Recently added to Recollection Wisconsin and DPLA, the Living History Project is a multifaceted community history initiative launched by the Madison Public Library earlier this year. The goal of the project is to work with community members and organizations to gather and preserve Madison history.
Within the larger project are several collections made up of audio interviews and digitized photos. Collections are related to themes specific to Madison and the city’s history, such as Neighborhoods & places, People & groups and Moments & events.
The project does not aim to be the end-all, be-all of Madison history; rather, the site includes links to lots of external local history projects to connect people with other stories about Madison, Dane County, and Wisconsin history.
In addition to the digital collections, there are other components that make up the larger Living History Project, including:
- Community story sharing events, such as the Madison Reunion event that took place at Memorial Union (a partnership with University Archives and the Wisconsin Historical Society), and the upcoming re-opening of the newly renovated Madison Municipal Building.
- Volunteer projects, including a digitization project to preserve sixty oral histories (currently contained on audio cassette) conducted by Historic Madison, Inc. in the 1980s.
- Community workshops on topics like Preservation 101 on how to handle and take care of family artifacts long-term.
- Circulating Living History Kits with easy-to-use digital recorders that community members can check out with a library card and use to record family members, neighbors, or even themselves!
The Living History Project is built using Omeka on the “back end” with a Drupal public interface. This is a very collaborative project, with lots of Madison Public Library staff, City of Madison staff, many community members, and many volunteers participating to make it all happen. In October, Madison Public Library’s Laura Damon-Moore shared more about this ongoing project in a radio interview with WORT.
— Posted by Laura Damon-Moore, Community Engagement Librarian, Madison Public Library
