RICHMOND, Va. – The Richmond Public Library is calling on the community to contribute personal stories, photos, and artifacts to create a digital archive documenting the removal of Confederate monuments from the city.
The Monuments Collection, part of the library system’s Digital Special Collections, currently contains items like a photo of the monuments in storage, and official government records such as public comment logs. And although those documents are an important piece of the story, the team behind the project says there is a much fuller story to be told.
“The reason we want to add to the Monuments Collection is so that it’s not just the city’s voice by way of the city government in the archives, in the publicly available historical record,” said Ben Himmelfarb, Branch Manager at Richmond’s Main Library. “We want everyday people’s voices in there.”
The Memory Lab team will host collection events at Richmond’s libraries throughout September and October:
- Westover Hills Branch Library: Wednesday, Sept. 17, 6 to 8 p.m.
- Main Library: Saturday, Oct. 4, 1 to 4 p.m.
- Hull Street Branch Library: Tuesday, Oct. 21, 6 to 8 p.m.
- West End Branch Library: Thursday, Oct. 23, 6 to 8 p.m.
- Ginter Park Branch Library: Sunday, Oct. 26, 2 to 4 p.m.
- Belmont Branch Library: Wednesday, Oct 29, 6 to 8 p.m.
Special Collections Librarian Chloe McCormick said the team will be on-hand at these events to help document your experience of the time period, in whatever form that may take.
“This can be everything from sending us photos that they might have on their phone or computer, recording oral histories with us, bringing in signs that they created,” McCormick said.
The library welcomes digital or physical copies of photos, videos, documents, signs, flyers, oral histories and written memories. Contributors can keep their originals while the library creates digital copies for the archive.
“We’re open to a wide variety of formats or items, whatever people feel is important to share with us,” McCormick said.
The materials in the Monuments Collection are publicly available for non-commercial use. The team hopes the archive, with the help of community contributions, can tell as many sides of the story as possible.
"It’s great for us, as Richmonders, to be able to tell our own stories ourselves through our own mouths, and to show how we actually feel about things," said Marvin Hicks, the library’s Community Memory Fellow. "To let the voices of the people be known and to have our own archive full of our own personal histories and stories.”
For more information, contact MemoryLab@rva.gov or (804)-646-1609.
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