The mission of the Community Archives of Southwest Virginia, LLC, is to develop and put into practice a new strategy for teaching history, by creating a "co-op" for scholars and history buffs, a digital archive of letters, journals and scrapbooks, and a virtual museum. This educational venture will allow scholars to share their knowledge with others, invite students and interns to contribute papers and conduct research, and eventually create jobs for a small staff. As an added dimension, it will encourage interested adults to become "community historians," offering them training in the techniques of historic methodology, familiarity with the literature, and sufficient confidence to research and write narrative histories, assist others in learning the context of history, and to become advocates of the philosophy that...learning history can be meaningful, practical, and fun.
Services/Products
We offer educational programs, in communities throughout Southwest Virginia, designed to stimulate interest in local history, and develop skills that can strengthen local efforts to promote tourism, create exhibits, publish educational materials, and generally instill an appreciation for history. We intend to promote the preservation of archival materials (letters, journals, scrapbooks, and other "Treasures in the Attic")...as a way to supplement and extend programs already offered by local museums and historical societies., We offer classes and workshops (for teachers, museum staff & volunteers, family historians, etc.) covering topics related to Virginia history, historic methodology, use of the internet for research, preservation of family archives, etc., after school programs to help inspire children to love history and develop connections to their family and community heritage, summer camps for children, with an integrated approach to learning about social history, material culture, and everyday life in the 18th or 19th century., 24 hour Emergency Service