Participatory Archives: Something Old, Something New

[Note: I am belatedly writing up my notes on this presentation, which I gave about a year ago now. I will
do my best to remember what I said at the time, but I can’t promise I will be able to represent it with
complete accuracy. There is one section that I actually did have written out formally, so it’s not as loose
as the other sections. I usually don’t write out my talks. I just use the slides as prompts, so that formal
section is a bit out of character for me. And you will also note that there’s an evolution in my thinking in
the course of this talk and it ends up with some tweaking of my definition of participatory archives, so
you need to actually get to the end to learn about that. But, on to the re-creation, and let this be a
lesson to you (and to me): write up your presentations as you go!]
This talk was given at the Midwest Archives Conference spring meeting in 2012 in Grand Rapids,
Michigan. I was honored to be asked to serve as the meeting’s keynote speaker.
I’m sure I started out by thanking the meeting’s program committee for inviting me to speak, and saying
some complimentary things about MAC. I probably also thanked MAC for giving me an excuse to do
more thinking about the topic that had been on my mind since the previous summer when I talked
about it at the SAA Annual Meeting: how should we think about “participatory archives” and why does
that matter? So the title of the talk refers both to participatory archives themselves and also to my
remarks—people who heard me speak in Chicago were hearing something old and something new in
Grand Rapids.

2
K. Theimer, “Participatory Archives: Something Old, Something New,” MAC Keynote, April 19, 2012.
As the cartoon says (sort of), I am what I am. I don’t consider myself a scholar and I’m certainly not an
academic. I’m a synthesizer and a populizer. I observe what is happening in the world of archives, and to
the best of my ability in the broader field of cultural heritage, and then I try to distill it and identify
qualities or themes that I think are particularly interesting or relevant for the archival profession as a
whole. And I try to do so in ways that are understandable and useful for working archivists and
practitioners. And my thinking is always evolving. What I say in this presentation is different from what I
said last summer, and will be different from what I say in talks in the future. So, with that disclaimer out
of the way … let’s start by first talking about “participatory culture” in general and then we’ll move on to
see how that applies to archives.

3
As you might imagine, there are a lot of formal definitions of “participatory culture,” but basically what
they boil down to is that people are not just passive consumers, but active creators.

4
In Chapter 1 of his book Remix, Lawrence Lessig recalled the concerns John Philip Sousa voiced in 1906
about the effect of recorded music on amateur music culture. The culture Sousa wanted to protect was
one in which ordinary people owned and played musical instruments, children took music lessons, and
people gathered and performed music spontaneously as part of their daily lives. What Sousa feared,
according to Lessig, was ‘that people would be less connected to, and hence practiced in, creating this
[musical] culture.’1
The musical culture evoked by Sousa can also be used as an example of participatory
culture. In a 2009 report Henry Jenkins defined participatory culture as:
a culture with relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support
for creating and sharing creations, and some type of informal mentorship whereby experienced
participants pass along knowledge to novices. In a participatory culture, members also believe
their contributions matter and feel some degree of social connection with one another (at the
least, members care about others’ opinions of what they have created).2
In Chapter 4 of the popular book Moneyball, Michael Lewis describes the origins and development of a
participatory culture centered on baseball statistics. Lewis’s story starts with the self-published analysis
of Bill James, who became the leader of this statistics-based movement. Lewis writes, “James’ literary
powers combined with his willingness to answer his mail to create a movement. Research scientists at
big companies, university professors of physics and economics and life sciences, professional
statisticians, Wall Street analysts, bored lawyers, math wizards unable to hold down regular jobs—all
1
Lessig, p. 27.
2
Henry Jenkins (P.I) with Ravi Purushotma, Margaret Weigel, Katie Clinton, and Alice J. Robison. ‘Confronting the
Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21
st
Century.’ Cambridge, Mass. : The MIT Press, 2009.
Available at http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/full_pdfs/confronting_the_challenges.pdf.

