Introduction. This thesis aims to investigate user participation in two selected music websites, The Metal Archives (also known as Metal-Archives or MA) and Discogs, as well as gather knowledge about how their databases and web interfaces are designed. Music genres are often associated with a culture or subculture. We wanted to investigate how the subcultures of metal music fans and record collecting has made an impact in these online archives, since the users who contribute to the archives are the ones who drive the archives forward. Method. To answer our research questions we described the designs of the websites themselves, as well as conducted surveys and one interview. Our survey material comes from user responses to two separate Google Forms surveys. The interview is a qualitative semi-structured interview conducted via e-mail with a policy expert from The Metal Archives. In addition to this, we supplemented it with a summary of an earlier interview with Discogs founder Kevin Lewandowsky. Qualitative method was used for analysis of both surveys and the interviews. Results. Both websites function as participatory archives since the user contributions are voluntary. Many who contribute do so out of a “Love for the culture”. While both user communities share a love for music, Discogs also focuses on its users selling physical records. Respondents from the surveys show an altruistic motivation for participating. To them, sharing contributions with others in the community feels important. Conclusion. Regarding website design, we found that both sites employ point systems as a motivating factor to ensure further user contributions. When it comes to user participation, both sites have active communities and can be seen as examples of crowdfunding. In the case of Metal-Archives the users showed a certain affect, passionately contributing data for its own sake. While both websites function as “Community Archives”, the culture differs. Metal-Archives is more elitist in nature and subcultural while Discogs aims to catalogue music from any genre. Furthermore, the search systems differ in that Metal-Archives is centred around finding bands while Discogs uses complex hyperlinking derived from the culture of vinyl record collecting. The thesis concludes that these two study objects show an example of community and the contributions of passionate fans online, as well as how the amount of information about music can benefit future research in music.  This is a two years master’s thesis in Archival Science.

Community archives have developed in response to gaps in the documentary record and the real and perceived limitations of state-funded archives. These communities, whether defined by location, shared identity, or common interests, recognize the vital role of records in building collective memory and the importance of having access to their history. Informed by postmodern and postcolonial intellectual concerns, archivists have explored such themes and taken a greater interest in community archives as models of archiving that offer new opportunities and tools for capturing diversity and multiple perspectives on the past. This thesis traces the history of archival thought in relation to community by examining the dichotomy between community and mainstream archives. It explores the breakdown of the dichotomy, as exemplified in recent models of independent community archives and participatory archives. Case studies of the Boissevain Community Archives and Shingwauk Residential Schools Centre test the hypothesis that archivists stand to benefit from a historical perspective on community archives, one that takes into account the ongoing production of community and the role of archives, archivists, and community members in that production. Throughout, this thesis reaffirms the value of historical analysis in archival studies, arguing that it enriches understandings of the provenance of records created, maintained, and preserved by community. / October 2016

Community expressions-specifically, annual events manifested by groups other than official organizations-can be sites for transmission of crucial understandings of the past that have not achieved representation in formal archives. In this dissertation, to locate the minor narratives of history I analyze a community expression with my focus honed on the ephemeral matter used within it, to imitate and question the reliance in archives on evidence, and explore ephemera as important focus points for the transmission of collective memory. The ephemerally embodied event I studied as an "archive" was the All Souls Procession, a grassroots annual celebration and parade in honor of the dead in Tucson, Arizona. To convey and interpret perspectives from the community enacting and participating in this event through engagement with ephemera, I have used three questions as my guide: How are ephemera used in All Souls Procession events as commemorative community expressions? How has the history of the All Souls Procession been shaped around the commemorative use of ephemera in relationship with recorded documents? And, What are the implications for archives of this case of commemoration through ephemeral community expression? Through qualitative methods of data collection including participant observation, document analysis, and unstructured interviews with thirteen current and former All Souls Procession organizers, I have found two overarching themes in the discourse around ephemeral commemoration in this event: processing the past and softening community boundaries. I found that through these themes of use, ephemera in the All Souls Procession anchor collective memory while constituting community boundaries, meeting a growing need to define and connect "members" of a rapidly expanding "community." With community membership defined as volunteerism in ASP events, ephemera function as iconic draws toward this event, attracting people to a unified theme and then engaging them in constructing it anew, as its ephemeral building blocks must be regularly recreated. Ephemera in this study were also found to help claim ownership and authority for the All Souls community, through occupation of space and memory. Concluding this work are three propositions: First, that in such community expressions, competing "archives" may face off against one another in the online arena, which is both ephemeral and enduring; Second, the use of ephemera as commemorative matter may give a community leverage in controlling records about the past, yet in increasingly transparent ways. Third, as they adapt to the model of participatory archives seen increasingly in the digital archival landscape, users can deploy strategies-forging alliances and "communities" that result in effacements and master narratives, the latter of which are then celebrated as community histories through new cycles of ephemeral commemoration. I ultimately retheorize the archive as collective action to construct, efface, and build community around history, supporting the notion that the more collective, or massive, or spectacular the telling of a story, the better it competes to become a history.

