This poster discusses our experience establishing a community archive called The Pumphouse Archive: a collection of artifacts, posters, fliers, and tour ephemera from the Midwestern DIY (do-it-yourself) music and art scene. The Pumphouse is the Lawrence, Kansas home and “band house” of Sam and Will Gunnerson: brothers, musicians, and active members of the Midwestern DIY scene. The Pumphouse has been a popular tour stop for bands since 2004, becoming an accidental repository in the process. The Pumphouse Archive documents the web of interconnected bands that developed around the resurgence of the DIY ethos, covering the past decade of punk, metal, math, indie, and garage rock shows in the Midwest.

The collection was processed, and the poster and flier collection digitized, in summer of 2016. A metadata schema was created for the poster and flier collection as a final project in our Fall 2016 Metadata class. We addressed preservation challenges, copyright and access concerns, and digital repository possibilities. We also identified potential user groups, their needs, and access points. Our biggest challenge was establishing ways to describe the most important characteristics of both the physical object and its digital copy. The collection is still growing, will continue to be digitized, and made available online. The DIY music community in the Midwest depends on the passion, talent, and dedication of its many contributors. Our contribution to the DIY community is using our training as archivists to preserve the history of a community which might otherwise not be preserved.