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Chewelah Needs Research
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Here is a response from Barbara Swanson at the Chewelah Museum:
Hi,
I am not sure this is what you want but here goes.
#1 Documenting and reserching the museum items.
#2 ? Reserch or Interpretation
#3 Once it is documented we would only have to add the donations or loans as they come into the museum.
Barb Swanson
Chewelah Museum
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Preparing Grant Proposal for Preserve America
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With this post I am starting a discussion online as we develop a grant proposal to present to Preserve America, assuming that we are accepted as a Preserve America Community. Your first thought may be "Well if this is a discussion, why is it his Blog?" Fair question. All of us are pretty new to the blog system on Community Server, including Scott Hirsch who manages and got me this far. As a moderated blog, I can build the content and filter it. I can also open it up to public or member posts, which may be faster and less work for me, but also riskier, though I think the worst would be blog spam (Is that as bad as it sounds?) At any rate here we go. I will start putting your emails on this site and try to has out the outlines of a grant proposal.
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Hunters Museum's idea of a Virtual Tour of Museums
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Hunters Museum's idea of a Virtual Tour of Museums
Please check out this website in detail. This is exactly what I have been talking about somehow doing for small out of the way museums and historical sites. They have made this site so interesting that I can't wait to go and see it in person. WHAT DOES EVERYBODY THINK?
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Research Starter Kit
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Hello Stevens County History Preservationists:
As agreed at the last Heritage Network meeting, I have created a form for listing stuff you think should be researched from your museum/group/stash....
In preparation, I visited the Hunters Museum - (This may be your last chance to see it.) I took some photos there, and they already have many suitable for a virtual tour. They also lent me some materials Ted, Dianne and friends have prepared about Hunters: a short history with pictures, a video CD and some post cards.
I have printed a blank Research Form as an Adobe PDF and also saved it as an Excel Spreadsheet. I also filled in a sample sheet to show you what I had in mind. You can find the Research form here: http://theheritagenetwork.org/blogs/barreca/ResearchForm.pdf and the sapmle fille-in form here: http://theheritagenetwork.org/blogs/barreca/ResearchSample.pdf. What I want out of it is a quantifiable number of research hours assigned to identifiable tasks. (Remember we will probably contribute at least half of them for free.) The items, quantity, dates etc. are to help in identifying what you have already and where you want to go with it.
To re-iterate, what the Preserve America program wants from research is to identify and prepare materials for interpretation to promote historical tourism, preservation and community identity. This little trip helped me visualize how this would work.
I see five fundamental outcomes from this research work:
- It will create digital records to speed access for genealogy and interpretation (telling the stories).
- It will help identify, organize and categorize materials for museum use.
- It will highlight important and interesting stories and themes with roots in the collection.
- It will help preserve with scans, photos of collections and copies of media a museum's collection.
- It will help identify materials whose rights for use or copyright are owned by someone else.
This is my first take on the task. I'm open to suggestions. We can continue the blog and talk it over at the next meeting.
Joe
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Share Information but Give Credit
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Hi Joe,
Though I no longer live in Stevens County, I still own property there and certainly am still very much interested in the history of the area. This may not fit into your pending grant (which sounds like a great idea to me) but I thought I’d make you aware of it anyway. A few years ago I led a tour for the Northwest chapter of the Oregon-California Trails Association in which we visited historical sites in Stevens County (and a few in Spokane County) primarily associated with the fur trade and with migration routes into Stevens County, by fur traders and by pioneers, many of whom had come across the Oregon Trail. We also covered Indian sites such as Kettle Falls. In doing research for this tour it became clear to me that there is a whole lot of fascinating history and historical sites in Stevens County that are not known to the general public, and many not to Stevens County residents even. One of the leading guidebooks on historical sites in Washington State doesn’t even include any sites in Stevens County. There is work to be done to make the history of Stevens County known to people.
For that tour I put together a booklet that covered some history of fur traders, settlers, missionaries and miners, as well as some history of some of the Stevens County communities we went through on our tour. I have a huge box of information (and some photographs) that I gathered in researching the tour and accompanying booklet. I am willing to share any of this material with Heritage Network folks, with one caveat: In the past, when I have shared information that I had spent considerable time researching and writing up, when the information was made public, I was given no credit for it whatsoever, even though the wording was mine almost word for word; I really don’t want that to happen again. Also, I have some unique photographs that I would not be willing to share unless I am given credit for them. As I said, I am willing to share what I have learned, but with proper credit given. This is a matter of ethics and professionalism in my view, and is something that should be paid attention to in all that the heritage network does if you want to be taken seriously by the larger historical community.
Here’s to a successful outcome to your grant writing efforts!
Lethene Parks
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Wish list for Grant from NEW Genealogical Society
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As to fitting in to your Preserve America stuff.....definitely making old newspapers available digitally would be a high request for us. We use newspapers extensively in our research whether looking for individuals or looking for items of historical significance (like the building of Grand Coulee Dam and other major events, the history of a building, the history of an area). Having them OCR'd is even a bigger "wish" on our "wish list." Even if not totally accurate, it would be a huge help. We currently have almost 60,000 entries in our newspaper database but it took us over 10 years to get to that point and we still have lots to index.
I know that the Washington State Archives has started to digitize some of our oldest newspapers in the state, but would expect it would be quite awhile before they get over here. You can see what newspapers they have done at
http://www.secstate.wa.gov/history/newspapers.aspx.