Institutionalized Community Archives: Understanding a Community's Relationship with Its Collected History

This thesis looks how institutional archives that accession community archive function with the community. Three distinct community archives based in the United States for case studies for this observation. The first, the Farmworker Movement Documentation Project, which began as a project created by a former volunteer, LeRoy Chatfield. The second community archive, the Oregon Hops and Brewing Archive, collects the history of the community of brewers and hop farmers in the state that is the largest producer of the plant. The Japanese American Service Committee (JASC), based in Chicago, Illinois, is the final archive studied in this thesis. The JASC began as a service organization with a mission that involved helping Japanese Americans readjust to life after the World War II internment camp history. These three different archives set the framework for the varying meanings of the term “community archive”.