Throughout Summer 2021, we facilitated four Digital Readiness Fairs where local history practitioners and invited guest experts shared their experiences working with digital projects including their challenges and successes, “best practices” and a few lessons learned along the way.
Did you miss the Digital Readiness Fairs? We’ve got you covered! Content from all four Digital Readiness Fairs is accessible here.
The Digital Readiness Fairs were hosted by four members of our Launch Committee:
- Katie Stilp, Local History Librarian at the Appleton Public Library
- Michelle Gobert, Museum Board Member at the Crandon Area Historical Society and Positive Youth Development Educator at UW-Extension Forest County
- Tammy Schutz, Executive Director of the Barron County Historical Society
- Chris Allen, Executive Director of the Kenosha County Historical Society
Hosting organizations helped arrange the speakers, topics, publicity plans and event arrangements for their own fairs, and their localized support drew participants and speakers most needed by hosts’ communities of practice. We asked the hosts to share their thoughts, lessons learned, and tips and tricks with us below. What lessons can you use for your own digital projects and events?
Katie Stilp
It was so great to be able to see so many people building their networks – and being able to build my own with other local history practitioners around the state. There are so many awesome projects happening around the state; it gave me ideas of things I might want to work on in the future with our own collection or potential community collaborations we can pursue when we do navigate a new digitization project. I think the projects discussed are only the tip of the iceberg of things we can accomplish around the state and that digitization of materials is only going to increase as demand for access to information increases. As a genealogist it is so awesome to be able to search online for materials when it isn’t possible to physically visit a location – during pandemic times or not! The only thing that I would’ve done differently would be to be able to host the event in person (with the option to attend virtually for those not within a reasonable drive time) but obviously with the pandemic this was not safely possible. Hopefully in the future we can do something like this again and have it be in person, which definitely adds another element to the networking.
Michelle Gobert
Participating in the community of practice allowed me to make professional connections with others in the same field of study. We already knew and had confirmed during the Fair that volunteer members are interested in participating in professional development activities and that having a local history community of practice can offer volunteers a place to make meaningful contributions to their community. Participating in the digital fair as a host allowed us to promote the event to our members who are active in our museum but not yet engaged in having an online presence. The digital fair allowed us to network amongst ourselves and encouraged all of us to brainstorm ideas to move our digital collections forward. One thing we might have done differently would be to offer handouts to registered participants. One of the benefits of attending continuing education classes and/or workshops/seminars is the handouts and vendor freebies. If there is a next time, encourage people to enroll early to get their “workshop in a box” materials! Our organization now has a deeper understanding of what the study of local history can offer the community. The mission of our organization includes the word educate and I believe the individuals that participated in the digital fair gained a deeper knowledge that our mission goes beyond our museum. Working with WiLS is great! I hope to continue and encourage additional Extension professionals to partner with their local libraries and museums on local history programming. I would have attended more digital fairs but my schedule did not allow me to do so. I love that the individual sessions are now available to view and I plan to share some of these with members in the future!
Thanks to everyone who attended or participated in the Fairs, and don’t worry – if you missed a session, all the recordings are available on our Fairs website. Check out the fairs, let us know what you think, and join the community of practice!
These fairs and the Digital Readiness Community of Practice are supported by an Archives Collaboratives Implementation Grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC), the granting arm of the National Archives.
