Archiving as Creating A Community
Yu-Shih Huang
Community archives, as Andrew Flinn has put it, are “the grassroots activities of documenting, recording and exploring community heritage in which community participation, control and ownership of the project is essential.”¹ What construct a community are “locality, culture, faith, background, or other shared identity or interest,” with which the members identify themselves.² Through the process of creating and managing an archive, a community and what make it as a community may deconstruct and reconstruct. This pattern can be discovered between Taiwanese community and the Taiwan National Treasure,³ an open-source database/movement.
The Taiwan National Treasure was created in 2016 by a group of Taiwanese professionals during their first g0v hackathon in New York.⁴ G0v, combining the ethos of citizen participation, open source, and activism, intends to bolster public discussions with transparent information. The community started as a “hackathon” in 2012 in Taiwan.⁵ In this three-day event, contributors with ideas, passion, and skills collaborated in visualizing the data of government budget and propagating it to more citizens through the Internet.⁶ This format — collaboration in a short amount of time — was then disseminated over Taiwan and even across the Pacific in 2016. During that hackathon in New York, over 85 participants with various backgrounds created about nine projects, including the Taiwan National Treasure.⁷
In the hackathon, Hsiao Hsin-Sheng (蕭新晟), a Taiwanese software engineer, partnered with Lin Yu-Cheng (林育正), a Taiwanese history enthusiast, and Chuang Shih-Chieh (莊士杰) , a first generation Taiwanese American, to produce a platform where the public can digitize the materials about Taiwan in archives and approach those records with less cost and boundaries.⁸ By introducing the concept of open source into the field of the archive, they intended to democratize not only the historical documents per se but also the process of archiving. To them, two main problems obstruct Taiwanese people understanding their history — the lack of accessibility in archives and the absence of self-identification in education system. Hsiao critiqued that it is troublesome and time-consuming to apply for access to the governmental archives in Taiwan.⁹ He believed that the archives should be accessible to everyone without any limitations and that the materials should be interpreted freely by the public as well.¹⁰ As for self-identification, Hsiao complained that he had received no Taiwan history but redundant details of China history in schools.¹¹ Echoing Hsiao’s perspective, Lin identified that, since Taiwanese people have long been pondering who they are, it may be helpful to introduce a third perspective from neither the Taiwanese people nor the Republic of China, the government currently occupying Taiwan, in order to assist the public in reconstructing their histories and identities.¹²
However, except for its name, the project concentrates more on accessibility than self-identification. Hsiao demonstrated a strong preference for maintaining the neutrality of the database and claimed that the U.S., as the third party, can provide a more objective and authentic Taiwanese history. Therefore, he advocated that the Taiwan National Treasure should serve as a librarian rather than a historian to unbiasedly store history sources instead of producing interpretations.¹³ This belief was represented in the process of digitization. In 2017, the team developed an iOS app that randomly assigns the materials to volunteers, who scan the documents through an iPhone, and the app immediately upload the results to the database. Since the volunteer does not decide what to digitize but is assigned specific materials, Hsiao presumed that there would be less bias in their collection.
Based on how the community participates, the project can be divided into four parts: collecting, editing, reproducing, and technology supporting. In the first step, with keywords, such as “Taiwan” or “Formosa,” core members identify materials in the archives that need to be digitized. After the volunteers receive the assigned documents randomly from the Taiwan National Treasure App, they digitize those documents with their iPhones. The next step is editing those uploaded materials through Taiwan National Treasure’s website. As soon as the documents have been transcribed via OCR software and translated by Google translation, users can edit the contents and add tags. To encourage more people to implement the digitized sources, the team held a contest calling for works using the materials in the database in 2018. However, one of the directors of the Taiwan National Treasure disclosed that, since there were only a few submissions, the contest ended without a conclusion. As for technology support, the team has developed its own scanning app and website, and continually recruited new contributors to upgrade the system.
The team of the Taiwan National Treasure has been digitizing the materials about Taiwan since 2016. They have visited the United Nations Archives, the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington DC and Maryland, and the Hoover Institution. There are still some other institutions on their list, and each facility contains bountiful materials related to Taiwan. The team depends on volunteers to fulfill their ambition. Every month, they invite whoever is interested in joining their trip to the archive and scanning documents for a few days. Echoing the goal of the Taiwan National Treasure — publicizing archives — these volunteers can interact physically with the historical documents. The interactions may demystify not only the contents of the archival materials but also the process of archival works. On the other hand, with these events, the Taiwan National Treasure creates a community both through the virtual crowdsourcing and through the actual interactions among attendees. By scanning archival documents at the same time and in the same space, a group identity was established. The contents and the contexts of those documents may not be the key to construct the identity of the group, but the process of working together is.
I participated in their visit to the NARA in Maryland on February 11th and 12th, 2019. There were four directors of the organization and six volunteers, including me, from New York, Washington DC, and Maryland. There were two parts to the event that constructed the community and their identity: digitizing the archival materials and having meals together. When digitizing, the participants would sometimes read through the documents and share what they had found. A volunteer said that, when scanning these materials, she had discovered some new topics in Taiwanese history and would like to learn more. On the other hand, the directors seemed to be intentionally arranging meals for participants to have conversations, and people often discussed their opinions or movements related to Taiwan political affairs with a specific premise — Taiwan independence. Through working together, sharing a similar political preference, and establishing personal relationships, this group fabricated connections among the participants, inside the Taiwan National Treasure, and with “Taiwan.”
