Intro to Community Archiving
4-Week Course Starts OCT 13, 2025
Course Description
What are community archives? How are they different than “traditional” archives? This course will introduce the basics, challenges, and opportunities of community archives, how to plan a community archive, and explore examples of digital and physical community archives. The course is geared toward archive and library professionals.
Learning Objectives
- Understand the meaning and value of both community and participatory archiving
- Recall best practices for collaborations and partnerships
- Learn tools for incorporating aspects of community and participatory archiving and be able to envision relevant plans for a repository
Total Course Hours: 10 Hours/ 1 CEU
"Intro to Community Archiving is a great foundational course for learning how to center community history, voices, experiences, and objects into existing archives or how to work with communities to create new archives. Even without an archival background, I found the course manageable and I learned a lot! The course supplements existing work I do with communities around preservation of history and culture and has given me more of an academic orientation to those practices. Definitely recommend!"
- Adrienne Burke, Principal at Community Planning Collaborative, Jacksonville, FL
Your Instructor
Kristina Mullenix is a historian who holds a BA in History, as well as an MLIS with specialty in Archives Management and a Certificate in the Basics of Archives. Her research focus is recovering Alabama’s historical silences concerning slavery history. She has experience with digital humanities projects, oral history initiatives, and archival work. She is presently a Special Collections Librarian at a public library within the local history and genealogy department.
She has been collaborating on a grant-funded oral history project about the lives and experiences of coal miners in Brookwood, AL as a Cauthen Fellow with the Alabama Folklife Association. Recently, she published an article in the "Tributaries" journal about the project and is planning a community scan day event.
Originally from Alabama, Kristina grew up traipsing through old cemeteries on the hunt for ancestors with her family. This shaped her love of genealogy and history. Kristina is most interested in community participatory historical research and preservation, as well as oral history and all things archives-museums-history-genealogy. In her spare time, she facilitates a historical fiction book club. Follow her history adventures on Instagram @Alabamastorykeeper.
"Taking this class has been a transformative experience. The course not only deepened my understanding of community archiving but also provided me with practical tools to engage with descendant communities in meaningful ways. The case studies illuminated how community-driven initiatives can preserve history and challenge traditional archival practices. The hands-on approach and thoughtful discussions helped me connect theory to practice, and I now feel equipped to contribute to preserving underrepresented voices in my own work. I highly recommend this class to anyone passionate about archives, history, and social justice."
- Cyndy Hamilton, Archive Librarian, Deale, MD
Frequently Asked Questions
It is an asynchronous online course designed to be completed in 4 weeks.
Participants will spend approximately 2.5 hours each week on viewing lectures, answering quizzes and completing discussion, reading, and writing assignments.
It is recommended that you complete each week's work within that week to stay in sync with other learners.
2. Answer all quizzes
3. Complete all assignments
When you complete these three items you can expect to receive you certificate within 2 weeks.
1. Try enrolling with a different browser or with a different device (laptop, tablet, smart phone, etc.)
2. Request that we send you an invoice. This will be emailed to you and you can pay through the link provided in the invoice. Send us an email at [email protected].