Community Archival Websites: The Pros and Cons

When I was a 21-year old history undergraduate, I embarked on researching the Civil War soldiers buried in the oldest cemetery in the county in which my college was located. There had been a legend for over a century of a large number of Civil War soldiers buried somewhere behind my campus. Unfortunately, the county in which I was research, Carter County, Kentucky, has no historical society or archives, a similar plight with most of northeastern Kentucky and other small regions within the geographic and social region known as “Appalachia.” Historical records, photographs, artifacts and the like are kept in families, with access to the original materials limited only to family and certain others to whom there is a trust to be provide access. Outside of the university archives at Morehead State University, about a 30-minute drive from the county in which I was researching, the only collection of local northeastern Kentucky archival materials was in Boyd County, at the public library’s genealogy room. However, the library had no actual archival material, and my research hit a dead end. That is, until I found the Carter County’s community archival website.

Community archival websites began proliferating the United States in the late 1990s thanks to two main sources: 1) the Mormon Church and the digitization of their LDS microfilm collections, and 2) USGenWeb Project. The Mormon Church’s digitization of their microfilmed genealogical resources became the centerpiece for websites like Ancestry.com to boom, and local genealogists and interested family members to locate information to help explain archival materials in the families’ possession. These digitized microfilmed records served as a primary source material basis for genealogists to research and connect their materials online to other local families’ collections. The USGenWeb Project began in 1996 with the goal of “to provide Internet websites for genealogical research in every county and every state of the United States. The Project is non-commercial and fully committed to free access for everyone. Organization is by county and state, and this website provides you with links to all the state websites which, in turn, provide gateways to the counties” (See resource i for source information). The unique goal was to give people at the county level in this country a platform to share their materials in a supported manner that allowed instant access for displaced relatives and lent what many “professional” historians have often considered typical colloquial research a sense of legitimacy. In small counties, such as Carter County, Kentucky, where so many people know one another, these sites brought unofficial collections of interested parties together for a common goal: to preserve and promote their families and communities’ heritage without allowing the outsiders to gain access to the original records, thus preserving that sense of close-knit communalism so unique to Appalachia.

During my research, I found a number of photographs, transcribed family histories, family records, and other vital archival and genealogical materials that led me to finish my book prior to graduation. Up to the time of my book, there had not been a publication regarding the county’s history that provided detailed footnotes, bibliographic references, and other necessary means for outsiders to re-access historical information regarding the county’s history. Carter County’s USGenWeb page allowed me to find so much information that otherwise I would have been refused access to by locals due to my being a “Northerner” and “outsider” (though, for full discloser, my family lineage is from Kentucky). Even at the writing of this blog post, I have discovered recently uploaded photographs of several of the Civil War soldiers I wrote about in my book, which is amazing, since there is no central repository or digitization project for Carter County photographs anywhere in the state of Kentucky. Community archival websites allow communities —much like a professional archival institution—access to those records which are deemed “public accessible,” and these sites are often coordinated by individuals who are able to persuade or obtain unique historical materials from locals that a professional researcher would be at a loss to discover.

Other community archival websites are run by locals who work in conjunction with regional historic and archival institutions, or are run by small historical societies without the resources to acquire a professionally-designed website with highly search-friendly organization of historic records. One example of the former is DaytonHistoryBooksOnline, a site that:

". . . is dedicated to placing historical items about Dayton, Ohio online. Curt Dalton [the founder], a local author who has written several books about Dayton's history, saw a need to make books and other educational materials about Dayton available to children and the general public. He knew that the documents had to be in a format that could easily be read and searched, to enable visitors to use the information in homework and personal projects" (information in brackets added)(See resource ii for source information).

In this example, the website’s founder had informal training in historical research, and had already established a network in the Dayton area with those able to provide local historic records. The site has grown from its original 20 local history books to include video, audio, photographs, a historical events blog by local citizens, and newspaper articles on Dayton area history, all with the benefit of a site search engine and a subject list for more pinpoint research. The site is now used by the history and archival programs for local Dayton area universities and colleges—as well as local libraries—all of which include Wright State University, University of Dayton, and the Dayton-Montgomery Metro Library.

Small historical societies, even if incorporated as a non-profit, are often run by non-professionals as far as the history and archival professions are concerned, yet these institution often use free or cheap hosting sites to run their local community history websites. Often located in communities with a small public library (meaning a small genealogy and local history department—if any) and very little interest in community history outside of a select group of citizens. One such example this author has encountered during his personal research for a journal article was in the town of Jamestown, Ohio, located 11 miles east of Xenia, Ohio, in Greene County. This community has lost most of its historic records, as a 1918 county history book noted: “Any effort to follow its career [Jamestown, Ohio] during the past one hundred years involves the historian in difficulty because of the fact that no records are available to trace its development year by year”(See resource iii for source information). I was conducting research on a lynching in that community that had gone un-investigated mostly since just after its occurrence in 1887. It was a unique case, and no photographs could be found in the county library, country archives, or county historical society from the late 1880s or even the 1890s for Jamestown. However, one photograph from 1884 of the exact site of the lynching (as reported in newspapers) was discovered on a local Jamestown community website that the historical society uses (See resource iv for source information). This photograph is owned by a local high school history teacher who did not even share it with the county historical society, yet he shared it with the local town historical society for their website only. Incidentally, the director of the town historical society runs the only barbershop in town and knows everyone in the community, just about.

