Remembrance of Contemporary Events: On Setting Up The Sunflower Movement Archive

In the late evening of March 18, 2014, students and activists stormed into and occupied the main chamber of Taiwan's Legislature. The event set off the Sunflower Movement, signifying a turning point in Taiwan's history. Researchers at Academia Sinica arranged to acquire all the supporting artifacts and documentary materials in the chamber before the protest came to a peaceful end. In this paper, we discuss the issues in archiving and making available to the public a large collection of artifacts created by thousands of participants in a contemporary event. We demonstrate systems designed to encourage people to identify items of their own in the archive. We show how an accessible catalog to the archive can help people tell their stories hence collectively may strengthen the public's recollections about the movement.

Finally write up our work on the Sunflower Movement Archive for Digital Humanities 2017. The paper feels more like reporting than academic writing. Nevertheless it is a relief. First time for me to use reStructuredText for long-form writing. I use rst2html for XHTML output, then pandoc for the ODT file. Very happy about my choice of the tools.

Coincidentally I just learn today is the very first Freedom of Speech Day in Taiwan.