n. (also participatory archive)the involvement of community members especially in the appraisal, arrangement, and description of archival collectionsShilton and Srinivasan 2007, 100Our methodology is particularly labour-intensive, and we recognize that it is outside of the scope of most archival institutions. However, we believe that as we explore the participatory process which we have outlined, we will be able to distill the process, finding ways for practicing archivists to incorporate participatory methods into their appraisal and processing decisions. And we hope to encourage others to explore methods for building scaleable and sustainable participatory archives. Ultimately, we believe that the rewards for communities and archivists, from the exploration of community identity to the preservation of a truly progressive understanding of our diverse history, outweigh the costs that participatory measures entail.Huvila 2008, 15The insights gained during the research and development work are used to formulate a new approach to a participatory archive. In spite of the historical nature of the archives discussed, the suggested ways of interacting with an archives are not specific to historical records. The fundamental characteristics of the proposed approach are decentralised curation, radical user orientation, and contextualisation of both records and the entire archival process.Theimer 2010bHowever, the concept of a group of people wanting to document their community (in any sense of the word) and taking steps to collect materials that preserve their history surely has a place in the definition of participatory archives.Theimer 2010bPart of the value of the participatory archives concept would be, I think, that it would help define the work of the archivist as a participant.Yakel 2011, 272The open questions are “what level of participation provides sufficient mass to sustain a participatory archive?” and “how do archives assess what is the most appropriate venue for participation around their collections?”Gilliland and McKemmish 2014, 78Participatory archives acknowledge that multiple parties have rights, responsibilities, needs and perspectives with regard to the record. They are created by, for and with multiple communities, according to and respectful of community values, practices, beliefs and needs. Participatory archives offer a space for negotiating different perspectives, experiences and needs and a mechanism for reconciling the dual nature of archives that has been critiqued by scholars and distrusted by those who have been disenfranchised, silenced or otherwise marginalized or victimized by archives and recordkeeping more generally.Gilliland and McKemmish 2014, 81. . . [T]he concept of a participatory archive acknowledges that multiple parties have rights, responsibilities, needs and perspectives with regard to the archives. Participatory archives consequently become a negotiated space built around critical reflection in which these different communities share stewardship and expertise—they are created by, for and with multiple communities, according to and respectful of community values, practices, beliefs and needs. They may also work in partnership with institutional archives, including government archives and collecting institutions.Duff and Haskell 2015, 39Recent calls for community archives, participatory archives, and archival commons suggest archives should move toward a more radical user orientation, one that we suggest fit well with the rhizome.Evans et al. 2015, 337The paper explores how an extended suite of rights in records, stretching beyond discovery and access to appraisal, description and disclosure, and linked to records continuum concepts of co-creation and multiple provenance, and the emergent concept of the participatory archive, might support community self-determination in the context of human rights and social justice agendas, with particular reference to the rights of the child. Additionally, the paper explores a new concept of archival autonomy and its relationship to community self-determination. Archival autonomy is tentatively defined as the ability for individuals and communities to participate in societal memory, with their own voice, and to become participatory agents in recordkeeping and archiving for identity, memory and accountability purposes.Allard and Ferris 2015, 376The relationships between researchers, archivists, and communities are complex, sometimes delicate, and require significant consideration of each player’s role. As noted earlier, these roles are framed within the archival literature in terms of the distinctions drawn between community archives, which are community initiated and driven (Stevens et al., 2010), and participatory archives that are initiated and hosted by archival institutions but with considerable community input (Shilton & Srinivasan, 2007).Roeschley and Kim 2019Bridging the gap between the personal and the communal, community-based participatory archives allow community members to shape the archival record with documentation of their personal experiences and relationships. Through the contribution and preservation of personal items, community members exhibit both vulnerability and archival control.Roeschley 2023, 3Linked to but distinct from independent community archives, participatory archives are archival projects in which archival contributors participate in archival processes to varying degrees (Huvila, 2008). The crucial difference between these two types of archives is that while independent community archives are often conceptualized as autonomous, participatory archives are mostly associated with traditional archives and other cultural heritage institutions which use participatory archiving as a means of community outreach.
