\u201cInteracting with communities whose languages \u2014 and with them entire ways of knowing the world \u2014 were at risk of disappearing gave me a firsthand view of what it means when a community loses control over its own records and stories,\u201d she says. \u201cFrom there, it felt very natural to ask the same questions about refugee communities.\u201d<\/p>\n
More than 122 million refugees throughout the world have been uprooted and forcibly displaced from their homes and their personal archives, and the ORSA project aims to help ensure no document or photo is ever lost again.<\/p>\n
Community-centered archiving relies on authentic, trusting relationships, and Frederick admits building trust wasn\u2019t easy. She was often perceived as an outsider within the refugee communities she longed to serve.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that challenge is actually one of the most important things to be honest about,\u201d she says. \u201cRefugee communities have very good reasons to be cautious about outside institutions showing up and encouraging them to share information about their experiences. There\u2019s a long history of researchers and organizations treating vulnerable communities as subjects to be studied rather than partners to work with.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSustained relationships are necessary,\u201d she explains, \u201cbecause trust isn\u2019t something you establish once at a first meeting \u2014 it\u2019s built over time. ORSA\u2019s whole model is built around that idea. We actively involve community members in the design process, in shaping what the ORSA looks like and how it serves them. That\u2019s not \u2018efficient\u2019 in the short term, but it\u2019s the only way to build something that actually belongs to the community it\u2019s meant to serve.\u201d<\/p>\n
ORSA doesn\u2019t have a brick-and-mortar home \u2014 it lives online as a digital archive. There are expenses though, and the creators experienced a crisis last year when an executive order terminated their funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, a federal agency which supports libraries and archives across the country. Luckily, a later court ruling reinstated their grant. Today, they\u2019ve expanded beyond the role of traditional archive to become a comprehensive information hub.<\/p>\n
Frederick is now completing her Ph.D. in Information Science, and she\u2019s earned the Theodore Calvin Pease Award from the Society of American Archivists. She\u2019s opened a private consulting practice with Roeschley to build customized archives and digital asset management systems for institutions and individuals.<\/p>\n
When she\u2019s not preserving critical documents for the world\u2019s refugees, Frederick spends her Saturday mornings at the St. Michael\u2019s Farmer\u2019s Market near Preston Center. Her husband Ross has a booth there, and together, they sell his homemade chow-chow.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe learned firsthand from the master in his tiny South Louisiana hometown of Breaux Bridge, where people are incredibly competitive about their recipes,\u201d she laughs. \u201cHe also makes the perfect pepper jelly and other seasonal rotating jams. Ross is so talented and has done so much to support me in all of my pursuits. It has been fun to be able to support him in this and watch him introduce the magic of South Louisiana cuisine to new people every week.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cInteracting with communities whose languages \u2014 and with them entire ways of knowing the world \u2014 were at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":357576,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[160,162,161],"class_list":["post-357575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-plano","tag-plano","tag-plano-headlines","tag-plano-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=357575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357575\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/357576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=357575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=357575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=357575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}