5
these people were soon mailing James their ideas, criticisms, models, and questions.”3
Lewis continues
to describe several key aspects of the movement that the amateur statistician Bill James’ work inspired,
aspects you will also recognize as basic elements of a participatory culture:
The swelling crowd of disciples and correspondents made James’s movement more potent in a
couple of ways. One was that it now had a form of peer review: by the early 1980’s all the
statistical work was being vetted by people, unlike James, who had deep interest in, and
understanding of, statistical theory. Baseball studies, previously an eccentric hobby, became
formalized along the lines of an academic discipline. In one way it was an even more effective
instrument of progress: all these exquisitely trained, brilliantly successful scientists and
mathematicians were working for love, not money. . . . The other advantage was that the
growing army of baseball analysts was willing and able to generate new baseball data.4
Technology played a part in helping these people communicate, but it was their passion for baseball and
statistics, as well as having a nexus in Bill James for communicating, that let them evolve from passive
observers of baseball into a community creating new knowledge about the sport. Communities of
“passionate amateurs” have always existed, and I believe that when thinking about participatory culture
on the web it’s important to remember that the factors that motivate people to participate have always
existed. The web and emerging technologies just give us new ways to carry out that motivation.
In his book Cognitive Surplus, Clay Shirky noted “The atomization of social life in the twentieth century
left us so far removed from participatory culture that when it came back, we needed the phrase
‘participatory culture’ to describe it. Before the twentieth century, we didn’t really have a phrase for
3
Michael Lewis, Moneyball, p. 80.
4
Lewis, 82.

6
participatory culture; in fact, it would have been something of a tautology. A significant chunk of culture
was participatory—local gatherings, events, and performances—because where else could culture come
from? ”5
I think similar observations could be made about the rise of so-called “DIY culture” and “maker
culture”—clearly such terms weren’t needed in the past. In the past people did or made things
themselves because they had no choice. Now people choose to do so for the sheer fulfilment of doing
and making.
I thought this introduction was important because many people equate participatory culture with use of
social media. Social media and other forms of web technology provide a megaphone for participatory
culture, but it is the participation aspect that I think archivists need to pay attention to, as well as how
technology can be used to facilitate it. Increasingly people use technology to interact with cultural
content outside official forums. They create their own networks and virtual (or tangible) collections of
historical materials. The challenge for archivists is how to benefit from this trend, and work with related
stakeholder groups and individual enthusiasts to promote the value of archival collections.
So, with that context, what do we mean when we talk about “participatory archives?”
5
Clary Shirky. Cognitive Surplus. New York: The Penguin Press, 2010, p. 19.

7
Here are two excellent definitions, written by two noted scholars. I respect their visions of participatory
archives, but for me their definitions are too narrow, or at a minimum too formal and academic to
describe the kinds of environments that are springing up around us and which I think of as participatory
archives.

8
So this is the definition I came up with and presented last summer at the SAA meeting in Chicago (in the
same session in which Elizabeth Yakel presented her definition cited in the last slide). My definition is
kind of long, I know, so let’s walk through it.
First, “an organization, site or collection”: that’s deliberately broad. I didn’t want to impose a narrow
definition of “archives” in this case. What’s critical here is that archival materials are the focus of the
activities, not the kind of organization or structure that’s hosting or sponsoring the work.
Next, “people other than archives professionals”: that seems pretty clear. To be participatory you have
to have people participating, and that means people other than professionals or staff.

9
So, what are these people contributing? Knowledge and resources. Knowledge seems clear, but
resources can include actually contributing original materials or copies of materials, as well as
contributing their own time or perhaps even money. But what’s left out here are contributions such as
opinions, feelings or artistic creations. So in other words, by this definition someone who views a photo
posted by an archives on Flickr and who leaves a comment saying “that woman is ugly!” or “this reminds
me of my grandmother’s house” or who uses that image in a music video is NOT making contributions
that would qualify as participating in a participatory archives.
Similarly, those contributions of knowledge and resources in the definition achieve certain goals. They
result “in increased understanding about archival materials.” In other words, the result is that
knowledge about the materials is increased. Again, the kinds of interactions those users had with the
Flickr image allowed them to have fun and derive personal satisfaction, but they didn’t lead to any new
information about the image. Nor, if the archives posted the image on Flickr and no one commented
would it have been “participatory” according to this definition. Just as a general blog post about the
work of the archives would not. Both lead to an increase in general awareness of archives, but neither
leads to “increased understanding” about the specific archival materials.
In other words, engagement is different from participation.

