Citizen Historian Offers Tools to Preserve Knoxville’s Personal & Community Stories

What would someone researching Knoxville a hundred years from now learn from the things you’ve kept? Or someone simply trying to understand your life?

I think about the Rubbermaid bin in our basement marked “sentimental,” a wild and chaotic assortment of photos, drawings, letters, poems, newspaper clippings, random objects and assorted ephemera I’ve stuffed into it over the years. Perhaps someday a future generation of our family will sort through it, shaking their heads in (hopefully) amused disbelief. “Dang, grandma was crazy.”

I’d at least like them to have enough context to appreciate exactly how.

The East Tennessee History Center takes those everyday pieces of our lives seriously. Its new Citizen Historian project, a partnership between Knox County Public Library and the East Tennessee Historical Society, helps individuals and organizations preserve their own history, with its stories intact. 

I recently attended a public training session for the project, hoping to get a box or two going for endeavors I’m involved with. (Sorry, Leslie’s Rubbermaid Bin of Mystery will remain sealed for the protection of everyone implicated.)

Several organizations and nonprofits, along with a first round of individuals, are assembling boxes of materials that document their histories. Staff walked us through what to collect, how to protect it, and how to make it useful to someone who wasn’t there.

Adam Alfrey, assistant director for historical services at Knox County Public Library, described the challenge of convincing people that their experiences belong in an archive at all. But both professional and amateur researchers regularly come looking for photographs, menus and other traces of everyday life that nobody thought to save. 

He recalled a collecting effort around Knoxville’s 1992 bicentennial, when residents brought family albums and other materials to the library for scanning. Those connections led to larger donations and, in his view, a collection more representative of the community.

“It really became this process of the community saying these are the stories that need to be put into that building,” he said.

Citizen Historian renews that invitation, including materials created digitally. While vintage is of course welcome, nothing is too recent: Part of the goal is to capture life in the here and now during the United States’ 250th anniversary.

Grant funding supported 250 collection kits, which include archival folders, acid-free paper, documentation worksheets, a small box for objects and a flash drive. Funding came through Friends of the Knox County Public Library through an agreement with the State of Tennessee administered by the Tennessee Commission for the United States Semiquincentennial.

Organizers are targeting Dec. 14 for participants to return their boxes and share what they learned. They emphasized curating a focused, thoughtful, well-documented collection. A box that tells a particular story is more useful than a box stuffed with everything anyone could find, à la my Rubbermaid bin. 

The staff shared tips for effective preservation. Store documents flat, give them room in their folders, watch for damaging fasteners and adhesives, and hang onto original photographs after scanning them. For oral histories, prepare questions, identify the speakers and date, and leave room for the conversation to wander.

Above all, they emphasized keeping the story with the material. Adam compared objects without any context to the antiques decorating a Cracker Barrel: interesting to look at, but disconnected from the people who used them. “How do we keep the story with the object,” he asked, “and make sure that it stays part of it?”

The session also reminded me of the amazing free research resources available through the History Center and the Library, from the Knox County Archives (second floor) and McClung Collection (third floor) to the Memory Lab at Lawson McGhee Library, where people can digitize photographs, documents and several audio and video formats. For materials that need more specialized attention, the Tennessee Archive of Moving Image and Sound (TAMIS) can help assess what you have. And on top of that, they’re constantly hosting workshops on genealogy, DIY research and more. 

You don’t need an official box, and you don’t have to donate your belongings, to take part in Citizen Historian’s larger purpose. “The act of preservation, of going through and keeping materials safe for future generations, is really what’s at the core of the project,” Adam said.

The printed guide is available at the History Center, and instructions and worksheets are available on the Citizen Historian website. They’re useful whether you’re preparing a contribution to the public collection or organizing whatever your version of my Rubbermaid bin is to pass along to your children.

Organizers hope the project gives people a better understanding of what archivists do: research, reconnect stories with materials, and organize collections so those stories can be found. 

We’re fortunate to have that expertise here and people eager to share it. Bring them your questions. You may have more history on your hands than you think!

p.s. A reminder that admission to the East Tennessee History Center is FREE for a span of 250 days that began on June 1 in commemoration of the 250th Anniversary of the United States. Visit the ETHS website to learn about current exhibitions, events, programming and more, as well as the Library website with all its many resources here.