Community Curation Buffalo – Community Archiving Workshop

Friday, June 5th from 10:30am to 5pm Community Curation Buffalo will host a Community Archiving Workshop (CAW) at the Central Meeting Room at the Buffalo and Erie County Public Central.

Whether videotaping a graduation ceremony or recording a sporting event, documenting a community’s history is only the first step in preserving history for future generations. As years go by and video and audio formats change, countless memories are locked away on obsolete and deteriorating tapes. The first step in accessing these valuable materials is to clearly identify what a collection contains so that the most important and most at-risk recordings can be preserved and made available for viewing and listening again. This workshop will feature experts from NMAAHC who come together with members of the First Shiloh Baptist Church of Buffalo, the Colored Musicians Club and Jazz Museum, and the WUFO/Black Radio History Collective to develop an archiving strategy for their collections. Learn archiving skills and hear about how specific steps for preservation can be applied directly to your organization’s needs. To learn more about the process, visit https://communityarchiving.org/.

In association with the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture (SI-NMAAHC) Robert Frederick Smith (RFS) Center for the Digitization and Curation of African American History and the Michigan Street African American Heritage Corridor Commission (MSAAHCC), the Community Archive Workshop provides community historians the opportunity to serve regional organizations and work with local volunteers to help them gain intellectual and physical control over some of their most fragile historical documents and recordings.

On Friday, June 5th, workshop participants will receive training to conduct basic processing, cataloging, and inspection of audiovisual materials. By doing so, participants will learn how to identify risk factors and make recommendations for preserving audiovisual collections. Most importantly, they will make it possible for community members to preserve their organizations’ history for future generations.