Community Archiving in War Time

Pedagogical practices may be integral to disruption of inequality and violence. Our project develops this claim by engaging students, volunteers and library professionals from Ukraine into building a community archive, Ukrainian Libraries in Wartime. Pedagogical practices we employ draw from peace education and archival pedagogy. We explore possibilities of service learning and praxis-based education to develop in our students professional and personal skills of working at the time of crisis (Bajaj, 2015; Renner,2009; Reardon and Cabezudo 2002). We employ Omeka to create a community archive that functions as a repository of evidence of crimes against libraries, while documenting the history of the resistance of Ukrainian librarians. Our project commenced in 2024 and is still ongoing. Using reflection and discussion with students, we learn and document how supporting Ukrainian professionals helped some transform their attitudes toward the war from feeling anger and frustration to experiencing hope, and developing a sense of agency//ability to foster some change. We also learned that developing a sense of solidarity and connectedness with the Ukrainian professional community enriches both Ukrainian partners and our students. Consulting archiving pedagogy, we also emphasize participation, shared stewardship, multiplicity of voices/approaches and advocacy to development of a community archive (Cook, 2013; Kuecker, et al. 2024). We hope sharing our pedagogical insights with ALISE community will enlighten educators in their struggles to develop tools that inspire compassion and lead to professional and personal successes.