How One Post Can Change History

Empowered local community rediscovers its past by telling its own story.

Russell Lange’s January 6th, 2015 Facebook post featured a black-and-white photograph of himself, his brother, Mark, and their mother, in their Sunday best. They are surrounded by tulips and pergola in Newburgh, New York’s Downing Park.

The image was accompanied by a call to action from the Historical Society of Newburgh Bay and the Highlands to the greater Hudson Valley community: “The idea is to ask folks who grew up here to submit photos that depict familiar scenes from their childhood in Newburgh.”

Five months later, the exhibit “Growing Up in Newburgh” was born. Over a dozen contributors responded with more than 120 images, one rare video and three toys spanning from the 19th century through today.

“The concept is to convey the ephemeral and transient nature of memories such as this and simulate a walk through individual memories of a community,” Russell, the exhibit’s curator, explained.

“For a community like Newburgh, which exists in a state of economic hardship, telling its own story is important,” wrote Matthew Colon, then director of the Historical Society of Newburgh Bay and the Highlands.

“Libraries and historical societies are fundamentally storytellers themselves. Technology gives us enormous opportunity and capacity to capture and preserve stories that have yet to be recorded and told. At Los Angeles Public Library, we are deploying a Mobile Memory Lab into the community where librarians assist residents with digitizing photographs, family history, and oral histories. This is our history and these activities not only help us discover and preserve it, but also ensure that our collections and work reflect the diversity of our city.

Special collections, particularly those not yet processed and digitized, can be made discoverable on local and national platforms through the work of libraries and other collecting institutions. This is incredibly important as so much of our nation’s history rests in these critical organizations. We must make it accessible.” — John F. Szabo, City Librarian, Los Angeles Public Library

One former Newburgher submitted something curious.

It was a series of images of Newburgh in the early 20th century. They featured the donor’s grandfather’s market and, because of this, her family had preserved the photographs for nearly a hundred years.

However, it wasn’t a quaint little corner store what attracted Lange’s eye. The curator’s attention was focused on the workers that could be seen in the foreground. They were in the process of laying the city’s brick roads.

A family album, passed down through generations with profound sentimental value, also happened to be a significant glimpse into the collective history of the Newburgh community.

As simple as the idea is, the concept has important ramifications for local historical societies and libraries. If the Historical Society of Newburgh Bay and the Highlands is willing to embrace the future of storytelling, there is no excuse for other organizations not to follow suit.

“At The Seattle Public Library, we’re always looking for creative solutions to meet our patrons’ changing needs and interests. One of the ways we preserve and share Seattle’s community history is through an oral history project called Sharing Our Voices, where we recorded and animated people’s stories in a short film format.

We’ve also curated digital collections from Seattle’s past, including images from community photographers, early 20th century architectural magazines, Seattle’s first World Fair, the world-famous Pike Place Market and more. These are just some of the ways we are using technology to better engage Seattle residents in our local culture and history.” — Marcellus Turner, Executive Director & Chief Librarian, The Seattle Public Library

Thanks to advances in technology and social media, the world is much more intuitive, interconnected and interactive. It is about time libraries and historical societies fully embraced this fact.

Simply reposting images from an in-house archive or starting a Facebook or Instagram page is missing the point. Relying on monthly or quarterly newsletters, often still distributed in print, does not take advantage of the ways in which engagement has changed. Creating multimedia exhibits that still treat their audience as spectators instead of collaborators is not the same thing as truly innovating.

What these organizations must do is realize the kind of storytelling they are involved in is no longer as unidirectional as it might have been in the past. There is a reciprocal exchange of ideas available to institutions if they just listened to their patrons more closely.

Colon recognized as much in a November 22nd article in 2015. He wrote: “The community let the Society into their photo albums, toy rooms and hearts. In exchange, the Society gave them a voice; a way to visualize their Newburgh experiences both past and present.”

What Colon, and the city of Newburgh, observed is that we are not just consumers of history but participants, as well. Each and every one of us. Historical societies, libraries, museums — the curators of our local and collective stories — have to change the way they source history to take into account the massive potential of community storytelling in a new media world.

If they don’t, they run the risk of seeding the initiative to those who will. New media technologies have changed the paradigm so much that relying on The Way Things Have Always Been is not a viable strategy anymore.

For the Historical Society of Newburgh Bay and the Highlands, a single Facebook post led to an award-winning exhibit, a partnership with SUNY Sullivan and countless community events where members could “foster an appreciation for the past by evoking nostalgia.”

And all it took was thinking differently, incorporating new media and engaging the community to tell its own story.

Historical societies and libraries have the tools at their disposal — we all do.

But the question remains: will they embrace their audience and empower communal storytelling?

Walter Montiel

ADDITIONAL QUOTES FROM HISTORICAL SOCIETY AND LIBRARY LEADERS:

“The TSHA has had a digital presence for about 20 years now, and the most important thing is to adapt to the changing digital environment as quickly as possible. We started with the Handbook of Texas, putting on line the six-volume print edition as text files and are now up to 27,000 entries that include audio and video. About 15 years ago we started digitizing the Southwestern Historical Quarterly.

We have also put together topical ebooks, which include entries from the Handbook along with articles from the Quarterly. Our quarterly newsletter, the Riding Line, is now available online as is a monthly bulletin. Our “Texas Day by Day” is an email blast about the day in Texas history. We post events on our Facebook site and have a Twitter feed. We have a storefront called Legacy of Texas, where we sell our books and other products, as well as an eBay storefront where we raise funds by auctioning books donated to us. We have just developed and launched a dashboard, MyTexas, in which members can control their accounts and will soon be able to participate in group discussions. We’ve done webinars for members and online workshops for teachers.

