In this article, I demonstrate how Qataris, in not seeing themselves or their communities reflected in these modern-day mainstream institutions, are actively engaging in community archiving activity. I maintain that community archiving activity is happening in Qatar (and other places in the Arabian, also known as Persian, Gulf) because of the estrangement the importation of foreign heritage expertise has caused. I call for us to recognize how everyday Qataris, neither heritage “experts” nor professionally trained archivists and yet possessing expertise in their own cultural practices, have created cultural identity-affirming archival collections within the last decade on social media sites such as Instagram and Twitter. The article draws on my experience teaching graduate students in a Library and Information Science program in Qatar for three years. As an insider/outsider, a Muslim, Black American instructor working at a branch of a British university in Qatar, I was privy to the intellectual discussions of heritage sector colleagues as well as the private reflections of local Qatari and Qatar-born students on the state of heritage projects in their country.
