community outreach

[Sarah M Christensen]

Hi everyone, 

Tomorrow I'm speaking to a group of international librarians (as well as staff members from READ Global) about ExploreCU. The organizer told me they are probably most interested in the community outreach aspect of this project, though this is something we've struggled with the most. Has anyone has success in developing partnerships with local organizations or individuals. If so, what do these partnerships look like? Do you know if these partnerships are a result of marketing, or more targeted outreach (i.e. contacting specific organizations with a proposal)? 

Right now we're found it easier to target classrooms and make ExploreCU a part of an assignment in order to get more people involved and develop content, but I'd really like to get community members more involved. Perhaps oral history interviews are a a lower-barrier way to get involved? Other ideas?

Cheers, 

Sarah

[Mark Souther]

Sarah (and everyone):

In many cases, organizations have approached us with their own funding to develop sites, but this stems from about a decade of past collaborations being well known in the Cleveland area.  These efforts have varied from our training members of the community to create app content, to organizations assisting us by providing access to raw content (primary sources) that our researchers at the Center have in turn used to curate app sites.  The latter model works more smoothly, as you might expect, but the former is perhaps a richer form of collaboration.  Making clear what your qualitative and technical specs are is important if the community is to contribute content.  I think your qualitative specs on the contributor's guide link you sent separately are very useful, but I don't see more technical specs.  However, in our experience, no matter how much detailed info you provide (whether to community partners or students), you'll still have to troubleshoot on an individual basis on a wide range of matters.  Making clear that your project retains final editorial review rights over content is important too.  Back to your original question, a typical scenario has been to receive funding from an organization, which has tended to be in the ballpark of $300 per app site (so 30 sites might be about $10,000).  Finally, oral history is another great way to involve the community while allowing you to take the lead in drawing upon that content to build app material.  For that, a good model is to seek an organization's assistance in identifying, contacting, and scheduling interviewees that a small cadre of well-trained university students will interview, ideally on special "oral history days" that take place in the organization's meeting spaces in 2, 3, or 4 concurrent sessions (so 3 students could collect 12 interviews in a day's time in 4 concurrent time slots).  I'll close here but am happy to offer other thoughts.

Mark Souther

J. Mark Souther, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of History
Director, Center for Public History + Digital Humanities
Cleveland State University
1860 East 22nd Street, RT 1310
Cleveland, Ohio 44114
Phone: (216) 687-3970
Email: m.so...@csuohio.edu

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http://clevelandhistorical.org

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