Maine Community Heritage Project
promoting community through the exploration of local history
Visit the Community Websites page to see the many dynamic local history websites created by towns and cities around the state since 2006.
The Maine Community Heritage Project (MCHP) is an intensive one-year program that mobilizes Maine communities around the exploration, gathering, and sharing of their local history. Each year (July-June), four local teams—each made up of representatives from local schools, libraries, and historical organizations—work closely with MHS staff to build substantial websites within Maine Memory Network dedicated to the history of their communities.
Program History
The Maine Community Heritage Project (MCHP) was developed in response to successful, though informal, projects pairing schools and historical societies starting in about 2004. (For more information on those early projects, visit our Community Gallery.) Demand from other communities who wanted to collaborate with Maine Memory Network (MMN) necessitated more formal procedures, better support, and new technical tools. In response, Maine Historical Society and Maine State Library applied for and received in 2007 a three-year Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) National Leadership Grant to develop and pilot MCHP.
Response to the program was immediate and substantial. Approximately 50 communities applied for 16 slots during MCHP's 2008-09 and 2009-10 project years. The teams chosen to build websites within MMN dedicated to the history of their communities included: Bangor, Bath, Biddeford, Blue Hill, Cumberland/North Yarmouth, Farmington, Guilford, Hallowell, Hampden, Islesboro, Lincoln, Lubec, New Portland, Presque Isle, Scarborough, and Thomaston. Their completed websites include a narrative history of the community, five or more exhibits on special topics, student sections, hundreds of digitized images, and more. Diverse communities with far-ranging interests, backgrounds, resources, and goals were able to use the MCHP, and their resulting websites, to address specific local needs and issues.
Due to the overwhelming success of the MCHP, Maine Historical Society and Maine State Library were able to secure a second National Leadership Grant in 2010 to create the Community Mobilization Program, which offers a broader menu of grant options to communities who wish to participate in Maine Memory Network in both large and small ways. The Maine Community Heritiage Project remains an option under this new program, with approximately four slots available per year.
Who Should Apply
The MCHP is the most intensive MMN training program and requires a significant commitment of time and effort by your local team. Participation will enable your community to immerse itself in its history; discover new ways to come together, collaborate and share resources; and to develop significant skills and capacity. Our staff is available to discuss your community's interest, team, and application.
Program Activities
Local teams will lead a community-wide engagement with their town's history, identify and share resources, develop substantial technical, project planning, and collaboration skills, deepen local partnerships, and create a substantial website that provides a centralized place for their community to access its history. Key project activities include:
- Participating in MCHP Orientation in July and a mid-year training (January) at MHS;
- Attending monthly team meetings and regular work sessions;
- conducting an inventory of local historical resources;
- digitizing 100-150 historical items from local collections and uploading them to Maine Memory Network;
- writing an illustrated narrative essay that introduces key themes and topics in the history of the community (approximately 3,000 words);
- creating five online exhibits that draw on historical documents, photographs, and artifacts to explore specific topics in local history;
- pulling this material together into their new website; and
- organizing several community-wide events
Benefits of Participation
The program creates numerous opportunities for students, teachers, local historical society members, librarians, and others in the community to come together, to collaborate, and to share their particular interests, knowledge, and skills.
- Librarians: (1) deepen their relationship and interaction with schools and historical organizations; (2) increase their capacity to serve as a key source for information about local history; and (3) continue to develop their technology skills.
- Staff/Volunteers of historical organizations: (1) develop close partnerships with schools and libraries; (2) increase awareness of and support for their organization within their community and beyond; and (3) receive help digitizing, interpreting, and sharing their collections online.
- Teachers: (1) develop skills, experiences, and relationships that enable them to more effectively engage their community; (2) participate in a project that is aligned to Maine's Learning Results (MLRs) and easily tailored to meet school curriculum objectives; (3) provide a meaningful service-learning opportunity for their students; and (4) earn contact hours for recertification.
- Students: (1) become actively engaged in their community, learn about its history, and play a prominent role in sharing that history; (2) develop and apply research, critical thinking, writing, technology, communication, and literacy skills; and (3) achieve key academic goals and MLRs.
Your Community History Website
The website your team creates will provide a centralized, resource-packed, online place where people throughout your community and beyond can go to learn about the history of your town. The MCHP takes advantage of user-friendly tools Maine Memory staff has developed that enable any community or group to build their own historical website within Maine Memory Network. Local teams will be able to add text, historical items, contemporary images, links, audio, and video to their website, and, to a certain degree, customize menu items, layout, etc. Each team will receive full training and support in the use of these tools.
Creating a website through the MCHP will enable your team to take advantage of Maine Memory's robust infrastructure, expand your community's presence on the web, and to present its history within the context of a nationally recognized website that thousands of people throughout Maine and across the country use to learn about Maine history. Participation also enables your team to avoid hiring a web designer, paying for hosting, or buying software.
See the current Community Websites on Maine Memory.
Local Team
Work in each local community will be planned and coordinated by a local planning team, the group that should submit its community's application. Each planning team should include at least one representative from a local library, historical organization, and school. The planning team may also include students. Each team will designate a team coordinator to serve as its local point person and to help coordinate project activities. The planning team will meet monthly, often with MHS staff in attendance, to coordinate project activities, monitor progress, and discuss opportunities and issues that arise, and to facilitate communication with MHS. Maine Historical staff will help teams organize their work, identify specific project tasks, set priorities, define specific roles and responsibilities for team members and other local participants, and assist in all phases of the project. We anticipate that each team will be organized a little differently, and reflect the particular interests, needs, talents, and temperaments of its community.
There will be many opportunities for additional members of each community to get involved and contribute. The planning team, in fact, should form the nucleus of a larger team of local participants—historical society members, teachers, students, librarians, retirees, service club members, civically-engaged individuals, and other volunteers—who will contribute to the project in a variety of ways according to their time, interest, and ability. Some of these opportunities might include mentoring students, helping with research, sharing information and knowledge, transcribing documents, scanning photographs, writing, editing, or participating in interviews.
Expectations for Local Teams
Successfully completing the program requires a significant commitment of time and effort by your local team. Local teams will be expected to meet formally at least once a month to plan and monitor project activities and to get together regularly as needed throughout the program year to complete program activities. Each partner is required to attend the mandatory project orientation in Portland on July 21-22, 2011 and mid-year training on January 19, 2012. Each partner is expected to contribute to the team and remain engaged throughout the program year. Please discuss these expectations as a team prior to applying and contact program staff with any questions.
For More Information
Please contact the Community Partnership Coordinator at lvpicard@mainehistory.org or call 774-1822 x215.