Refugee families face a barrage of challenges upon entering the United States. A primary obstacle to many refugees is a lack of access to vital records necessary to accessing essential services and establishing their new lives in the United States. As they are often displaced without their personal records, the already-challenging integration into their lives in the United States can be made more difficult due to a lack of records.

Records of Refuge: Supporting Refugee Communities’ Archival Needs (RoR) is a three-year research project conducted by Dr. Ana Roeschley, an Assistant Professor and Director of Archival Studies in the Department of Information Science at the University of North Texas. Inspired by Roeschley's own experiences as a child refugee in the United States and her research on personal and participatory archiving practices, this project aims to close research gaps on the documentary and archival needs of refugees in the United States. Additionally, RoR serves as a crucial foundation for future work to implement new archival practices for refugee communities and the people who work with them. Using grounded theory and user-centered design approaches, data collection will occur through focus groups and interviews with refugees and individuals who work with refugees and through an investigation of personal digital management software and archival repositories.