IASA 2017 Annual Conference

This paper will explore the methods of community engagement work in the archives sector, especially in the current era of social media. We will illustrate the current forms of engagement between Shanghai Audiovisual Archives and local community-members. We will also discuss future projects and the challenges that arise with digital archiving.

Shanghai Audiovisual Archives developed a project to connect local community users using social media. Communities were encouraged to contribute to, and participate in, activities such as watching and sharing historical materials, telling individual stories, and providing personal archives via social media. The archivists combined these community archives with official records to build a virtual community on social media platforms. Archivists also held photographic and visual art exhibitions and lectures of local community histories. The outcome of this project was immeasurable community good will.

This article also presents the challenges of such projects conforming to a top-down model. We have found that the discourse of community participation is overly ambitious in its intents and, from a practical of view, is not easy to apply. This is because the communities are neither universal nor homogenous. For example, the motivation to participate in such projects is totally different across various age groups. Older citizens are less inclined to use digital applications, making it difficult to garner popularity for such projects. The digital gap in the usage of the archives sector needs to be more of a focus in modern day archiving.