The Untapped Resource of the Local Historical Society

 

2012-09-21 07.27.22

For the past seven months, I have worked as a consultant for Chippewa County Historical Society, in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. The experience has taught me a lot about the resources available at local public history institutions, and how little I knew about their possibilities for use in the classroom.

Because it’s in a small town, operated by an all-volunteer staff, and infrequently open, the historical society was understandably not on many teachers’ and professors’ lists of resources they could use in the classroom. One of my goals when I started work there as the historical society’s first paid staff member was to take steps toward changing that. As I learned more about the thousands of artifacts at the Historical Society, I came to appreciate how beneficial these little-known artifacts could be in the classroom. I encountered a diary from a woman who moved to Chippewa Falls in the 1870s, describing in detail the grueling nature of life in rural Wisconsin. I found the bulletin from the memorial service for President John F. Kennedy given by a local Presbyterian church. I became familiar with the Society’s collection of logging tools, children’s toys, schoolbooks, clothes, sheet music, and artwork, all of which attest to the unique history of the community.

I also met with Dr. Erin Devlin, an Assistant Professor of History at the nearby University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. She and I discussed her idea to do a project with the Historical Society that would be beneficial to the students in her public history course and to the Historical Society itself. It involved redesigning the Historical Society’s history kits—essentially containers with artifacts and classroom teaching materials pertaining to a specific historical subject or era—a project that would be the focus of her spring course, and, when finished, would benefit her students and would provide a tremendous resource for the Historical Society. I am excited about this project, and think it has tremendous potential to help the Historical Society showcase its resources to the community, and provide a valuable tool for high school, middle school, and elementary school teachers in the Chippewa Valley.

My experience at Chippewa County Historical Society has me thinking about how many history teachers there are in small towns like Chippewa Falls, and how many local historical societies containing invaluable resources that go unknown by teachers. How do you take advantage of public history resources in your area? If you teach a local history class, do you work closely with the museum/library/historical society on crafting specific course assignments? What more do you think we as historians and teachers can do to assist local historical societies and museums? I have my own thoughts on this, but I would be very interested in others’ feedback.  I think that local historical societies are a truly untapped resource for the many historians who don’t teach in large cities with well-known museums close by.

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