Community Archives ???are the grassroots activities of documenting, recording, and exploring
community heritage in which community participation, control, and ownership of the project is
essential??? (Flinn, 2007). It is the aggregation of shared interests, identity, and memories by a group of
individuals in the community. One such project is the Cunningham Children???s Home Archives in
Urbana, Illinois. This project, initiated by CCH in collaboration with University of Illinois graduate
students, preserves the memories of former residents through the archivilization of photographs, audiovisual
materials, and papers. This project exemplifies the need of a local institution as well as the need
of graduate students in engaging to the community. Thus, in this poster, we will describe the
collaborative work between CCH and the university through its graduate students.
CCH is a former orphanage and is now a residential treatment center dedicated to helping children,
youths, and their families. The history of CCH since its inception in the late 1800s includes memories of
staff and former residents. These memories are represented in photographs, audio-video tapes, art works,
and letters. These materials document part of many people???s lives and are, often, the only memories of
their childhood. Additionally, CCH has been an institution in Champaign County for over 100 years and
is a significant part of the community. Hence our efforts together with CCH staff are valuable to the
preservation of history of the local community and to the memories of many people directly and
indirectly part of the children???s home.
So, in this poster, we will describe the first stage of the project, which includes inventory of materials
and recommendations for long-term preservation as well as discussion of the future of the project. The
first stage of the project involves the assessment of the photograph collection in the archives. The
photograph collection is the bulk of the materials at the CCH archives and is heavily accessed by staff
and former residents. We also set a short-term goal for the first stage, which was to establish the
recommendations for organizing and preserving the current photograph collection and future photograph
collections of the archives. Ultimately, the long-term goal of the project is to have the materials, both
non-digital and born-digital materials, properly archived for the future
