Archiving Cultures defines and models the concept of a cultural archives focusing on how diverse communities express and record their heritage and collective memory and why and how these often-intangible expressions are archival records. Analysis of oral traditions, memory texts and performance arts demonstrate their relevance as records of their communities. Key features of this book include definitions of cultural heritage and archival heritage with an emphasis on intangible cultural heritage. Aspects of cultural heritage such as oral traditions, performance arts, memory texts and collective memory are placed within the context of records and archives. Presents strategies for reconciling intangible and tangible cultural expressions with traditional archival theory and practice. Offers both analog and digital models for constructing a cultural archives through examples and vignettes. Audience includes archivists and other information workers who challenge Western archival theory and scholars concerned with interdisciplinary perspectives on tangible and intangible cultural heritage. Relevant to scholars involved with non-textual materials. Will appeal to a range of academic disciplines engaging with 'the archive'.

Interpreting records in the broadest sense, the 15 essays in this volume explore a wide variety of records that represent new archival interpretations. The book is split into two parts, with the first section focusing on record forms that are not generally considered 'archival' in traditional Western practice. The second section explores more 'traditional' archival collections and demonstrates how these collections are analyzed and presented from the perspective of Caribbean peoples. As a whole, the volume suggests how colonial records can be repurposed to surface Caribbean narratives. Reflecting on the unique challenges faced by developing countries as they approach their archives, the volume considers how to identify and archive records in the forms and formats that reflect the post-colonial and decolonized Caribbean; how to build an archive of the people that documents contemporary society and reflects Caribbean memory; and how to repurpose the colonial archives so that they assist the Caribbean in reclaiming its history. Archiving Caribbean Identity demonstrates how non-textual cultural traces function as archival records and how folk-centered perspectives disrupt conventional understandings of records. The book should thus be of interest to academics and students engaged in the study of archives, memory, culture, history, sociology, and the colonial and post-colonial experience.

This book traces the trajectory of the community archives movement, expanding the definition of community archives to include sites such as historical societies, social movement organisations and community centres. It also explores new definitions of what community archives might encompass, particularly in relation to disciplines outside the archives. Over ten years have passed since the first volume of Community Archives, and inspired by continued research as well as by the formal recognition of community archives in the UK, the community archives movement has become an important area of research, recognition and appreciation by archivists, archival scholars and others worldwide. Increasingly the subject of papers and conferences, community archives are now seen as being in the vanguard of social concerns, markers of community-based activism, a participatory approach exemplifying the on-going evolution of ‘professional’ archival (and heritage) practice and integral to the ability of people to articulate and assert their identity. Community Archives, Community Spaces reflects the latest research and includes practical case studies on the challenges of building and sustaining community archives. This new book will appeal to practitioners, researchers, and academics in the archives and records community as well as to historians and other scholars concerned with community building and social issues.

How do archives and other cultural institutions such as museums determine the boundaries of a particular community, and of their own institutional reach, in constructing effective strategies and methodologies for selecting and maintaining appropriate material evidence? This book offers guidance for archivists, record managers and museums professionals faced with such issues in their daily work. This edited collection explores the relationships between communities and the records they create at both practical and scholarly levels. It focuses on the ways in which records reflect community identity and collective memory, and the implications of capturing, appraising and documenting these core societal elements – with particular focus on the ways in which recent advances in technology can overcome traditional obstacles, as well as how technologies themselves offer possibilities of creating new virtual communities. It is divided into five themes: - a community archives model - communities and non-traditional record keeping - records loss, destruction and recovery - online communities: how technology brings communities and their records together - building a community archive. Readership: This book will appeal to practitioners, researchers, and academics in the archives and records community as well as to historians and other scholars concerned with community building and social issues.

This book examines the relationships between archives, communities and collective memory through both the lens of a postcolonial society, the United States Virgin Islands, a former colony of Denmark, now a United States territory, and through an archival perspective on the relationship between communities and the creation of records. Because the historical records of the Virgin Islands reside primarily in Denmark and the United States, Virgin Islanders have had limited access to the primary sources of their history and this has affected both their ability to write their own history and to construct their collective memory. But while a strong oral tradition, often in competition with the written tradition, influences the ways in which this community remembers, it also underlines the dilemma of interpreting the history of the colonized through the records of the colonizer. The story of the Virgin Islands and its search for its memory includes an exploration of how this community, through public commemorations and folk tradition has formed its memory to date, and the role that archives play in this process. Interwoven throughout is a broader analysis of the place of archives and archivists in helping communities find their history. The book is exceptionally well written and will appeal to historians, archivists and those interested in the Carribean.