Dylan Gaffney, Forbes Library, in Northampton, MA
The program is seeking public libraries to join a diverse network of 150+ organizations that are:
Documenting local history by saving web-published sites, stories and community engagement on the web.
Growing their professional skills and increasing institutional technical capacity by engaging in a supportive network of peer organizations pursuing this work.
Building a public understanding of web archiving buy sales lead as a practice and its importance to preserving 21st century community history and underrepresented voices.
Current Community Webs cohort members have created nearly 300 publicly available local history web archive collections on topics ranging from , to local arts and culture, to 2020 local and U.S. elections. of local organizations, movements and individuals is often the primary way to document their presence for future historians.
“During the summer of 2016, Baton Rouge witnessed the shooting of Alton Sterling, the mass shooting of Baton Rouge law enforcement, and the Great Flood of 2016. While watching these events unfold from our smartphones and computers, we at the East Baton Rouge Parish Library realized this information might be in jeopardy of never being acquired and preserved due to a shift in the way information is being created and disseminated.” – Emily Ward, East Baton Rouge Parish Library.