Documented history
Community Curation, Not Data Extraction
Preservation should increase a community’s control over its own record.
NMAAHC’s digitization and community-curation programs use technology to support family history, home-movie preservation, community archives, and knowledge sharing. The digital-first model matters because valuable records often remain dispersed in homes and local organizations rather than centralized institutions.
Access is not the same as surrender. A responsible project clarifies who owns files, who may describe or publish them, how copies return home, and whether contributors can limit future use. Digitization succeeds when it strengthens custodianship instead of converting trust into an extractable dataset.