10
Engagement is great. No one loves engagement more than I do. By saying it’s different from
participation I don’t mean to denigrate it. It’s just different. These sites are excellent examples of
fostering engagement. The National Archives’ caption contest on the Prologue blog (example:
http://blogs.archives.gov/prologue/?p=5061) and the Mustaches of the Nineteenth Century blog from
the University of Kentucky Archives (http://mustachesofthenineteenthcentury.blogspot.com/) are both
a lot of fun and people love them. A Facebook page, like this one for the Maryland Historical Society,
allows people to learn about upcoming events and read posts about a repository’s collections.

11
There are lots of ways to create engagement with users, and I’ve showed examples of most of these:
telling a story (blogs or Twitter accounts that allow people to follow along by reading diary entries of
letters are great examples of this), giving people the chance to win something (again, contests like funny
caption contests are great for this), conversation (such engaging in actual discussions on a Facebook
page blog or Twitter account), allowing people to share or rate objects or collections (the Coca-Cola
archives had a site in which they had users rate their favorite Coke memorabilia), humor is one we’re all
familiar with (again, Mustaches of the Nineteenth Century does this well), and of course inspiring
wonder and creativity, which I think we all see daily in our face to face interactions with researchers,
and which extends into the virtual realm as well.

12
But again, my contention is that while engagement is great, it’s not on the same level as participation.
The key factor is the type of contribution that’s made and the result it generates—increased
understanding about archival materials.
But what about that last part of the definition?

13
Why “usually in an online environment”? Because if you take that part out and look at the definition, it
describes the situation that many (if not most) archives have always had. People other than archives
professionals—that is volunteers, researchers and interns—contributing knowledge and resources
(especially time) resulting in increased understanding of archival materials. That’s a pretty normal
situation for many small and medium sized archives. Again, thinking back on the kinds of participatory
cultures I talked about earlier, participation per se is nothing new. What has put a new wrinkle in the
whole thing is technology, which in many cases allows someone located far away from the physical site
of the archives to make a contribution. And that’s what’s new about the kinds of participatory archives
I’m going to talk about next. The principles are familiar, but technology makes so much more possible.

14
I’m going to quickly talk about six different kinds of activities that make something a participatory
archives. In each case I’ve picked just a few examples to illustrate my point, and I’m afraid I will have to
rush through them since my time is limited so my apologies if I don’t do them justice. I’ll post links to the
sites after this talk so you can go and explore them on your own.
[NOTE: For this document I’m not going to try to summarize what each site does, as I did in the talk. This
is already getting very long and since I’m providing links you can go and look for yourself.]

15
There have been a lot of great projects lately that allow users to contribute their knowledge and time to
help archives by doing work.

16
The New York Public Library’s great “What’s on the Menu?” site (http://menus.nypl.org/), which allows
users to help transcribe historical menus, is highly addictive. It capitalizes on two things many people
love: food and history.
Old Weather (http://www.oldweather.org/) gives users a chance to transcribe detailed weather
information from ship’s logs from the UK National Archives, allowing climate scientists access to a
wealth of historical data for their research. [Again, there’s a lot more to it than that, but go and check it
out for yourself if you’re not familiar with it!]

17
Waisda? (http://woordentikkertje.manbijthond.nl/) created a game-like environment to encourage
users to help tag archival video and so make it easier to search.
Another one from the New York Public Library: Map Warper (http://maps.nypl.org/warper) “is a tool
for digitally aligning (‘rectifying’) historical maps from the NYPL's collections to match today's precise
maps. Visitors can browse already rectified maps or assist the NYPL by aligning a map.”

