Thursday, June 1, 2017

U.S. Libertarian archives moved to Colorado

The Libertarian Party’s national archives now live in Colorado | The Colorado Independent - Corey Hutchins:

May 30, 2017 - "Colorado, the birthplace of the national Libertarian Party, is now something else: host of the party’s trove of physical archives since its founding in 1971 in Colorado Springs.... Colorado, a state with about 1 percent of its registered voting population claiming membership in the party, has always had an outsized role in Libertarian history. Now, just this spring, the party’s physical history relocated from a storage facility in Alexandria, Virginia, to Parker, Colorado.

"Leading the effort to bring those records to the party’s birthplace was Caryn Ann Harlos of Castle Rock, the state party’s pink-haired spokeswoman who serves as the national party’s representative for nine western states. On a December trip to the East Coast on party business, she asked to see archives many thought were destroyed in a flood when they were housed in the basement of the famous Watergate building. Instead, Harlos found a room of records largely intact. Boxes of newsletters, convention material, even contents from the desks of former party officials.

"'I got a burr under my saddle and was like "This stuff needs to be preserved,"' she said over the phone recently.

"The national party set up a committee and formulated a $10,000 budget to make it happen. Party people packed the archives in a U-Haul and a staffer drove it west.

"For the past several weeks, Harlos, a paralegal with two decades of document management  experience, has, in her own words, been becoming one with the records.... Her goal is to organize and digitize the documents, and then upload them to the online crowdsourced Libertarian history site Lpedia.

"She stresses it is not a public Libertarian Party museum or anything, but anyone who wants to take a look can make an appointment with her.

"'There are people very passionate about the history,' she says. 'I have people planning weeklong vacations to come and work on these records in Colorado.'"

Read more: http://www.coloradoindependent.com/165618/libertarian-party-archives-colorado
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