In support of the IMLS Grant "Community Development Model for Digital Community Archives" awarded to Virginia Tech in 2019, Virginia Tech university Libraries hosted four forum sessions for community organizations located in the greater Southwest Virginia to discuss a model for developing an equitable, community-developed archive. This was facilitated by the Institute for Engagement & Negotiation at the University of Virginia. The sessions were conducted remotely on Zoom and recorded. The four sessions included discussion on what the Southwest Virginia Digital Archive is and how it may serve the wider community; functional requirements community members may have in order to effectively display their content; the Memorandum of Agreement that would officially document the collaboration; and the development of a community advisory board to ensure ongoing support.

This dataset includes four TXT files of transcriptions from each of the four sessions. The transcriptions have been cleaned and anonymized to protect the community participants. Participants agreed to have anonymized transcripts made public. Members of the Virginia Tech faculty and the Institute for Engagement & Negotiation staff are named to provide context.

Additional grant information may be found at https://www.imls.gov/grants/awarded/lg-15-19-0137-19.