances conveying archival skills, such as editing metadata, and historical research.