Community Cloud Storage

Shift Collective developed Community Cloud Storage to address the needs of community-based archives for affordable digital storage that offers offsite redundancy along and privacy.

Our Approach

We’re utilizing internet protocols to create blah blah blah

While still in beta, Community Cloud Storage is ready for DIY use. We don’t tackle questions around governance—like how you decide who can add or delete things on your storage, that’s up to you. But it’s ready to roll out now for those with some technical skills. Below you’ll see how!

Step by Step Instructions

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Funding

 

Research Outputs:

2-page Technical Brief on Decentralized Storage

click here to download full report from year 1

Year 1: Harm Reduction Strategy for Decentralized Storage Technologies (2023)

download year 2 full report here

Year 2: Developing a Prototype for Decentralized Storage (2024)

 

Related Research:

Year 2 & 3 Working Strands

1. Historypin Platform

Shift Leads: Lynette/Jon

Activities:

  • Determine tech partner

  • Strategy, timing & scope of work

  • Ensuring there is a pathway to decentralized storage

3. Community-Based Archives Collections

Shift Leads: Erin/Bergis

Activities:

  • Identify and work with 5 community-based archives in Year 2, with 3 networks in year 3

  • Support them in digitization and planning process

  • Support them in creating 10 collections on Historypin

  • Document needs, processes, issues

  • Walk through decentralized storage MVP and test viability

 

2. Historypin Preservation Prototype Design

Shift Lead: Jon

Activities:

  • Work with advisors to develop “minimal viable product” based on risk assessment & harm reduction model developed in year 1

  • Draft technical architecture design, requirements and threat models of several options, including IPFS, LOCKSS, and Historypin/Internet Archive APIs

  • Test and refine with community-based archives

 

4. Education and Dissemination

Shift Lead: Zakiya

Activities:

  • Disseminate findings and materials

  • Present at community meetings & workshops, convenings, conferences, etc

  • Organize and host quarterly public calls

 

Announcing the Year 2 Community-Based Archives Partners

We are partnering with 6 community-based archive partners to create 10 digital collections each, helping us to evaluate how likely they would be to use a version of Historypin with a long-term preservation option according to an ethical framework developed in a previous phase of research and their own organizational needs.

Year 2 Outputs and Reports (free to download and reuse, CC-BY-SA):

Download the outputs from year one of our research, including:

  • Scope of Work, Design Plan, Prototype Build, and Assessment for Historypin Decentralized Storage Minimum Viable Product Prototype

Announcing the Year 3 Community-Based Archives Networks

In year three (2025), we are scaling the project together with 3 digital networks of community-based archives. We’ve assembled one of the networks from our own community-based archives partners, and have also teamed up with Asian & Pacific Islander Americans in Historic Preservation (APIAHiP) and Manitos Community Memory Project Digital Archive. These 36 organizations will be taking part in the Shift Collective Summer Institute on Decentralized Storage for Community-Based Archives to learn about decentralized storage, digital collection creation, and the Historypin platform. They’ll be creating demo collections to test the decentralized storage prototype (which we’ll be testing out) and evaluating how this might meet their digital storage needs along with concerns of privacy, permanence, and transparency.

Check out our Year 3 technical demonstration of the decentralized storage pilot from September 30, 2025. We’ll be publishing more details in the coming months.