Archiving Living Historical Narratives with Youth Participatory Action Research

As part of an interdisciplinary place-based summer program, the three adults and nine youth explored local communities as a co-researchers, seeking to preserve and sustain their community's literacies, histories, and stories. Youth co-researchers led the data collection, analysis, and creation of archival resources to capture community literacies, histories, and stories that expanded beyond traditional print-centric resources and archival collections management systems. From our youth co-researchers we learned: (1) prioritizing people as archival sources, (2) living historical narratives lead to critical readings of historical artifacts, and (3) public digital composing practices with historical narratives and historical artifacts. The implications result in recommendations for public libraries, archives, community educators, and classroom educators who hope to replicate local, place-based historical inquiry and preservation.