This document summarizes Rhonda Jones' background and experience in public history, archives, and community engagement work. Jones has a PhD from UNC-Chapel Hill and experience in oral history projects, museum studies, and community archives. She discusses approaches to participatory archives and programming that involve local communities in documenting their own histories. Her work emphasizes collaborative projects and digital access to broaden the audience for archival materials.

1. Person, Peer, Patron: Scholarly
Interactions Among Local Communities,
Archivists & Librarians
Rhonda Jones, Ph.D.
University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
April 27, 2015

2. COMBINING RESEARCH & PEDAGOGY
STUDENT PRACTICUMS
COMMUNITY SERVICE & OUTREACH
COMMUNITY ARCHIVES

3. PROFESSIONAL
BACKGROUND
2ND yr. master’s student at UNC Chapel Hill’s
School of Library & Information Science with a
concentration in archives and records
management
Assistant Professor/Director of Public History
• Introduction to Public History
• Oral History
• Museum Studies
• Introduction to Archives
• Arrangement and Description
• Collections Management

4. WHAT IS PUBLIC HISTORY?
Commonly referred to as “people’s history” or “applied history”
the theory and methodology of public history is firmly rooted in the
discipline of history and shared authority. At its core, the
fundamentals of research and interpretation rests on sound
scholarship and is useful in public practice.
Offering a multi-disciplinary approach it emphasizes collaborative
work with academic institutions, community members,
stakeholders, and professional organizations
As with all public scholarship, digital technologies play an
increasingly important role in the work of public historians,
creating new spaces where they can share their work and broaden
access to varied audiences.

5. BEHIND THE VEIL ORAL HISTORY PROJECT
CENTER FOR DOCUMENTARY STUDIES
DUKE UNIVERSITY
Maintained electronic, subject-
index database for 1,250
narratives on African Americans’
experiences in the Jim Crow
South.
• Coordinated accessioned
interviews
• Liaison for researchers’
requests
• Facilitated library transfers
• Provided content knowledge to
have a small percentage of the
collection digitized

6. Chowan Discovery Group
Ahoskie, North Carolina

7. “Kin and Community”
Historic Stagville Planation and UNC’S Wilson Library
Hands-on-experiences in archival fundamentals,
museum curatorship, and collections management

8. Five week summer internship in archival theory
and methodology Museum of Confederacy’s
Eleanor S. Brockenbrough Library, 2009-2014
• Arrangement, description, cataloging,
preservation, and records management
according to Society of American Archivists
standards
• Research & cultural interpretation

9. Project RIGHT Now Carolinas (Research, Interpretation,
Gather, Historic, Treasures), a coalition of librarians,
archivists, and historians who engage in collaborative
research projects with churches, schools, institutions, and
local organizations

11. PATICIPATORY ARCHIVES,
PROGAMMING & PUBLIC OUTREACH

12. JACKSON CENTER FOR SAVING
AND MAKING HISTORY
 Working with UNC’s Southern Oral History
Program (SOHP) the Marian Cheek Jackson
Center for Saving and Making History
recognizes the legacy of the multiplicity of
voices within the Northside and Pine Knoll
neighborhoods in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
 The Center has preserved hundreds of
recorded oral history interviews from local
residents with a social justice orientation, and
implemented communication technology to
transform them into a physical and digital
archive.

13. Published and unpublished materials: manuscripts, letters,
photographs, moving images and sound materials, artwork,
books, artifacts, and the digital equivalents of all of these things.
Broadly speaking community archives are defined as a
collection of “living archive” materials that serve to document
and preserve the communities’ triumphs and struggles, while
educating, inspiring, and empowering the users they serve. The
process of creating the collection has to involve the community.
Typically, this means that volunteers have played a key role,
sometimes alongside scholars and professional archivists.
What are community archives?

14. • Youth radio audio
recordings
• Photographs and
other files
• Oral history
recordings &
transcripts
• Manuscripts
Working with Omeka

15. Implications of archival custody
and the future for wider use
Digitization vs. digital preservation
Is it an archive?
• Accessible & searchable… but are
unprocessed
• Finding aid

16. FINAL THOUGHTS…

17. ANY QUESTIONS?