Community memory : building multimedia archives on the Internet

Abstract

Can we use technology to build and strengthen bonds within communities? Can we build technology that will help to elaborate and preserve the shared history of a community? Can we make the technology easy to use, even for beginning computer users? Community Memory is an attempt to answer those questions. It is a Web-based environment where a community can collaborate to build an electronic scrapbook. Narrative expression, both as stories and as photographs, is the tool with which the communities elaborate their shared history and identity. Two communities, an extended family and a high school reunion class, have begun using the tools, and data was collected on their interactions during a period of several months. The communities were given an email list to use as well as the Web-based tools of the scrapbook. The data show that communities approach the project quite differently and that strong preferences emerged both between the two groups and within one of the groups for different modes of communicating their stories.