Title Pending 15697

Abstract

<strong>This is an accepted article with a DOI pre-assigned that is not yet published.</strong> <font color="#000000" face="Times New Roman, serif"><span style="font-size: 16px;">Community archives is a widely used concept in both archival scholarship and the archival profession, yet to date the concept lacks a clear and consistent definition. In attempts to increase inclusivity in the community archives paradigm, scholars have refused to offer a strict definition for the term, resulting in the conflation of community archives and community-based archival practices occurring in institutional repositories. This article reviews the definitions offered in the growing body of community archives literature and offers a reframing of the umbrella concept of community archives through the lens of community engagement. In applying the principles of Arstein’s Ladder, a framework that describes the level of citizen engagement in public planning projects, we offer the continuum of community-engaged archival praxis that articulates the distinction between community archives and other archival practices that fall on a spectrum of community-based practices. Returning to earlier definitions of community archives that center on the autonomy of the community, we ground community archives in the concept of the archival impulse as a means for identifying the impetus of a community-engaged archival project and the directionality of the control over the archives. The continuum and impulse provide a means for disambiguating the myriad concepts that fall under the moniker of “community” and more clearly define the relationship between institutional repositories and the communities that they seek to engage.</span></font><br>