We spent several days discussing the question of how to deal with the Co-Op’s fibrous time capsules. Hidden in Fairhaven, the contents were unknown but potentially valuable for the upcoming 50th anniversary. The Co-Op seemed to entrust us with years of delicate history.
This early in the process, we had no preconceived end goal, and only two boxes of materials with which the Co-Op wanted to build their 50th anniversary celebration showcase.
Our discussions moved to digitizing the photos and documents, including purchasing a hard drive and using Paul’s janky scanner, hopefully without destroying them. Adobe Lightroom seemed like a reasonable program to catalog and organize the scanned artifacts. But, we faced the task of trying to solve a major archival issue, while having no prior experience with the archival process.
We toyed with the invention of a process which would produce weekly stories created from the artifacts found in these boxes. Some excitement grew around this idea between Jeremy Cushman, our project manager, and the Co-Op. This component of the project gave us the opportunity to continuously build interest in the Co-Op leading up to the anniversary. But after careful consideration, we reached the decision to leave archiving these sensitive documents to actual, trained archivists. Jeremy referred the Co-Op to the Washington State Archives for the “notorious boxes” to be catalogued. Engaging with the idea of these “weekly stories” still had merit, though. The idea of a process that had a standard, repeating form, which would ideally generate more possible content, influenced our interview work plans.
Following that decision, there was a momentary delay while we outlined our goals. The project then shifted towards gathering oral histories about the Co-Op through interviewing founders and long time contributors. But, before contacting anyone, we had to develop a framework for interviews. Rather than typical the question-answer interview format, we needed these to flow like conversations. In trying to collect oral histories, we needed to make sure we captured the stories of the Co-Op and its history. Oral histories allow us to share the stories that build up Bellingham’s history, heard directly from the people involved. Our framework, consisting of several statements encapsulating what we wanted to learn about the Co-Op, helped us engage with our interviewees.
Our initial leads for interviews came in the form of three names, founders of the Co-Op: Melissa Queen, Alison Magraw, and Ron Sorensen. The search for Ron had begun.