This summer I spent much of my time outside of my day job working on MARMIA community archiving projects, both here in Baltimore and in Eastern Serbia. In Baltimore, I assisted MARMIA’s AMIA Pathways Artist-Archivist In Residence SHAN Wallace to promote a celebration of home movie preservation, with SHAN providing free video digitization to local organizations and individuals using MARMIA’s equipment. In August I took some MARMIA surplus equipment to our Serbian sister organization, SKVER Magazin, where I worked with the Community Archiving Workshop to hold a 4-day intensive training on audiovisual preservation. We assisted SKVER with their collections, supported local librarians and archivists in learning more about how to care for their collections, and then helped the local Zaječar community in digitizing some of their home movies and slides.

While this work was conducted in two very different communities thousands of miles away from each other, it reminded me that the act of community archiving builds and strengthens community relationships. If you look up the definition of “community” on the Internet, my favorite is “a feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals” (from Oxford Languages). Scientific research has proven that strong social connections within our communities is good for human mental and physical health, and there are many people and organizations out there working to strengthen community connections. Let’s make sure that we add community archiving to the list of how to support community building work! Community archiving doesn’t just help preserve our community history, but it helps now in the present moment to make powerful social connections that will serve us long into the future. I personally have been so inspired and have had such meaningful interactions with people through both of these projects that I feel eternally grateful and connected to everyone involved. I can’t wait to continue this work soon, in the Mid-Atlantic and beyond!

Siobhan and SHAN were live on WJZ-TV with Marty Bass to promote the free digitization program!
Photo by Jeni Spamer. Siobhan and SHAN met Gloria and Noreen, two women working on the Laurel Cemetery Project at the Baltimore City Archives.
A VHS brought in to be digitized at the July Home Movie Celebration Event. Luskins was a local electronics chain of stores.
A group inventorying some of SKVER’s collections
A VHS tape brought in to the workshop by an attendee.
A VHS playing on a CRT monitor of Zaječar history.
A group of attendees are assisted by Marie Lascu of the Community Archiving Workshop in inventorying a SKVER collection.

Published by siobhan-cernugelj-hagan