Methods and Data
This project aims to engage in critical metadata and historical practices that respect and foreground Black lives. The project concerns itself, first and foremost, with collecting historical material relating to Black individuals, families, and communities in Keene and the greater Monadnock region to highlight their histories for the public. Additionally, this digital collection attends to reparative metadata practices that are "people-first." This means that the descriptions of the data make an effort to highlight those who are often obscured, neglected, and forgotten in descriptive archival practices. It also hopes to give contextualization to the harmful ways in which traditional archiving practices and processes of documentation have perpetuated the racialization of non-white individuals.
To learn more about what each field of metadata means, and how I attempt to illuminate BIPOC individuals through them, see the Metadata page.
To learn more about historical terminology that appears in these 19th century histories that helps aid researchers in the discovery of relevant archival material, see the Glossary page.
My project has been inspired and informed by similar projects that make an effort to collect material related to different facets of Black History. Some of these include, but aren’t limited to: