It is much more complicated: The challenges of teaching about community archives in Poland

Abstract

Community archives (grassroots documentary initiatives) have existed in Poland for a long time, their history can be traced back even to the second half of the 19th century. However, it is only in the last decade or so that the movement of grassroots, independent archives has seen particular growth. They are becoming the subject of scholarly research and are also gaining interest from public archival institutions. They have also been finding their way into archival studies programs. The purpose of the conference poster is to present the context in which community archives are present in Polish archival studies curricula (the organization of the process of training archivists, the Polish landscape of archival institutions), as well as to discuss the challenges of teaching about community archives. Among these challenges are the following: there is no consensus on the community archives definition; the phenomenon is context-dependent and very diverse; community archives are/can be politically motivated and sensitive to changing social contexts; they challenge many basics of classical archival science (provenance, objectivity, social roles of archives. The poster presentation is based extensiveley on the teaching experience of the author, who since 2019 has been teaching the course "Community Archives" at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun, Poland. The poster was presented at the International Council on Archives Congress in Abu Dhabi (October 2023).