… we’re nearing the end of year 1 of the Archives Unleashed cohort program. During June 1 to June 3, the AU team, Internet Archive staff, and representatives from cohorts 1 and 2 met in Vancouver, BC for the AU Cohort Program closing event. Our host, the Internet Archive, welcomed us to their new Canada HQ, the Permanent (see below for shots of the exterior and interior).
The event began with introductions, and short presentations by cohort 2 teams about their projects. All projects seem super interesting and are varied: from the history of Mormon mommy-bloggers to queer communities in Geocities to COVID19 in Saskatchewan (uh, we’re very interested in the latter).
Subsequently, representatives from cohort 1 facilitated 1-hour long discussions about their projects. The idea here was not to simply report on progress, but to ask questions and possibly ‘workshop’ the project with the everyone involved. You can check our slides below:
Day two featured a panel of cohort 1 representatives discussing a variety of topics, from what we wish we’d known before starting to thoughts about the ethics of using web archives. Following this panel, we disbanded into breakout groups to plan ahead (what does publishing this research look like, and where will we do it?)
I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to represent our cohort at this event (mountains are really nice!). This was the first in-person event that I’ve attended in several years, and so, I definitely felt some of the rust falling off of the conversational muscles that have atrophied a little during the pandemic. Moreover, this event – after a year of working on a project with minimal interaction with other cohorts – gave me a sense of how our efforts sit in the larger scheme of the AU cohort program. I think applauding successes and commiserating over shared frustrations are key elements of a shared discipline/methodology/scholarly tradition. Working with web archives in this way is very much a nascent way of doing things; this event nudged us in the right direction.
And one last bit of good news: cohort 1 projects have been extended into 2022-23. This means that we’ll continue to be connected with the AU team and cohort 2, and have the time we need to meet our research goals. Stay tuned for more updates.
