Robert J. Sullivan Jr. served the Harrisonburg, VA community for more than two decades as its city planner and was beloved for his dedication as “unofficial historian” and community advocate. This panel discussion will draw on a project involving the Robert J. Sullivan Jr. Papers at James Madison University, tracing the progress of this multiformat collection from initial appraisal to programming and outreach. Panel members will reflect on the challenges and opportunities in undertaking a collaborative community project, managing the priorities and expectations of numerous stakeholders and their respective constituents, building community connections by documenting and performing outreach, outsourcing digitization and adding the content to an institutional repository, and how this case study in community collaboration successfully brought together different communities of researchers.