Gonzaba – Question 3

¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 Who is the Trump Protest Archive’s main audience? Stating that the audience of any digital project is “the general public” is just sloppy. So who’s the Trump Protest archive’s main audience? I admit that it’s a question I’m still pondering. Ideally, I’m hoping future researchers can find diverse ways to use the images and accompanying metadata. I’m confident that skilled digital humanists can find trends in themes across geographic boundaries or across time periods. A casual browser to the archive even now can explore how multifaceted the American and international resistance remains, centered as it is on diverse issues and using diverse tactics, from humor to emotional messaging.

¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 0 Collecting digital content is perhaps the easiest part of the process. Addressing questions about use of the collected material is much harder. I conceived of the Trump Protest Archive literally the night before the national Women’s March on Washington. Now that it is up and running, I am working on the larger vision for the archive—identifying its target audiences, a plan for sustainability, and other logistical information. However, sometimes that’s the nature of a social justice archive.  This process—setting up the repository as quickly as possibly and temporarily deferring use and preservation questions—is perhaps characteristic of any archival activity that attempts to capture unfolding contemporary events, unlike the more deliberative steps we can take when we archive the documentation of events that have already taken place. The creators of Preserve the Baltimore Uprising, for example, could not have anticipated the momentous events it would eventually cover, and yet they built a comprehensive, community-curated collection of archival material that will help future generations make sense of the Baltimore riots.