CALL TO JOIN FALL ARCHIVES SOJOURN

The Global Archives Team is calling on colleagues to take part in a Global Archives Fall Sojourn from September 17 through October 19, 2012. Colleagues will be a part of a three-year plan to digitize the Town Meeting ‘76 Collection and put it online.

The Town Meeting ‘76 Collection has been a priority of the Archive Team and volunteers for some time. There is real value in this collection for those who want to access the largest local community change process ever undertaken in a concerted campaign. As this work is done, volunteers will learn how to take a focused area, scan relevant documents, and create links for accessing the information.

"We know much of the historical work is dated and can be confusing to understand without a context,” says volunteer Jack Giles. "More importantly, there needs to be a story created that speaks from the future, describing a contradiction or focus area with which the world is presently struggling and for which a collection will have relevance and wisdom.”

This Sojourn will result in a library, a "living legacy" website, which will allow access to the each collection with one click. It will be "living" in the sense that the site will be maintained by a team of curators who will continue to add, refine and link new materials to the collection as they becomes available. In many cases, these will include links to additional sources and/or groups beyond our historical work. But there is more.
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This link, http://voicethread.com/share/3233370/, has an outline of five sojourn weeks of work. There is also a link (http://electriccollegiumideas.posterous.com) where colleagues can indicate their collection priorities, personal passions and knowledge, as well as participation choices. They will also find details of the dates and costs of participating in the sojourn program.