18
Of course another way to contribute is not by just transcribing or doing other “work,” but by
contributing specialized information.

19
“Remember Me” (http://rememberme.ushmm.org/) is a site hosted by the US Holocaust Memorial
Museum that seeks to uncover what happened to the children who survived the Holocaust and were
documented in photographs by relief agencies.
You’re all probably familiar with archives posting copies from their collections on Flickr, but I’m talking
here about cases in which archives do so with the explicit goal of learning more about them, as is shown
here in a collection from the UK National Archives, “Africa Through a Lens”
(http://www.flickr.com/photos/nationalarchives/collections/72157625827328771/), which seeks to
crowdsource information about images taken in colonial Africa.

20
Asking the public to contribute their knowledge about archival collections by creating or editing pages in
a wiki have been less successful than some other kinds of participatory archives, but they are certainly a
valid example. Here are two of them: “Your Archives” from the UK National Archives (which has since
been made inactive, although the site is still
available: http://yourarchives.nationalarchives.gov.uk/index.php?title=Home_page ) and “Our
Archives” from our own National Archives ( http://www.ourarchives.wikispaces.net/).

21
A third way for people to contribute to a participatory archives is by adding items to a collection.

22
The Denver Public Library’s “Creating Your Community” site
( http://www.creatingcommunities.denverlibrary.org/) provides an infrastructure though which self-
defined “communities” can upload, document, and share their own collections of resources.
The Library of Virginia’s “CW 150 Legacy” project ( http://www.virginiamemory.com/collections/cw150)
actively solicited people to bring in their own original documents related to the Civil War to events so
that they could be scanned and virtually added to the Library’s own online collection.

23
One reason why I wanted to be deliberately vague in my definition about who or what the “archives”
part of participatory archives might be is so that the definition would include collections being created
and maintained outside formal organizational settings.

24
One example of this kind of “archive” is Vintage Toronto on
Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Vintage-Toronto/256041347799190), which encourages
anyone to upload their own photos of Toronto from the past as well as adding their own memories to
the images that have already been shared.
The Rave Archive http://ravearchive.com/, an effort run privately by volunteers, seeks to “exhibit aspects of
American and Canadian rave culture and history . . . and provide a space where people can share ideas and
stories in a forum environment. [They] digitize and make freely accessible high-quality mixtape rips, high
resolution scans of 'zines and flyers, as well as other ephemera, and are constantly looking for the donation (or
loan) of new materials to be added to the site.”

25
The Archive Team (http://www.archiveteam.org) is another volunteer effort to collect, preserve, and
make accessible documentation of at-risk or “doomed” online communities or publications.

26
Another more creative way people participate in archives is by taking the collections that are available
online and creating new products and site that provide new insight into them. Each of the three tools I
will talk about in this section was created by someone outside the organization that holds the records.

27
Another wonderful project from the New York Public Library, the Stereograminator
(http://stereo.nypl.org/) allows site visitors to create and share 3D images from the Library’s collection
of stereograms.
The Pittsburgh Mapping and Historical Site Viewer (http://peoplemaps.esri.com/pittviewer/) was
created by a map and GIS enthusiast who took copies of maps from Historic Pittsburgh and turned them
into geo-rectified layers, highlighting historic sites.

28
Invisible Australians (http://www.invisibleaustralians.org/) is another “citizen” effort to bring new
meaning to archival materials by using technology to give a new context. The project uses
documentation from the National Archives of Australia, originally created as a product of discriminatory
laws, and uses it to bring to life the faces and lives of these “invisible” Australians of the past.

29
This last category is one that I wish I could find more examples of. In some ways this would represent
the most “participatory” aspect of all, involving people other than archives professionals directly in the
management or decision making of the archival organization.

30
The U.S. National Archives’ Public Interest Declassification Board created the “Transforming
Classification” blog (http://blogs.archives.gov/transformingclassification/) and has used it, as well as
other forums, to actively solicit public input on how to reform the process of classification and
declassification of government records.

