While old photos of major events, places, and celebrities were digitized and published, personal people’s archives remind left on the attics. The current generation of seniors are the last generation who hold the very first and very last analog photos of the mass photography era. To educate senior citizens to digitize and manage online their personal archives and make a big multimedia resource with their blogs is the mission of the FolkHistory project. If we will not do it right now, these priceless archives will be gone together with their owners.
The FolkHistory Project is a proposed educational and multimedia project that is the brainchild of Lena Faber, author, former journalist and associate professor, and refugee from Russia, currently living in Maine.
Participants in the project become students who are willing to share their memories publicly and become contributors and content creators of their personal chapters within the FolkHistory media portal. The content will be family photos captioned with descriptions and related stories. Every story will have the family name and will be placed on the portal map and timeline. Readers and viewers can start searching directly from the map or from the timeline.
Why is this project so important? If we, as a society, do not start preserving our documents and stories, we risk losing these images and stories of microhistory. In the United States, sometimes personal stories are taken for granted. Unlike Europe and Asia, no major wars have occured on North American soil since the 19th century. Government has not experienced widespread destruction or change of power.
While 19th century archives are still available here, we can’t lose these records to floods, fires, or natural disasters. While we do have some digital records for groups of people and towns or places, personal stories are being lost. And today’s culture of immediacy has led to a society that rarely prints pictures. So we are already losing the last generation of people who only have memories saved in printed images. The current generation of seniors are the first and last generation who hold the very first photos of the era when mass photography took off.
Educating people - how to recognize one’s own history and how to catalog and preserve that history - will be at the forefront of the project. We will educate participants on the necessary basics of technology and dealing with their archives. Specific skills include navigating the web, digitizing photos and the use of scanners, content creation including adding stories and labels to photographs, multimedia skills, and both creative plus non-fiction writing. Users of the portal and participants will also have the option to create digital books that can be printed.
Although historic preservation is also a goal of this project, digital literacy and intergenerational collaboration are the main by-products. High on the list of mission objectives is the goal to expand the basic knowledge of digitizing media and using technology for seniors so that their priceless photos and documents won’t be gone with them. The project becomes personal for each participant and provides each with a goal that only they can achieve, helping to fulfill their lives and create (and preserve) meaning from them.
The portal is where everything will reside. The FolkHistory medial portal will draw the picture of real people, real lives, real struggles, and real accomplishments, beyond the official history of wars and political movements as major events, and the lives of celebrities as major characters.
Interest in local events and people has been growing rapidly. The adage “Buy Local” has turned into ‘living locally.’ This is even true in many media outlets where we see smaller local media organizations outperforming larger national organizations. Our mission is to help fill and increase the awareness of and interest in a locality’s past.
The actual process of creating the stories that become housed within the portal provides students the opportunity to document their personal stories - their microhistory. Microhistory is primarily cultural and social and is the investigation of a single event, a town or village, or of an individual. Our project plans to allow readers and participants to view the history of a locality by presenting personal ‘investigations’ of individuals within any given area. We will create a portal housing peoples’ digitized archives and memories.
Part of the portal will be an interactive map, where viewers and participants of the FolkHistory project will be able to see the interconnectivity of people and places. These combined aspects of community, curation, and convening of people’s lives and stories will help to create a collective identity that is being lost in a digital age that increasingly creates isolation and emphasis on the individual.
Microhistory is a concept that most people are not familiar with. And there are significant differences from one locale to another even within states, let alone geographical regions of the country. There is scientific research on the subject of microhistory, but there is no web project or anything of this kind. Our project could be interesting for researchers but is not anticipated to be scientific, rather cultural, based on subjective memories that, in our opinion, may make the results more interesting.
News from the past, told by the people who live it, can help be a check against both official and unofficial versions of history. The current atmosphere within journalism, media, social media, and the plethora of fake news stories that abound on the internet make it vital for individuals to have a way to record their own accounts of events and their lives free from the subjective interpretation of third parties.
Regarding the use of the internet and microhistory, the following comes from an article published by the University of Victoria:
“Overall, microhistory and the web are very well-suited for one another because of the relationship between microhistory and a website and macrohistory and the web. Although the Internet cannot be the only place microhistory is displayed, it is an excellent medium through which to display microhistory, give a starting point for research, create an interest in microhistory, and develop an understanding of what microhistory is, and what its relationship to macrohistory is. It takes time to develop microhistory communities that can do all of these things, but once they are started they can become a vast source of information and can only develop and improve as time goes by.”
Lena Faber will spearhead the educational programs, web design and development, communication, and public relations development. As an asylee, she brings unique perspective to this project. She has traveled to many corners of the globe and has been witness to war and political upheaval that continues to drive her desire to help people archive their own personal history for generations to come. Ms. Faber brings her expertise as a professional journalist, author, photographer and web designer to the table. Currently, Ms. Faber is also an instructor for Community Education, successfully teaching classes on social media for businesses and a course entitled “Save your family history. Crash course on blogging for seniors.”
Who will participate? All people who have archives stored in their garages and attics with no idea what to do with them. People who are afraid of losing those wonderful old black and white pictures of their family as children from generations past. Those who have pictures of themselves or their families on vacations or in front of old buildings or at picnics in local parks that don’t exist any longer.
We all know these people. They are us and our family members. They are primarily senior citizens. Some are active and involved in their communities. Others may be disengaged and in need of socialization and developing digital literacy skills. We find them at local libraries, at churches, in retirement communities, in condominium developments, in coffee shops or local businesses. This type of project can bring additional meaning to lives well lived.
In an effort to create cross-generational cultural and social connections, high school and college students as well as younger adults who already possess computer skills will be tapped to volunteer in assisting with the older adults’ skills and product development. Partnerships between the young adults and seniors are another way that stories can be passed down. Through continued community outreach throughout all phases, the FolkHistory Project stands poised to foster a unique level of civic engagement.
Other users will include . . . everyone. Anyone interested in history, be it local, individual, or the effects of microhistory on macrohistory, will find this project useful. As a multimedia project with plans to grow from a regional to a statewide to a national and international project, the FolkHistory Project will endure for years to come. This is a project of the future that captures the past.
In order for the project to succeed, we are looking for key sponsorships. The first task, and most important to get started, is finding a web hosting company. The project has need of a central entity, preferably a company within mid-coast Maine, to provide this service as an in-kind donation throughout the start-up period which could last several years.
Five Town CSD Adult & Community Education will continue to provide classroom and advertising support for the project. Five Town CSD Adult & Community Education will look to expand the reach of the project throughout the Maine Adult Ed system by asking partner programs to offer classroom space free of charge for the educational sessions.
We will be looking to other community organizations to provide outreach to their constituents, be that through churches, retirement communities, community organizations, libraries, historical societies, and the like.
Public and private grant funding will be sought. Private and corporate sponsorships and donations are anticipated and will be sought.
It is anticipated that all venues will be used through in-kind donations from libraries, adult education programs, schools, colleges, assisted living facilities, and other community forums.