TechSoup
Preserving Community Histories: Advancing Ethical Digital Storage Solutions
Zakiya Collier & Jon Voss, Shift Collective

Community-based archives hold irreplaceable records of marginalized histories, yet they often operate independently and face significant technical and financial challenges. Recognizing these issues, Shift Collective launched a groundbreaking three-year research and development initiative dedicated to exploring the ethical, cultural, and technical needs of small cultural memory organizations that steward the most important historical collections for diverse communities worldwide.

Precarious and hyperlocalized digitized and born-digital content needs affordable and sustainable digital storage, and decentralized storage promises a potential solution

Join us to learn how your organization can apply Shift Collective’s insights to create affordable, sustainable, and ethical digital storage models tailored to the needs of small cultural memory organizations. Discover how this work seeks to address systemic inequities and build a future where community histories are preserved, respected, and accessible without exploitation or resource barriers.

At the Event, You Will:

• Learn about Shift Collective’s ethical framework for engaging with decentralized storage technologies and how it addresses the cultural and technical needs of small, community-based archives.

• Explore a conceptual model designed to foster collaboration between small cultural memory organizations and larger institutions, emphasizing non-extractive, community-centered solutions.

• See how a front-end interface like Historypin can make long-term storage accessible.

• Engage with researchers and technical advisors as they share use cases, challenges, and lessons learned from their ongoing work.

• Discuss the broader implications for the cultural heritage field, including how these solutions could reshape digital preservation practices globally.

Recording available here.