31
Another way, of course, to get people involved directly in the activities of an archives is to get them to
help fund those activities. Some of the best examples of this I’ve found are on Kickstarter. These two are
the Locus Photo and Ephemera Archive Project
(http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2040521099/locus-photo-and-ephemera-archive-
project?ref=live) and Project Gado (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1889549817/digitize-the-afro-
american-newspaper-using-open-so?ref=live). [Note that the “Adopt a Cylinder Program” sponsored by
the Cylinder Digitization and Preservation Project at the Department of Special Collections, U.C. Santa
Barbara is another example, but I didn’t use that one in my talk.]

32
Another way to think about participatory archives that’s in a somewhat different vein than my actual
definition is for archivists themselves to become active participants in communities relevant to the
collections, and so become more active advocates for them. This kind of participation can in turn, lead
to greater involvement by the general public as well as scholars with archival collections.

33
Ah, but back to my lovingly-crafted definition, that so boldly chose to exclude some categories of online
activity. Does it really apply in the strictest sense to all the projects I just talked about? Some, clearly
yes. Some others, perhaps not so clearly. When I was preparing this talk I faced this dilemma. All of
these projects seemed to me like participatory archives, so if they didn’t meet my definition, then . . .
. . . obviously my definition needed some retooling.

34
What were the elements that I thought were so important? Those exclusionary ones about what people
were contributing and what the results were.
But in looking back over the examples I selected for this talk, another element emerged, and it’s clearly
the element I so adamantly wanted to exclude: engagement.

35
I went back and thought about what it means to be a participatory culture, and to Lessig’s example of
Sousa’s musical culture. When people were gathering together to play music, they wanted to play well,
I’m sure, but wasn’t it equally important to practice, to play, and to gather together, rather than
exclusively what the outcome was like?
[NOTE: I don’t cite it here, but I must have also had in mind Trevor Owen’s fantastic blog post
“Crowdsourcing Cultural Heritage: The Objectives Are Upside Down”
(http://www.trevorowens.org/2012/03/crowdsourcing-cultural-heritage-the-objectives-are-upside-
down/) which he posted in March, about a month before I gave this talk. It’s possible I hadn’t read it
until afterwards, but in any case it’s great and very relevant.]

36
So I need to revise my definition. I haven’t done it yet because lovingly-crafting a definition takes time,
but that element of engagement needs to be included, so here in this slide is a place holder for it that
captures the thought.
[NOTE: This is the refined definition I am now using:
An organization, site or collection in which people other than the archives professionals
contribute knowledge or resources resulting in increased appreciation and understanding of
archival materials and archives, usually in an online environment. ]

37
To tie this into a metaphor I’ve used before, if you want to divide the development of the archival
profession into nice big chunks, you can think about the first phase as being about establishing control
of the material. The second phase, Archives 2.0, was about the profession looking at itself and
establishing new attitudes and approaches to problems. The next phase, which you could call Archives
3.0, will I think be focused on making connections between our collections and people. And this is very
much what participatory archives are all about.
But why does this matter, other than being another interesting way to think about things that people
are already doing?

38
It matters, I think, because as we well know, these are perilous times for some cultural organizations.
Many archives have been hit with multiple changes to their environment in a comparatively short space
of time—a proliferation of record formats to preserve, changing expectations from users about how
they want to access information and interact with the archives, and for some, reduced funding and
resource levels. I’m not saying that adopting the practices of participatory archives can help mitigate all
those issues, but they can certainly help establish a stronger connection with a user community, and so
hopefully nurture future advocates for archival programs.

39
But in exchange, that means a loss of control and certainty that some archives and archivists may not be
comfortable with. Much depends on the extent to which you want to take it—how participatory do you
want to be? How flexible with your boundaries, your roles, your authority? How risk tolerant is your
organization?

40
In order to succeed, the archivist needs to be part of the party, part of the crowd (personally, I think
we’re the woman in the front with the blue crown and the lei), and . . .
. . . NOT this.
And to paraphrase Linus at the end of the Charlie Brown Christmas Special, “That’s what participatory
archives are all about.”

Participatory Archives: Something Old, Something New

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