In South Africa there has been a growing recognition of community craft projects in previously marginalised communities. They are acknowledged for their artistic merit, and for the fact that they serve as a means of economic empowerment for especially black South African women. This study goes beyond this and identifies the embroidered story cloth projects as serving as potential archives for the communities in which they are situated. The embroidered story cloths produced by the Mogalakwena Craft Art Development Foundation (MCADF) are considered as a relevant practical example of the counter-archival discourse in the archival process. This Foundation is situated in a remote area of the Limpopo Province, South Africa, close to the Botswana border. Founded in 1994 in an effort to alleviate poverty and unemployment in this community, this project has grown into a unique archive, which documents various aspects of the women’s everyday life. This project encompasses a number of aspects highlighted by the counter-archival discourse. The embroidered story cloths constitute archival sources that previously would not have been considered part of the conventional nineteenth and twentieth century archive as they involve oral tradition and material craft art practices. Furthermore, the choice of subjects documented by the participants of the MCADF project, which include everyday life situations, as well as rituals and rites of passage, moves the focus of history away from the dated “grand narratives of progress” of the Western world to include the voices from outside the political realm. This aligns with elements of the community archive which have an important role to play in terms of democratising the archival record, decentralising the archives as public institution as well as giving previously or currently marginalised people a voice. In this case it is women who, due to their gender, their inability to express themselves in written form and the previous discriminatory political dispensation in South Africa (apartheid), would not have been included in traditional archives. / Thesis (DPhil)--University of Pretoria, 2015. / tm2015 / Historical and Heritage Studies / DPhil / Unrestricted

Western archival institutions have both silenced and misrepresented Indigenous peoples in Canada for more than a century. These actions have in turn assisted in the colonization and subjectification of a myriad of Indigenous communities within the colonial construct of Canada. This institutional complicity in the colonization process has recently come under fire. Questions have arisen about how these institutions can be decolonized and how they can be used in partnership with Indigenous peoples to strengthen the Indigenous voices they once silenced. The institutional decolonization of archives becomes especially important when the archival institution in question has been given the responsibility to care for records that relate to gross human rights abuses perpetrated against Indigenous peoples. This is the case for the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR) at the University of Manitoba, which has a mandate to preserve and share the truths of Residential School Survivors. / May 2017

This thesis is the result of two years of study in archival science at the Department of ABM (archive, library, museum) at Uppsala University, Sweden. The purpose of the thesis is to highlight community archives, specifically how the community archive "Archive for the Unexplained" in Norrköping operates as a community archive and handles received documents and records of ufo-reports from UFO-Sweden. Our focus has been to study record- keeping and how the documents are made available to promote the possibility of transparency, research, and ar- chival retrieval. The analysis is divided into two parts: the archive and its internal archival structure, as well as the records. The analysis of the archival structure is focused on how the archive operates as a community archive based on the theory of Terry Cook's four paradigms, which aims to show how archives have gone from closed archives to open places for knowledge. The results of this thesis show how the Archive for the Unexplained as a community archive in contrasts to archives that operate in the official authority and fulfill a vital role in the paranormal field and how its material is primarily used for investigating Unexplained phenomena while it is providing a creative space for a narrative of a fictional and folkloristic nature. This is a two years master's thesis in Archival science.

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