Poole reviews existing scholarship on community archives’ information work, which he approaches as “unprecedently democratic venues for information work” (657). Poole defines ‘information work’ as the infrastructure for ‘getting things done’, and ‘community archives’ as “grassroots tools of individual and collective identity, education, and empowerment” that confront discrimination, repression, marginalization and other forms of injustice produced by white supremacy, racism, neoliberalism, patriarchy, colonialism, and other violent and oppressive power structures (658).
In defining ‘community,’ Poole begins by acknowledging the imagined nature of all communities (Anderson 1991)—ultimately, any group that imagines itself a community, is a community, based on shared criteria. Unease over the definition of community is produced by application of the term to denote the ‘otherness’ of a group—whose concerns and interests can be marginalized as not being aligned with those of the societal majority—as well as scholars’ romanticized use of ‘community’ as a cure-all. For these reasons, the term ‘community archives’ remains problematic and ill-defined in some ways. Moreover, community archive stakeholders’ representations of themselves and their materials is also often internally contested. However, Poole does not build off this concept any further and moves forward acknowledging the inadequacies of the term ‘community’.
According to Poole, community archive’s information work involves challenging and transforming traditional mainstream archival principles and practices—from custody, collection development and appraisal, to processing, arrangement and description. For instance, community archivist often prefer stewardship and post-custodial practices over custody—this can entail custody practices that are more flexible or shared between community members and other institutions. Community archivists also democratize archival creation and processing.
Community archives also different from traditional principles in that they are explicitly approached as political, in that they are often created and reused in service of social justice. Community archives can act implicitly or explicitly as a form of infrapolitics (Scott, 1990), in which material and symbolic tactics as used for subterranean, political, and cultural resistance. They can serve to guide present and future action, enrich collective memory, harness affect (see quote below), and (re)claim place and space. Poole offers several examples of such applications in the work of community archivists.
Poole argues that community archives stand to benefit from collaborations or partnerships with mainstream institutions by: obtaining training and advice on different archiving practices and technologies; increasing public visibility, legitimacy and relevance; and obtaining resources (e.g. digital or physical infrastructure, secure storage, staff, space, funding) that contributes to the archive’s longevity and sustainability. Aside from mutual benefits, Poole also identifies potential hurdles between such partnerships, such as the challenge of establishing trust and balancing sustainability and autonomy. Poole identifies four key elements of sustainability: individual initiative, resources, outreach, and succession.
Poole concludes by offering potential directions for future research, such as probing how internal hierarchies affect community archives’ information work, or how community archives infrapolitical work could be applied in developing strategies for policy action.
“The affective and emotional aspects of community archives’ information work may further social justice outcomes (Caswell and Cifor, 2016; Cifor, 2016; Cifor and Gilliland, 2016; Henningham et al.,2017). According to Cvetkovich (2014), “the centrality of feeling to the relations between private and public spheres and especially ofhow the intimate life of romance, the family, and thedomestic sphere serves as the foundation for social relations ofpower” (p. 14). In other words, as Ahmed (2004) suggests, “emotions do things, and work to align individuals with collectives—or bodily space with social space—through the very intensity of their attachments” (p. 26). Emotional encounters with archives connect people to their past in ways that administrative or bureaucratic records cannot (Caswell and Mallick, 2014).” (667)
