Enabling Access to the Federal Writers' Project Slave Narratives: A Case Study in Digital Archive Design
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Abstract
In the 1930s, over 2 300 former enslaved people were interviewed, taped, and photographed as part of the American Federal Writers’ Project (FWP). No other initiative recorded to such a great extent the voices of the formerly enslaved. Although this collection has great utility for scholarly research and public education, the current online archive from the Library of Congress is poorly designed and difficult to use. For my Master’s thesis, I have worked to conceptualize what an ethical, accessible online archive for the FWP Slave Narratives might look like. I have approached this task in three parts: a consideration, and emphatic rejection, of the principles of neutrality; extensive study of the history and complexity of the Narratives; and examination of how the affordances of digital archives could be used to make the Narratives more accessible. This work functions as a case study of the challenges in designing online archives for complicated historical documents.