Those type of close communal ties are ties that can take professional archivists and historians quite some time to establish with those harborers of community memory; particularly in my experiences, non-professionals do not trust professionals, because of one word—possession. Although community historians perform their research for the community’s benefit, often their sense of identity is in the research they do, the public service they perform, and the individuals that know to come to this “local historian.” Every smaller community has one of these individuals, and to insult them may mean the loss of an entire city or town’s historical records that this individual has collected and stored in their basement (yes, I’m speaking from a true story). In the Jamestown example, I do not think I would have gotten very far coming into a community which has completely forgotten the 1887 lynching and as “Do you have any historical records on this lynching—I’m writing an article on it?” Doors probably would not have been able to have closed fast enough. Such tight community possession and protection of its historical resources in a non-formal manner is equally present in African American communities. Again, I have been involved in two major African American communities in this country both in a Northern and Southern state, and the results were very similar. Familiarity and trust are more important than professionalism and long-term sustainability of historic materials for these communities, since their trust has been broken so many times in the past. All of this being said, what are the pros and cons of community archival websites?

Pros: Information otherwise lost is promoted and made widely available; a sense of community pride is built in promoting these records online; and individuals and families get to tell their stories in their own way, without having to follow a template or “professional” standard.
A key thing to remember about these websites is the importance of their informal nature. Although their records might not be structured or described very well, might lake appropriate or any metadata, and may not have copyright or citation information available, that is the price of have an informal website. Since many community archival websites are hosted on free websites that offer limited options for structure or design, there is often little that can be done to improve their format to facilitate better research capabilities. Also, if the site was to become more professional, they would cease to be “community” sites. It is almost like comparing a local historic burger joint to McDonalds: sure the menu may not have all the prices listed or multiple ways to chose to have your food made, but the food tastes great and the service is personal.

Cons: Historic records will be improperly preserved, and may never be fully described with all pertinent information that researchers would find invaluable; not everyone in the community will be allowed to participate in the preservation and promotion effort of these local historic records, since only a handful of individuals are “in charge” of the community’s records; outsider researchers working on historic projects and publications will most likely not find important records they need to connect the historical dots; and if something happens to those controlling the community’s historic records (such as a heart attack), vital historic community information will disappear for good.

Okay, now that the definitions and issues involved have been discussed, how can librarians, archivists, and historians approach locating, using, and preserving historic records found on community archival websites? I offer three pieces of advice:

1) If you are an outsider to the community, try to locate a local professional of some sorts with whom you can build a relationship and who is connect with those operating the community’s historic/archival website. Let this person put you in touch with the individual/individuals you should speak with about possibly obtaining copies, permission for use, or cooping with the community archival website. Most often, it is best to have your connection be present for the initial meetings, and try to make the first contacts in-person, rather than by phone or email. For local historians, nothing will turn someone down more than informal, impersonal communication. The whole reason they became involved with the community archival website was for the personalism of the historical service they provide—an equal amount of personalism should be shown if a professional archivist wishes to acquire anything useful or important from them.

2) Do not talk about “possession,” “proper preservation,” “deed of gift,” or “donation” with these community historians. By pitting yourself as a “professional,” you are telling them that they are not. However, to their mind, they are doing something you could never do or have not done to this point: obtain and interpret local historical information from a community by building relationships with those who do not trust many people. Since the key to the reason many local historians do what they do is “possession,” speaking to them using terms that denote transferring or yielding possession of their work or materials to an archives, museum, historical society, or library will be mostly unsuccessful. Rather, discuss the importance of what they do for audiences they may have not encountered or been intending to reach, and offer simple alternatives to yielding possession of their materials. It can be as simple as scanning the materials, or taking non-flash photographs (though, in one case, I encountered a local historian who had scanned everything and was convinced he had more than enough training to scan the materials professionally and archivally—sometimes you just cannot win the argument). Offer them a coop with their website, by attaching a description and link for their website and its resources to the professional’s institutional website. Many archivists already tell researchers the names of locals to contact for more information; this is a way to give the community archival websites directors the credit while adding some semblance of credence and professionalism to the work they have done. Offer them the chance to speak to your constituents about their materials, or involved them in planning local history projects. Building relationships here is the key.

3) If all else fails and you receive high resistance from those running the websites, a simple solution is to sidestep these individuals. Build your own community contacts, go to the individuals from whom the website operators received some of their historic records, and ask for copies of the information for your institution. There are times when losing the historic records because of the resistance, pride, and stubbornness of the local communities is not something that should be allowed to occur. The historic records of the community belong to the community—not to a few individuals within it. The community deserves the best care of the records possible, and the most use of them to add to the public body of historical knowledge. But not this: such actions can cause backlash from some of the locals, and an institution must discuss how to handle such situations.

Ultimately, community archival websites are a huge asset, and the greatest care should be taken to ensure that the work a select few are doing does not fall apart. The community demands it.

Resources

i. “About the USGenWeb Project,” Viewed on February 14, 2011, at http://usgenweb.org/about/index.shtml.

ii. DaytonHistoryBooksOnline, viewed on February 23, 2011, at http://www.daytonhistorybooks.com/index.html.

iii. Michael A. Broadstone, ed., History of Greene County, Ohio: Its People, Industries and Institutions, Vol. 1 (Indianapolis, Indiana: B.F. Bowen &Co., 1918): 387.

iv. http://www.dragonbbs.com/members/ww8566/