Contribute
This archive grows by objects and by corrections. Both are wanted, and corrections more than objects.
Correct a record
If you can read a caption this catalogue marked illegible, identify a publisher it left open, tighten a date, or show that a front and back have been wrongly paired, that is the single most valuable thing you can send. Quote the record number and say what you can see and how you know.
Contribute an object
If you hold a photograph, card, document or press print relating to Chinese American history and would like it catalogued here, the archive can work from photographs — the object never has to leave you.
- Photograph the front, flat and square, in daylight, filling the frame. A phone is fine. Do not crop.
- Photograph the back as well, always. On press prints and many cards the back carries more information than the front.
- Photograph any text close up if it is small or faint — imprints, stamps, pencilled numbers, labels.
- Tell the archive what you know: where the object came from, who owned it, anything written about it. Say plainly which parts are family memory and which are documented. Both are recorded, and they are recorded differently.
What the archive will and will not publish
Published
- The object, uncropped
- Everything printed on it, transcribed
- Verified historical context
- A named statement of what is uncertain
Not published
- A living person’s address, contact details or identifying documents
- Provenance details a lender asks to keep private
- Attributions the archive cannot support
- A guessed caption presented as a read one
What to send
Object: what it is, as best you can say Size: roughly, in inches or cm Front: photograph attached Back: photograph attached Text: anything you can read on it Story: where it came from, who had it Known: which parts of the story are documented Terms: may the archive publish the image? under whose name?
Send to Jeffrey Liu through Tarita Foundation.