Led by the co-founders of the Free ‘Em All Radio Archive and two student collaborators, this session will provide a case study of a community oral history archives at Dominican University. Launched in 2016, Free ‘Em All Radio--a call-in podcast hosted by The Lady of Rage and Chairman Fred Hampton Jr. of the Black Panther Party Cubs--has become a historic record in its own right. Each week, the podcast broadcasts the voices of incarcerated people and political activists across diverse communities who report on current events and critical issues including racial injustice and prison abolition. Founded in 2021, the corresponding archive fosters the development of an equitable and inclusive cultural record.
In this session, presenters - including host Chairman Fred Hampton Jr. - will offer a live demonstration of the ArchivesSpace repository, describe the podcast cataloging process, and discuss relationship-building among student catalogers and community stakeholders. The presenters will introduce you to podcast preservation and give practical tips for archivists who wish to begin collecting this new but valuable digital medium. This collection and its collaborators will illustrate an achievable method of developing a community archive on an open-source digital platform, offering a blueprint for those who seek to preserve a more diverse collection of human voices.
