Power+Place Collaborative's History Harvest collects and digitizes archives of the community.
For over a year, Elon University Master’s of Higher Education student Emily Moser has been leading the Alamance County History Harvest, an initiative affiliated with the Power + Place Collaborative that focuses on building a community archive through digitizing the historical materials of Alamance County citizens and storytellers.
The Power+Place Collaborative is a partnership between Elon University’s Center for Design Thinking, diverse faculty across campus and community organizations. Their goal is to collect, preserve and share oral histories and digital stories in partnership with residents from diverse communities across Alamance County.
“We’ve really been trying to highlight the storytellers of Power+Place and the communities that interface with Power+Place, particularly the African American communities in Alamance County,” Moser said. “It’s rooted in accessibility to create counter archives – archives outside of a traditional university or library archive.”
Moser holds many roles at Elon, along with her time doing History Harvest, including being the program coordinator for the Center for Engaged Learning and the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning. Through her work, she’s interweaved all her interests into one, including her love for objects and public history.
“I hope that objects can be another way people can connect,” Moser said. “I think that the History Harvest can be that. You don’t have to be a permanent resident of Alamance County and the items don’t have to be about Alamance County. It can be about you as someone living in Alamance County, that’s just as valid.”
Power+Place stores its archived materials from its storytellers and its History Harvest materials on Omeka, an openly accessible platform for digital collections and exhibitions. So far, Power+Place has archived over 106 documents, photos, transcripts, and more to their database that is accessible to anyone. They will work this summer on adding all of the donated materials to the Omeka site, along with hosting additional Harvest events.
Coordinating and planning for the History Harvest started in the summer of 2024, then transitioned to one of Assistant Professor of History Amanda Kleintop’s fall Museum Studies and Public History classes, where students learned how to do some of the work themselves.
“We had an initial open History Harvest in September at Snow Camp Outdoor Theater,” Moser said. “We’ve done pop-up History Harvest events with Power+Place. We are really lucky that students from Dr. Kleintop’s class last fall stayed interested. A benefit of Elon being a close-knit community is that there’s a lot of interpersonal connection.”
According to Moser, History Harvest was designed at the University of Nebraska as a public history project designed to engage students. The student-led initiative encourages working directly with community members to collect and digitize donated materials. Moser will be at the Gibsonville Public Library’s Juneteenth Celebration on June 14, also referred to as Juneteenth, to collect and further expand the History Harvest database.
The setup is “way more simple than you think,” only using a book scanner that saves scans directly to a hard drive and metadata forms that describe the specifics of the object on the website. Moser says that those who bring the materials still keep ownership of the object brought to History Harvest, which will be recorded in the metadata.
Connect with Power+Place Collaborative
If you are looking to donate any objects or materials to the History Harvest archive, you can contact Moser at emoser3@elon.edu or Center for Design Thinking director Danielle Lake at dlake@elon.edu for further information.
This summer, you can also join the Center for Design Thinking and the Power + Place Collaborative at Burlington 4th Fridays where the organization will be sharing digital stories from diverse community members.
In the fall, Power+Place will host Stories of Alamance County 2025, a public screening and community dialogue featuring new digital stories focusing on rootedness, migration, and belonging. These stories are co-created by Elon students and local partners, including the African American Cultural Arts & History Center and the CityGate Dream Center.
A History Harvest, community dialogue and lunch will be held along with the screening open to all members of the community to join! Register online.
Learn more about the Power + Place Collaborative and make a donation online.