Arizona State University is trying to build up its historical collection and they need the community's help to do it.
ASU Archivists want to get the community involved in telling the state's history and they want to show the diverse faces in Arizona throughout the years.
The school has been awarded a hefty grant that will allow them to put on free workshops over the next three years to show the community how to take care of those fragile items that tell their story.
Everyone is welcome to add to the community archive. But they do want to reach some of the minorities in our community -- the Latino, African-American, Asian-American and LGBTQ communities -- to tell the state's story.
They'll help you make digital copies of your items and teach how to interview relatives who have stories to tell.
Archivist Nancy Godoy says, "People have all of these hidden treasures in the homes, the attics and the basements, and they don't know necessarily what to do with them, and so the workshop shows them how to take care of that material and how to become community archivists."
Irma Payan attended previous workshops. She was born and raised in Arizona and so were her parents. She started digging through old pictures, school yearbooks and found old military and even baptism records and was able to get digital copies of them now thanks to this project. It's something she wishes she would've done sooner.
Payan says, "I have something here that I had stored, but I didn't think it was that important. I just saved it. And this is from Cesar Chavez's funeral, and you can see it's damaged. But learning about this now, if I would've taken this course a long time ago, I wouldn't have just thrown it someplace."
There will be more workshops in early 2018. Follow Chicano Collection on Facebook for future workshop dates if you'd like to attend.
