Your Morning Boost - External Relations and The Essential First Step to Digital Archives

Welcome to your Morning Boost, brought to you by AWB Education. Here we amplify knowledge, widen reach, and broaden impact in education, delivering your daily dose of professional development. This program is sponsored by Grundmeier Leader Services, where together we are transforming education one leader at a time. Now get ready to amplify your day with your Morning Boost. It's Friday and you have earned your final your morning Boost for the week. Happy Friday, everybody. We are concluding our remarkable series with Kristen gwen Becker of History IT, and we're wrapping up with the ultimate actionable advice. Today we focus on the external power of your archives. How do schools effectively use their archives for alumni engagement or donor relations. Then we'll boil down everything we've learned into the most practical starting point. What's a realistic first step for a school looking to begin or refresh it's archival practices. Finally, Kristin has one powerful piece of advice for all of you, So get ready for a motivating finish to your week. All right, Kristin, let's talk about the essential task of external relations. Just how do schools effectively use their archives? Then for alumni engagement or donor relations. So if you think about a digital archive that's truly accessible, that's tagged with every single person's name, every subject, every event, they're able to then curate any content, any connection to that person's interest, which is usually frankly themselves, right, So at its most minimum, you know, here are photos of you, hero, photos of your class. Hey, you are interested in athletics or drama, and so they're able to just have that, you know, they're able to make that personal connection. Anyone in alumni engagement or fundraising is going to tell you that that you know, that is going to move the need further than a cold, you know, general email about being a part of a larger history and make it about you. So if I've been listening all week and getting excited about what you're talking about, and be honest, I'm already at that stage right now, what's a realistic first step? If I'm a school I want to begin this process or to refresh my archival practices, what's that realistic first step for me to consider? So History I T's philosophy is that every single digital preservation project has to begin with the strategic plan, which has to begin with an assessment. So everything we do is about assessing a collection, a physical collection or digital collection, whatever it looks like, where are you, what do you have, what condition is it in, and what's it going to take? Where's it that you want to go? Is that comprehensive to digital preservation? Is it something along the way? So, and then making a plan to get there, however long that's going to take, or however many dollars that's going to cost, having a plan, because we all know what digital initiatives look like when it's like, oh, we're just going to jump, like let's just jump into our yearbooks and we get like two thirds of the way through and then the it guy leaves and then like what happened to those files somewhere? Or like can anyone open a zip disc anymore? Instead of having a plan for true preservation, I would also say, you know, really thinking about involving the stakeholders who are going to use it, and not just looking at you know, the history people or the library, not looking exclusively at that, but the you know, the kind of folks you've been talking about all week, everyone across the organization that could benefit from this, bringing them into that conversation and then building the strategic plan to say, okay, let's invest in digital our kind of what's that plan going to look like and who's going to be involved. This has been an amazing week. It's been fun to listen to your story here and just think about the possibilities that this could provide. If you can give one piece of advice to school leaders, what would that be? Just one Adam, that's that's that's tricky, my one piece of advice. Do it right, do it, do it professionally, do it, you know, make the investment jump in. I would say, well, I would say, I'm going to give you two more things. Start early. Usually, as I mentioned earlier in the week, you know, organizations will start to think about this when they have a milestone, and these processes, you know, it's a longer process. These projects take time, and so if you're looking at one hundred year milestone and you want to start six months before some event, you're in trouble. So thinking really thinking ahead. But the most important thing to do is to prioritize accessibility. The vast majority of the work in building a digital archive comes in cataloging it and tagging it in ways that are meaningful for people to be able to search and explore the materials. So if what you're going to do is scan a bunch of PDFs and put them on your server and then check the you know, weird digital box, don't bother because it's not going to bring any new value. Doctor Gwen Becker tell our listeners how they can get in touch with you if they want more information, want to learn more about your work, or partner up with history it on their own project. How do they get in touch with you? Absolutely so. Yeah, we're historyit dot com. We're on all the socials at history it hashtag save history on all the socials. Odyssey Preservation dot com is our software platform if folks are interested in just going to software route for digital archives and museums. But yeah, go on our website. There are all kinds of resources, but forms you can fill out to connect with us. Even if you're just seeking advice, We're here is that resource. Well, again, thank you for being here. This has been an awesome week. You've been a wonderful guest. I really appreciate you popping on here to let school leaders know about this wonderful project you've got. Thanks so much, Thanks for having me. Yeah, you bet. We want our history to be truly used. Thank you very much for this entire week. It's been awesome. All right, listeners, this has been a wonderful week. I look forward to what we can bring for you next week. Again on your Morning Boost. Thanks for listening. Have a wonderful weekend. I know you have earned it. We'll be back here again on Monday, as we talk with you again next week. That concludes another episode of your Morning Boost. We hope today's daily dose of professional development helps you amplify knowledge, wide in reach, and broaden impact. Your Morning Boost is an AWB education production brought to you with the generous support of Grundmeier Leader Services. Join us again tomorrow for more. Until then, keep boosting your impact.