Community Archives and the Digital Divide 2.0: Who Is Left Out of Trusted Digital Repositories and Historical Preservation Conversations
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.33700/2670-451X.36.2.127-145(2026)Keywords:
digital divide, community archives, trusted digital preservation, ethics of care, professional archivistsAbstract
Purpose: This article examines whose voices are missing from discussions of trusted digital archiving and argues that the digital divide has shifted from a question of who can access technology to a question of whose records survive. It focuses on community archives and on what professional archivists can do to support them.
Method/approach: The article combines a literature review on the digital divide and community archives with a mixed methods survey of professional archivists administered in 2016. Of 152 respondents, 139 had worked with community archives, 77 completed the survey, and respondents described 283 community archives.
Results: Processing was the most frequent request from community archives (61%), while preservation was the need professionals ranked highest (70%) yet only the sixth most requested. Nearly half of the community archives collected electronic records, but only 23% had a preservation or sustainability plan, 29% used collection management software and 16% had a grant writer. Three quarters of respondents said resources for supporting community archives were insufficient, and they wanted new resources to be free, accessible, written for a lay audience and focused on sustaining archives over time.
Conclusions/findings: Economic, technical and institutional barriers, reinforced by the positionality of those who set standards and funding priorities, exclude small, racialized, Indigenous, working-class, rural and LGBTQ+ communities from trusted digital preservation. Free plain language resources, dedicated funding and partnerships grounded in an ethics of care are proposed as steps toward a more inclusive record.
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