John Sarnowski, Director, The ResCarta Foundation

Proposal Type: Workshop

Abstract: A how to workshop on holding a “ScanDay” where local materials are gathered, digititzed, described, collected and hosted to a public web site. Volunteer training, promotion, work flows, deed forms, equipment required, software and infrastructure necessary to pull off a successful community event.

Seeking: Looking for metadata expertise, promotional expertise, oral history specialists to flush out the experience. The Rescarta Foundation has been promoting and assisting with the “ScanDay” across Wisconsin for the last five years.

Related Topics: Digital, Oral History, Civic Engagement

If you have a direct offer of assistance, sensitive criticism, or wish to share contact information for other people the proposer should reach out to, please get in contact directly: John Sarnowski, john.sarnowski[at]rescarta.org

If you have general ideas or feedback to share please feel free to use the comments feature below.

 


 

Discussion

5 comments
  1. Denise Meringolo says:

    This is a very cool idea. I wonder if the best approach would be to seek out some local partners by connecting with the chair of the local arrangements committee for NCPH 2015

  2. John Dichtl says:

    This workshop might also be highly attractive to the American Association for State and Local History (AASLH), which, as you may know, is headquartered in Nashville. Bob Beatty, AASLH’s vice president for programs, is on the Local Arrangements Committee for the Nashville and knows the public history community there well. You could ask him for suggestions of possible co-panelists like Denise has suggested. (Also, AASLH’s annual conference will be up your way this fall, in St. Paul, MN, September 17-20, so that might be an opportunity to make some connections.) I wonder if any state/local sites have partnered with National Park Service or National Archives outposts on something like this.

  3. Love this idea, and I’ll bet many would be interested in a workshop that discussed how it can be done well. I feel like there should be a good bit of expertise out there on this that could be mined. What about amongst folks in/around the University of Nebraska Lincoln, where they have done these “History Harvest” projects? (I think this idea has spread other places, too, but am not positive where else.) See: http://historyharvest.unl.edu/

  4. Susan Knowles, Center for Historic Preservation, Middle TN State University says:

    Another possible Nashville connection is the Tennessee State Library and Archives, which has been conducting a series of public sessions under the title of Looking Back in Tennessee, most recently focused on the Civil War. Wayne Moore, Deputy Archivist, is on the local arrangements committee (perhaps your could be an off-site session as TSLA is just a block and a half from conference hotel). Their collaboration with the Tennessee State Museum made the project hugely successful; the combination of archivists and curators at these sessions offered historical, archival, and technical expertise to members of the public who brought artifacts to share. As historians and curators, we are all benefiting from the many new digital images of objects in private hands that are now research resources available on TSLA’s website.

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