World Digital Preservation Day 2026: Using Concordia’s Digital Lab to Digitize Community Archive Materials

While Montreal Roller Derby (MTLRD) is only 20 years old, much of its history has already been lost. Websites have shut down, photos and materials have been lost, and ephemera has lived up to its name. Founded in 2006, during the booming age of MySpace and early internet culture, most of MTLRD’s materials were digital. But the lack of surviving materials from the league’s early years is a testament to the increasingly apparent fact that digital materials are often more fragile than physical ones; which is why digital preservation is so important! 

For the uninitiated, roller derby is a full-contact women’s and gender-inclusive sport played on quad rollerskates. MTLRD is a highly competitive league, currently ranking 7th in the world. But it’s still a bootstrapped, D.I.Y. community, and one that means the world to those involved. As a small, woman- and queer-run organization, MTLRD’s history has largely gone unrecorded by mainstream archives. To help remedy this, the MTLRD Archives were founded in 2024 to collect as much of its remaining history as possible and organize it into a small community archive.

Most of MTLRD’s materials are “born-digital”, which means they were originally created in a digital format. For example, the poster above, which was made using a graphic design platform. Ironically, though, the only surviving versions of these materials are often printed copies. In order to preserve these materials, we needed to digitize our posters, photo rosters, season programs, game programs, ephemera, and more, but did not have the resources to do so independently. 

Like many small community collections, the MTLRD Archives has a limited budget and equally limited access to digitization and digital preservation resources. Concordia RMA’s Digital Lab and their team were very helpful in opening their space to us, and this collaboration led to over 200 digital surrogates which are now available on our Internet Archive page. Having these materials digitized means granting access to these rare surviving copies of materials like the photo roster below, to be enjoyed by alumni, fans, current skaters, other derby leagues, and more.

Using the Digital Preservation Lab and its digitization equipment was straightforward and well documented. This project mainly involved working with the flatbed scanner and bulk scanner at the ‘Digitization Station’, but the lab also has a comprehensive suite of tools and software for digitizing audiovisual materials.

Of course, digitization is only one small piece of digital preservation. Scanning something doesn’t, by itself, automatically make it preserved forever. But, for the MTLRD Archives, this project was an important and very practical step toward preserving our materials and making them more accessible. We’re very grateful to Concordia and the RMA team for making the lab and its resources available to us.

A message for other community archives: If you’re a community archive who doesn’t struggle with access to resources and digitization equipment, tell me your secrets. Otherwise, consider leveraging the resources of larger institutions to protect your histories and make them more widely accessible to your community. I am happy to chat about my experiences to anyone in this same boat, and the Concordia RMA team is also a great resource!

A message for other institutional archives: Take a page out of Concordia RMA’s book! Private and institutional archives and libraries often have access to resources, expertise, and tools that are out of reach for most community archives. Consider how you can use those resources to foster positive relationships with the communities around you and support local community archival endeavours. 

Author Bio: Natasha Fisher (a.k.a. Joan of Anarchy) currently works as the Digital Archivist of The ArQuives and as Archivist of the Montreal Roller Derby Archives. She is passionate about web and digital preservation, and preserving community stories.