Nevertheless, is the identity forged through participation a Taiwanese identity or a Taiwan National Treasure identity? From what I have observed, the identity here is not directly equal to Taiwanese identity, and I do not think that every attendee was conscious of the issue. From the name of the organization, which reads as “National Treasure” (國家寶藏) with Chinese characters without defining what nation is this. People with different ideologies will call their country (to some people, it is even not a country) by different names, such as Taiwan, the Republic of China, or Chinese Taipei. Even though the participants were mostly the supporters of Taiwan independence, the Taiwan National Treasure declares that it is a neutral database and won’t serve any ideologies.
The complicated consciousnesses of Taiwan can also be discovered among the participants during the trip. Some volunteers and a director didn’t show a strong enthusiasm for history. The reason why they attended this event was based on their personal relationship with another director. One of the volunteers was new to the city and wanted to network with people. Yet, one volunteer was a retired Taiwanese professional, who has lived in the U.S. for over forty years. She disclosed to me that, since she had witnessed how the Republic of China restricted some students who fought against its dictatorship from returning Taiwan during the late twentieth century, she would do anything to benefit Taiwan. Except for this senior volunteer, most of them did not politicalize their actions as constructing and demonstrating their identity or their community and seemed to be less likely to interpret their actions of digitizing documents as a part of the practices of their Taiwan identity.
Although the observation of this trip can hardly represent the whole Taiwan National Treasure community, not to mention Taiwanese communities broadly, I still experienced how the team forge their community through online and offline participations. They employed a vague national identity and included — but not limit to — Taiwan independence to reconstruct their Taiwan national treasure. They practice a community archive as Flinn’s definition but broaden it by sustaining the diversity about identities in a community.
[1] Andrew Flinn, “Community histories, community archives: Some opportunities and challenges.” Journal of the Society of Archivists 28 no. 2 (2007): 153. doi:10.1080/00379810701611936.
[2] Andrew Flinn, “Community histories, community archives: Some opportunities and challenges.” Journal of the Society of Archivists 28 no. 2 (2007): 153. doi:10.1080/00379810701611936.
[3] https://www.nationaltreasure.tw/en.
[4] “G0v@NYC 2016/11 紀錄 By Ttcat — Hackmd”. 2016. Hackmd. https://hackmd.io/s/Hy_2DQTzg?fbclid=IwAR13hqZXcW5BxyKcQLT1D1HlampLtf0sYAfdD6Yd9S32fThIetGS7ABaWz0.
[5] “關於零時政府”. G0v.tw. Accessed February 25. https://g0v.tw/zh-TW/about.html.
[6] “關於零時政府”. G0v.tw. Accessed February 25. https://g0v.tw/zh-TW/about.html.
[7] “G0v@NYC 2016/11 紀錄 By Ttcat — Hackmd”. 2016. Hackmd. https://hackmd.io/s/Hy_2DQTzg?fbclid=IwAR13hqZXcW5BxyKcQLT1D1HlampLtf0sYAfdD6Yd9S32fThIetGS7ABaWz0.
[8] Chien, Yun-Chen. 2017. “G0v 獎助金》用鄉民科技開放台灣歷史：尋找遺落在世界的國家寶藏 — G0v.News”. G0v.News. https://g0v.news/g0v-%E7%8D%8E%E5%8A%A9%E9%87%91-%E7%94%A8%E9%84%89%E6%B0%91%E7%A7%91%E6%8A%80%E9%96%8B%E6%94%BE%E5%8F%B0%E7%81%A3%E6%AD%B7%E5%8F%B2-%E5%B0%8B%E6%89%BE%E9%81%BA%E8%90%BD%E5%9C%A8%E4%B8%96%E7%95%8C%E7%9A%84%E5%9C%8B%E5%AE%B6%E5%AF%B6%E8%97%8F-b93199dd3327.
[9] 蔣珮伊，2017年，〈台港兩地青年發起檔案蒐集運動：自小背誦的史實不再理所當然？〉，「端傳媒」， https://theinitium.com/article/20171211-taiwan-hongkong-national-archives-collecting-action/。
[10] 蔣珮伊，2017年，〈台港兩地青年發起檔案蒐集運動：自小背誦的史實不再理所當然？〉，「端傳媒」，https://theinitium.com/article/20171211-taiwan-hongkong-national-archives-collecting-action/。
[11] 蕭新晟，2017年，〈遺落在世界的國家寶藏 — G0v 公民科技創新獎助金〉，「Hackdash」，https://grants.g0v.tw/projects/586e658a6901c8001e1c6a10。
[12] Chien, Yun-Chen. 2017. “G0v 獎助金》用鄉民科技開放台灣歷史：尋找遺落在世界的國家寶藏 — G0v.News”. G0v.News. https://g0v.news/g0v-%E7%8D%8E%E5%8A%A9%E9%87%91-%E7%94%A8%E9%84%89%E6%B0%91%E7%A7%91%E6%8A%80%E9%96%8B%E6%94%BE%E5%8F%B0%E7%81%A3%E6%AD%B7%E5%8F%B2-%E5%B0%8B%E6%89%BE%E9%81%BA%E8%90%BD%E5%9C%A8%E4%B8%96%E7%95%8C%E7%9A%84%E5%9C%8B%E5%AE%B6%E5%AF%B6%E8%97%8F-b93199dd3327.
[13] 蔣珮伊，2017年，〈台港兩地青年發起檔案蒐集運動：自小背誦的史實不再理所當然？〉，「端傳媒」， https://theinitium.com/article/20171211-taiwan-hongkong-national-archives-collecting-action/。
Thanks to Maggie Schreiner, Shih-Chieh Chuang and Yun-Chen Chien for providing valuable feedback and editing.
Yu-Shih Huang is a graduate student in the Archives and Public History Program at New York University.
