Bringing Radio Haiti Home

In a dialogue, the authors—one an audiovisual archivist, the other a scholar-turned-archivist—discuss the challenges of processing the Radio Haiti Archive, the seemingly unusual choice of Duke as custodian of the collection, and the sometimes uneasy balance between the practices of a traditional US academic library and providing true access to audiences in Haiti and in the Haitian diaspora. Wagner and Breaden address the ways in which the Radio Haiti archive is an act of devoir de mémoire (memory work), contending that providing meaningful access to digitized Radio Haiti materials—in terms of language, technology, and culture—allows the station to, in a sense, continue to exist in its place of creation, as a bearer of Haiti’s history and heritage.