Independent Community Archives: Challenging the Status Quo of Private and Public Archives

Abstract

The community archives movement has emerged as a prominent, and often critical, presence within, and also outside the archival traditions and practices in North America and the United Kingdom. They can take many forms and often contest how both public and private archives in these regions have historically been understood, structured and operated. This paper first presents a brief review of some of the ways in which community archives have been framed in the archival literature. It then considers several questions regarding how such framings of community archives might challenge the status quo of private and public archives as currently defined and organized under the recently revised Croatian legislative framework and proposes a more conciliatory approach.