Paper short abstract:

Archival documentary resources provide rich resources for analysis of place and space

Paper long abstract:

Ethnographic archives provide rich resources for the examination of regional/local place-making, community aesthetics and practices of self-representation through a focus on built spaces and sites as revealed in collections material. A corollary is that the examination of content in collections is inextricably linked to a conjoined analysis of the possibilities and limits of the ethnographic imagination and documentary practices that underlie the production of that content. This paper introduces an ongoing mass digitization and access project at the US national library that will provide rich, multi-layered views of the practices of everyday life in local settings for use by research scholars, communities of origin and the general public. The analysis of visual documentation contained in field surveys conducted over the course of three decades (1970's- 90's) aims to generate a conversation about place, space, cultural production and re-production in rural and urban communities across the United States in late twentieth-century America.