Documenting the Untold Stories of Feminist Activists at Welfare Rights Initiative

The authors document the process as they undertake the pre-planning, creation, and initial steps towards the construction of a born digital oral history project. The goal with this project is to retool the concept of a digital exhibit as not solely an educational tool aimed at scholarly researchers but also to reach out to a wider audience of community activists interested in examining the history of grassroots activism and the role of grassroots activist organizations in policymaking. Themes include: approaches to user-centered digital library design, lessons learned, and challenges ahead; for whom are digital libraries being created, and for what purpose? digital libraries for individuals, communities, and societies; digital collection building, collection development policy, and content management; techniques for creating collections.