Bastian, J. A. and B. Alexander, Eds. (2009). Community archives: the shaping memory. London, Facet.
This edited volume includes thirteen essays by a range of authors, including librarians, archivists and lawyers, and each essay presents a case study of from one to three archival repositories, community groups, or documentary projects. The essays include cases in Europe, the Americas, the South Pacific and the Caribbean. The notion of 'community archives' includes both formal and informal institutions; both mainstream (academic archives or local libraries) and grass-roots; and it draws on ideas of community of place, interest and identity. The authors link discourses about the meaning and purpose of archives to the recent literature on memory, community, identity, accountability, and social justice. Some of the communities represented in this volume include: black culture in London, the West Yorkshire area of England, the native Noongar Claim region of Western Australia, American medical students, the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, the people of St. Kitts, Canadian lesbians and gays, Bosnian refugees, former leprosy patients on a Philippine island, and Grateful Dead fans. This book critically explores the complex relationship between archives, community and memory.