Poole reviews existing scholarship on community archives’ information work, which he approaches as “unprecedently democratic venues for information work” (657).
Benedict Anderson’s concept of imagined communities as one that is built around the construct of shared values and ideals essentially pushes for a division between those who belong in the community and those who do not. The article seemingly argues for the alternatives, in the case of looking at community archives. For the author, community archives need to be involved in what he calls “information work” i.e. the infrastructure of “getting things done” and community archives as “grassroot tools of individual and collective identity, education, and empowerment”.
