What are the best ways to collaborate with local historical societies?

For library and information science faculty, it is important to join the local historical society, meet their leadership, become familiar with their programs and services, and explore opportunities for student practicums or internships, where students work on needed projects for academic credit.

Find and outline a common cause which all historical societies share in one way or another. It would relate to the 'why' they formed and are passionate to preserve and collect historical, cultural and heritage related stories which are passed on and should not be forgotten. I find it specially important to bring different cultures and local groups together in relation to human rights, equality, diversity and social inclusion.

Local historical societies have very little resources. The one thing they need is capacity. Simple things like website updates, social media management, content management are beyond their capacity. When I collaborate with the historical society, I offer services.

Every community has local history, museums and businesses. Historical societies resources are limited to assist visitors with research or historic information. Define your objective & historic interest. Start on-line to find articles or biographies about the community. Leave a business card at local museums and historical societies. In return you will gain excellent contacts. Many historical societies have clipping files and other information to assist in local historic research. Write biographies or articles as information is discovered. Many publications will accept biographies or articles with the appropriate citations. Become an historic asset to your community.

To approach with historical society for collaboration,there should be common goal and interest. There should be mutual understanding to get benefit of working together. Planning is important to accomplish any work.

At the college level, meeting with the wonderful people (staff, volunteers) at your local historical society and asking, what do you need done? What kinds of projects have you discussed but felt were beyond the skills or time of the historical society members? In the classroom, have students brainstorm roles and decide which role they want. At the end of the semester, always have a public presentation, in which the historical society members, the students, and the audience share the final product, get feedback, and agree on next steps. And always have a "home" for the project, whether that be a freestanding website, a link from the historical society's web page, or a google drive shared with the participants.

The historical society is typically limited in capacity, we need to fit into their org. Join their board, join an existing standing committee. Don't try to create an alignment that does not exist. Get into an alignment with them where they already have a focus.

Right, communication and coordination is mainstream for successful collaboration. Always share thoughts and appreciate other works.

People involved in highly effective and impactful people's movements need historical societies to preserve and tell the story. It is an affinity group, and I realize it all starts with a relationship to get into the inner circle; only then will you discover a mutual interest that will invite them into your story and engage with their interests.

Both libraries and historical societies can work together and share their resources and expertise. Local and community history is an example of this where a library can be the repository for the wealth of knowledge and resources that a historical society may have about the community's history. The historical society can have lectures, workshops and displays and the library can provide the space for these activities.

Since librarians are skilled at researching online and finding useful resources, they can bring their expertise to the local historical society to help patrons search online about their own community. If they want to find more information about their family history, librarians can be useful to help them find the right key terms and resources that can help them. The historical society should have a space for librarians to do their work with patrons.

Libraries and historical societies have natural affinities especially in urban areas where historical societies specialize in specific demographic constituencies. To collaborate on programming is a basic way to leverage knowledge of collections. Network with colleagues from multiple institutions supports reference using referrals that can become the basis for collaborative grant writing to do projects that benefit the community and collections.

Collaborate with schools that may need the historical expertist from the historical communities. Information came from the web so much now, we need interaction with professionals who have actual knowledge for our children and students.

Consider offering library auditorium space for historical society meetings, offer tours and presentations about local records available in the library and how to access them, speak at outside organizational meetings about a local historical event, use a grant to hire a playwright to work with local residents in creating an historical play about the area, and set up tables at regional conferences for local historians. Have a clear system for accepting, archiving, and indexing donated historical materials. This is the one collection that is cheapest to maintain and has a permanent audience who will appreciate your effort.

In developing relationships it is more effective to promote their programs. I think if you want to engage the historical society they will need you to engage in what they are doing. They will not have bandwidth to generate new programs.

Working together should be the motto. Always plan joint programs and services. Workshop can be one of the best way to showcase each other collection.

To work closely with local historical societies, establish personal ties by attending their events and meetings. Set clear objectives and determine the shared goals that are related to their mission. Provide your expertise in areas such as archival research or event planning, showing a willingness to engage in mutually beneficial activities. To ensure a successful and lasting collaboration propose joint projects engage the community and keep communication channels open.

Feedback collection can identify the weakness sand strength of collaboration which will help to plan for future endeavours. Any problem can be solved by fruitful discussion and maintain relationships for further collaboration.

Our City's historical society is defunct so the library became the new home of the collection. Through grants, we have been working with a local historian and her interns to digitize the collection and quite a lot of photos and documents were digitized and are now hosted on FIU dPanther for citizens to see. We recently received another grant and will be using that to work on getting interviews and other historical items the historian has been collecting the last few years onto a product called BiblioBoard, where the public will be able to access them.

Today, we have social media to communicate these local historical societies if they have social media accounts. Before research if we collect pre research topics about these societes to know them, our further research progress goes in easier way.