Shar­ing our Knowl­edge
Part 10: Our Inter­net Presence

Shar­ing our Knowl­edge is a series of arti­cles about the His­to­rian Archives Project and how you can become involved.

Strong­hold Cas­tle Descendants

The more I think about the His­to­rian Archives project, the more I real­ize that our Inter­net pres­ence is key to mak­ing the project work. How do we find peo­ple inter­ested in help­ing? How do we find peo­ple with knowl­edge or exper­tise to share?

Get the Word Out

We use the Newslet­ter and the Web site to get the word out, just as we always have.

• The Newslet­ter tar­gets our exist­ing mem­ber­ship, many of whom make very lit­tle use of com­put­ers or Web sites.
• The Web site is avail­able to our exist­ing mem­ber­ship, but is our pri­mary means of reach­ing poten­tial mem­bers, and par­tic­u­larly the younger generation.

Show Inter­est­ing Results

Our Web site allows us to do far more than tell about what we plan to do. We can show things are actu­ally happening!

Even though they are not a direct part of the His­to­rian Archives project, we can and should enhance our online pres­ence with the following:

• Photo albums and slide shows – fam­ily reunion pho­tos, his­toric pho­tos, other items of Asso­ci­a­tion interest
• A mes­sage board, allow­ing peo­ple to imme­di­ately begin inter­act­ing with the Asso­ci­a­tion, post His­to­rian queries, dis­cuss the upcom­ing Reunion, and so on
• Begin a Dig­i­tal Library, demon­strat­ing the value of what we’re after
• Make some sort of infor­ma­tion avail­able on CD and instant down­load as soon as we can
• Var­i­ous col­or­ful charts and dia­grams. They are easy to gen­er­ate, and can show such things as our rela­tion­ship to Notable Relatives
• Essays and excerpts from our pub­lished material

These “inter­est­ing results” are key to get­ting the His­to­rian Archives project off the ground in the first place! An inter­est­ing project already in progress is far more attractive.

A sec­ond key, after show­ing inter­est­ing arti­facts, is to show early results from the His­to­rian Archives project. The more essays, man­u­scripts, and his­tor­i­cal infor­ma­tion that we can show online, or as avail­able for pur­chase, the more we gain momen­tum and addi­tional interest.

Please share your ideas!

• Click Here to visit the project mes­sage board
• Click Here for the com­plete list of articles
• Reply below