Do-it-yourself archives and collections
Just recently I've come across several wonderful examples of archives and collections. The internet is a marvel. I'm especially interested in smaller, more personal collections.
Gallery of historical Suminagashi examples via Tracy Durnell.
Bix discovered, researched, and published The Finger 'Portland’s long-lost, World War II-era, Kaiser shipyard workers zine.'
The Anarchist Libraries Network has a list of libraries and resources for getting one started.
The Fanac Fan History Project preserves scifi fan magazines and fandom material from as early as 1930.
Tools-wise and getting involved, ArchiveBox for self-hosted archiving and Archive Team is fighting the good fight archiving our history. Updating 25th Jan to add: Archive the Unimportant.
Similarly, but on single texts rather than an archive: Imperfect sent me a link to A Pattern Language in relation to my Marianne North project. There's also Phil Gyford's Diary of Samuel Pepys, a big influence for me. My Granddad is Keeping Busy is posting his grandfather's diaries.
Not forgetting all the fantastic zine libraries.
There are also so many archives run by universities, libraries, local history groups, and other organisations. With a bit of digging I found weather records for 1934, the newspapers people would have been reading then, the advertisements, maps of their town, business directories, all sorts. It's amazing.
It's my regular reminder that places like this can't be taken for granted. To donate to Internet Archive, Wikipedia and all these archives when I use them. To say thank you.