Steel & Oil INDUSTRIAL MEMORY ARCHIVE

Contribute an entry

This archive grows by contribution. If you hold a source that documents industrial labor history in Anshan or Houston, a photograph of a site, a public filing, a family document, a recorded interview with consent, you can propose it as an entry. Every submission enters under the same sourcing standard the seed records meet, and every accepted entry gets a stable identifier and a citation line. The aim is a record that other researchers can cite, so the bar is the bar.

Who can contribute

Historians and graduate researchers, archivists and librarians, community and family historians, and people who lived the history in either city. Bilingual contributions are welcome and encouraged; Chinese-language sources are read in the original. You do not need an institutional affiliation. You do need a source that resolves and the right to share it.

What makes a valid entry

An entry is accepted only when it clears four tests:

  1. Two independent sources. Every entry needs at least two independent sources, each of which resolves to something a reader can check: an archival document, a public filing, a published treatment, an object record, or a consented interview transcript. One source is not enough; that is the standard every record in the archive is held to (see Sources & standards).
  2. In scope. The subject sits in the industrial labor history of Anshan steel or Houston upstream oil and gas, or in the direct civic and economic infrastructure around either: the firms, the works, the people, the documents, the events, the sites, the lived memory.
  3. Provenance stated. You can say where the source came from and who holds it. Unsourced assertion does not enter the archive.
  4. Consent, for any interview. Oral histories enter only under a recorded consent term at one of the three release levels (full, pseudonymous, partial). No interview is published without it, and no words are attributed to a real person without their agreement.

The submission template

Fill the same fields every catalog record carries. The first block is the Dublin Core spine; the second is the collection-specific extension. Copy this and complete it, in English or Chinese:

PROPOSED TITLE (English):
TITLE (中文, if applicable):
TYPE: Site | Person | Document | Artifact | Event | Oral History
CASE: Anshan | Houston
CREATOR / custodian:
DATE (era string):
SUBJECT keywords (3-6):
COVERAGE (place; approx lat, lon):
LANGUAGE of the content:
RIGHTS / consent statement:

SUMMARY (one sentence):
DESCRIPTION (1-3 paragraphs):
SIGNIFICANCE to the Anshan-Houston comparison:
PROVENANCE (where it was found; who holds it):
SOURCE 1 (full citation + resolving URL):
SOURCE 2 (full citation + resolving URL):
YOUR NAME and how you wish to be credited:

Send the completed template, with any files or links, to the editor: contribute [at] steel-and-oil.archive (sample address, not yet live). In the launched archive this is a web form that writes a candidate record into the same records data the catalog is built from.

How editorial review works

Submission is not publication. Every proposed entry goes through a short, stated review before it appears in the catalog:

  1. Intake. The editor confirms the entry is in scope and that the two sources resolve. Submissions that fail either are returned with a note, not silently dropped.
  2. Source check. Both sources are opened and verified. A thin but honestly-labeled entry can still enter, described for exactly what it is, rather than be rejected or dressed up.
  3. Consent and rights review. For any interview or personal material, the consent term is confirmed and recorded. Anshan-side subjects are offered the safety addendum described on Sources & standards.
  4. Assignment and credit. An accepted entry is assigned a stable identifier (see How to cite), credited to its contributor in the record, and added to the catalog and the next data release. Contributors keep the rights they came in with; the metadata is licensed CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.

On disagreement. Where sources conflict, the archive records the conflict rather than resolving it by fiat: both readings are cited, and the uncertainty is noted in the record. The editor's job is to hold the standard, not to settle the history.

A note on this stage. This contribution pathway is the design for the launched archive. No outside submission has been accepted yet, and the editorial role is held by the founding editor. The standard described here is what every record in the archive is held to.