The Archival Documentation of Diasporic Croatian Community Experiences research project focuses on diaspora heritage material of the Croatian community in the greater Los Angeles area. This interdisciplinary research is situated among the fields of Archival and Information Studies, Heritage Studies and Cultural Anthropology. Research about historical and contemporary diaspora is prominent in discourse globally and libraries, archives, and museums (LAMs) are now also engaging substantively with concerns of personal and collective memory, identity formation related to community heritage and transnational approach to core processes of preservation, appraisal, description and representation of such material under their custody. Traces that immigrant communities printed on the host country, nature and types of their connections with their original national and ethnic identity and homeland through heritage, offer important insights not only for the accounts of past but of present also.

The project is funded through a Fulbright visiting scholar grant which has been awarded to principal investigator Dr. Tamara Štefanac from the National and University Library in Zagreb (Croatia), in the academic year 2022/2023.