Publication Date

5-2015

Description

This poster chronicles a novel archive project—the Documenting Ferguson Project at Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL). Our poster highlighted our steps in the documentation and preservation of materials created in the course of and surrounding events in Ferguson, Missouri following the shooting death of Michael Brown on August 9, 2014. WUSTL created a committee, consisting of University Archives and other library staff, faculty, and additional university staff, to coordinate the efforts to capture the history as it happened. The Documenting Ferguson Project Team was called together in August 2014, soon after the death of Michael Brown and the first protests in Ferguson, Missouri. It was immediately clear that the events unfolding in the St. Louis suburb were producing important records and required a specialized response to target the wealth of born-digital materials. Our poster will address the issues that arose and how the Documenting Ferguson Project confronted them. The approach includes web archiving, crowd sourced content, documentation of the project, preservation, and working with researchers. The events in Ferguson have grown to encompass and touch on many issues facing, not only residents of that community, but people from all walks of life in St. Louis and the rest of the country. As archivists, we are tasked with documenting these events and preserving the memory surrounding them for future generations.

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Disciplines

African American Studies | Digital Humanities | Library and Information Science | Public History | United States History

Comments

Presented at the Midwest Archives Conference (MAC) Annual Meeting, May 6-9 2015, Lexington, Kentucky

Filename

ferguson-poster-v4.pdf

Documenting Ferguson: Capturing History as It Happens

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