Transcript Activist Archivists Document the Living Wage Movement

Activist Archivists
Document the Living
Wage Movement
Presented by
Jeff Cowick
Carmen Cowick
An Introduction to the Project…

The Living Wage Project began in February 2014
as a graduate student-led project intending to
document the current movement fighting for a
living wage across the United States.

In addition to seeking out organizations who are
a part of this movement, the project founders
were interested in archiving their own archivist
experience in the movement by documenting
rallies they have attended and donating personal
items to the archive.
Archiving Current Social
Movements
Real-time documentation has its
advantages:
 The ability to cut down on mythmaking,
because primary source materials would
be readily available.

It would cut down on the chances of
misremembering the events and dates.
Archiving Current Social
Movements (cont’d)
Real-time documentation has its
advantages:

Eliminates either undermining or
overestimating the importance of a social
movement.
Choosing a Digital Platform
What software platform should be used to
build the site that would best suit the
collection?
 What metadata schema is most
appropriate for this type of digital
collection?
 Which plug-ins will offer the best access
to the collection; and will they provide
improved understanding of the project?

Choosing a Digital Platform
(cont’d)

Is commercial branded software or opensource software better for this project?

Which open source software to choose?
The Emergence of the Activist
Archivist
Traditional
Archivist
Activist
Archivist
The Activist Archivist’s Skills in
the 21st Century
The Activist Archivist needs a full grasp of
social media platforms.
Twitter
 Facebook
 Youtube
 Flickr

LWP’s Oral Histories Collection

This collection was created by the
founders/archivists themselves, actively
soliciting interviews, not just collecting
ready-made recordings as with most
archival materials of this kind.
Oral History Obstacles…

Many did not know what an archive was
and did not understand why someone
would want an oral history of their views
and ideas on this subject.

Attempting to solicit these interviews on
Facebook and giving the option of doing
the oral history over the phone proved
unfruitful, mostly due to flakiness of the
potential participant and not for their lack
of consent.
Photographs and Video within the
Project Founders Collection

The Living Wage Project founders have
included in their collection of photographs
and videos taken themselves while in
attendance at functions of the living wage
movement.
Photographs and Videos:
Advantages

The primary advantage was in not
needing to solicit donations from others
who were photographing or recording the
event.

Furthermore, by posting the videos to The
Living Wage Project’s YouTube account, it
allowed traffic to be brought to the digital
archive. Links to the videos were also
tweeted on Twitter and published on
Facebook.
Moving forward…
.
Visit The Living Wage Project at:
www.qclivingwageproject.omeka.net
[email protected]