In other words, we use the technology of today to stay engaged with the public about the Texas past.” — Dr. J.F. de la Teja, CEO, Texas State Historical Association

“Established in 1856, the Florida Historical Society is the oldest existing cultural organization in the state. While we continue to maintain “tried and true” activities such as publishing our academic journal the Florida Historical Quarterly, publishing books through the Florida Historical Society Press, operating the Brevard Museum of History and Natural Science, managing the Historic Rossetter House Museum and Gardens, and hosting an Annual Meeting and Symposium in different Florida cities each year, for more than a decade the organization has been taking an interdisciplinary, multimedia approach to enhance our storytelling and engage a wider audience.

Our public radio program “Florida Frontiers: The Weekly Radio Magazine of the Florida Historical Society” has been broadcast on NPR affiliates throughout the state since January 2009, and is also available as a podcast. Since January 2016, the television series version of “Florida Frontiers” has been airing on PBS affiliates throughout the state. Both programs are archived on our website at myfloridahistory.org.

These media projects are two of our most successful educational outreach tools, engaging the general public as well as academics. Both our radio and television programs focus on the diverse cultures that have been an important part of Florida history, yet are often overlooked.

We also have an active social media presence, particularly on Facebook, where our daily posts reach tens of thousands of followers. We are also pulling in new audiences through original theatrical presentations and music festivals that focus on Florida history and culture.” — Dr. Ben Brotemarkle, Executive Director, Florida Historical Society

“The best storytelling is done person to person and always has been. No exhibit ever connected with a human being quite the same way. From Homer to Mark Twain to Garrison Keeler to Doris Kearns Goodwin, the artful telling of stories — heroic or humorous — is what historians and museums should be studying. Artifacts have stories that need storytellers to make them come to life.

That said, I have been very impressed with the radio program “Moth Radio Hour,” which does storytelling on a large scale and makes connections with people from all walks of life. I would love to see a national radio “History Hour” that transports us, enlightens us, and elevates us to a higher understanding of our place in our communities, in the world, in the universe, and in the cosmos.” — William Fury, Executive Director, Illinois State Historical Society

“Storytelling must engage multiple senses. It’s not enough to just listen to a story. Today, visits to historical sites are more memorable and meaningful because those visits are interactive. In 2016, we launched a new interpretive program called “Hands on History” that sought to enhance the way we share stories at Kona Historical Society. We identified several traditional crafts and practices that were important to the daily lives of our community in the early 20th century. We recognized that many of these activities continued to be practiced, as a hobby, by the Society’s staff, volunteers, and community members. “Hands on History” allows these individuals to share those practices in a very interactive way.

Formal and informal interpretive talks are still the crux of what we do at our historical sites, but hands-on demonstrations allow visitors to see, smell, feel, hear, and (sometimes) taste the story as well. These interactive components of our programs have helped visitors better connect with our sites’ resources and create unique, long lasting memories.

I think there is plenty of room to grow — at our site and at other historical societies — in the ways that we utilize new media to enhance the sites’ storytelling. However, various new media are (and have been) a key tool in the ways in which we share knowledge and information among historical societies. Qualitative and quantitative data about visitor experiences, interpretive techniques, and preservation practices are easily accessible through fellow societies’ blogs, social medial, digital publications, and other media. Such data inspires new approaches and helps inform our decision-making in our interpretive programs.

Furthermore, social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, and particularly customer review platforms like Yelp and TripAdvisor) have had an incredible impact on the ways we develop and manage our public programs. These platforms allow us to review changing visitor interests, assess the impact of new programs, and identify customer service concerns that may have been overlooked by management. These platforms also provide a great promotional tool. Visitors share their experiences, which in turn, inspire other visitors to consider a stop at our historical sites. A significant portion of our visitors indicate that the learned about Kona Historical Society programs, and were inspired to visit, after reading the reviews on TripAdvisor, Yelp, Google, and Facebook.” — Gavin J. Mičulka, Director of Interpretation, Kona Historical Society

“History tends to focus on big trends and ideas over time. We measure our progress in centuries, from milestone events such as the American Revolution to women’s suffrage.

But people measure things on a smaller scale — of a year or a decade. The more we can focus our story on an individual, or small group of people, and their actions, and how these actions may have impacted or resulted from big trends, the more our audience can relate to the story.

Artifacts and documents can serve as witnesses to action in the story, but the better we focus on the people, the better we will engage our community. In essence, we need to scale our stories to our audience.” — Ann Toplovich, Executive Director, Tennessee Historical Society

“History is loaded with intense stories of success, failure, tragedy, happiness, etc. Everything one wants in a good story. Historical societies, museums, libraries, and other cultural institutions (zoos) have grown in their understanding of story over the years. Dioramas, text panels, videos, and virtually every method of delivering your mission lend themselves to stories.

History museums (and societies) are often behind the curve, for no good reason except that they tend to be more reluctant to follow trends. Perhaps they feel tied to old ways, a natural feeling for preservers of history. Art museums seem to be risk takers — no surprise, really, when you consider their missions.

Each institution has limitations or challenges that they must work around: finances, governing boards, antiquated missions, audiences, etc. Audiences, in particular, are more critical, and their access to information and media has changed the way they get and interpret information.

Modern audiences seem to want to see themselves in stories. They like having a hand in creating story. The idea of ‘play’ is one that has come and gone many times, and there is something there. In order to tell better stories, museums must ask better questions. Some do, some don’t.

From assessment, you can build a knowledge of where to begin your story, and a sense of where it can go. Modern audiences also seem to like big statements and gestures. Big statements are dangerous, and can have their challenges. Organizations with financial stability can stand to be more adventurous. Those of us in a state financed institution must be more calculated.” — Greg Hardison, Creative Engagement Specialist, Kentucky Historical Society