Recuerdos Hablados/Memories Spoken: Toward the Co-Creation of Digital Knowledge with Community Significance

Collaborative relationships among libraries, archives, and museums can fruitfully engage cultural community members in collaborative construction of digital knowledge. A continuum of co-creation approaches in the Center for Colorado & the West at Auraria Library illustrates the value of working together. The most mature community-generated initiative produces digital images with contextualizing metadata of cultural "significance." Examples suggest that inclusive, community-generated digital knowledge activities can shape interpretations and narratives of the past and present, thereby influencing construction of the future, as community members express their contexts, concepts, and truths. Concluding remarks consider implications for community-generated digital knowledge activities that give "voice" to underrepresented populations and suggest new directions for organizational purpose and professional practice.