Advice and help with building history capacity.
The Minnesota Historical Society’s Local History Services helps Minnesotans preserve and share their history. This blog is a resource of best practices on the wide variety of museum, preservation, conservation, funding, and non-profit management topics. We’re here to help.
Tomorrow's History Access
By: grabitsdm
| Information Technology
| September 23, 2008
This is a question for both members of the public and for those at local historical organizations. Bearing in mind that demand for electronic access might always surpass financial ability to provide service, tell us more about electronic delivery of historical services. What services currently satisfy what kinds of demands? What sorts of electronic services are not being offered? How important is it for local history organizations to have pages on Placeography, Facebook, YouTube, Flikr, and the like? What technology skills do local historical society volunteers and paid staff want/need to learn?
These are broad questions and asked only as it is good to occasionally reflect on what we as a community are doing well and what else might be needed. The discussion that follows hopefully will be about what is done now and what is wished for in the future. I think anyone involved with local history knows how stretched volunteers and staff are, so we shouldn't feel a need to restate that. Instead, I'd like to get a sense of where we as a local history community are, and what kinds of technology might be coming that could be used to good advantage marketing our services and making history more accessible. In order to do that, I will invite the many I know that read this blog but have not commented to share your thoughts. You are observers and users of technology, your thoughts will be important to shaping this discussion.
These are broad questions and asked only as it is good to occasionally reflect on what we as a community are doing well and what else might be needed. The discussion that follows hopefully will be about what is done now and what is wished for in the future. I think anyone involved with local history knows how stretched volunteers and staff are, so we shouldn't feel a need to restate that. Instead, I'd like to get a sense of where we as a local history community are, and what kinds of technology might be coming that could be used to good advantage marketing our services and making history more accessible. In order to do that, I will invite the many I know that read this blog but have not commented to share your thoughts. You are observers and users of technology, your thoughts will be important to shaping this discussion.