"It's my fourth child." The affective and personal impact of community archives

Abstract

The paper reports partial results of the research project “The impact of independent community archives” funded by the National Science Center in Krakow, Poland (grant no. 2022/47/D/HS3/00914; 2023-2026). The aim of the project is to describe the social and affective impact of Polish independent community archives on their creators, contributors, audiences, and the community they document. The project's goal is achieved through three in-depth case studies of contemporary independent archives. The primary source of information is qualitative interviews with people associated with the archives, particularly community archivists. The paper addresses, in particular, the affective (emotional) impact and personal impact. The citation used in the title, 'It's my fourth child', comes from one of the interviewed community archivists (mother of three children) and shows an interesting way of describing archivist's personal and affective involvement in the archive. The presentation includes: a short discussion on the Polish context of community archives; a description of the research process; partial results - several influences found in two Polish community archives studied so far: German Minority Research Center (Polish: Centrum Badań Mniejszości Niemieckiej) and Dogs Community Archive (Polish: Psie Archiwum Społeczne); reflections on the challenges of studying the affective and personal impact of archives. In terms of influences, the presentation discusses: trust/distrust, archival toil/burden, sense of mission, sensitivity/empathy, negative emotional impact, hard and educational personal impacts, and "soft" personal impacts.