Scaling Community Through Archives: A National Program to Expand Community Archives

This applied research project will systematically investigate how library needs and best practices related to the development of community archives vary across urban and rural libraries. The project will ask the following research questions: (1) How do understandings of community archives, and their desired role within communities, vary between public library staff in rural and urban systems? (2) How do urban and rural systems differ in terms of the challenges they must navigate to effectively build a community archive? (3) How do these systems differ in terms of best practices for implementing impactful community archives? To answer these questions, the project will support a diverse cohort of public librarians, split between urban and rural systems, to develop community archives.