Preserving Your Rowing Legacy
The first step is to become a Member of The Rowing History Project, by contacting us here.
This will establish a line of communication and enable us to help you navigate your path forward for creating your historical archive. Each situation is unique, but we can help guide you through the process, and help to identify potential sources of funding to offset the costs.
Everything begins with an archive. This is a written record, supplemented with photos and other media, identifying the contents of a collection. This may include such things as:
- Important Governance Documents, such as Charters, Announcements, By-Laws, Minutes, Logs, Legal Agreements, etc.
- Awards and Diplomas
- Posters
- Trophies, Plaques, Medals
- Objects such as boats, oars, components, etc.
- Paintings and other artwork
- Brochures
- Banners
- Newspaper Articles
- Letters
- Books
Each important item in the collection should be described by an archive record, and optionally supplemented with media representation: photos, audios, videos, documents.
We have adopted a well-known archiving standard created by the Society of American Archivists, known as DACS (Describing Archives: A Content Standard). This is an output-neutral set of rules for describing archives, personal papers, and manuscript collections, and can be applied to all material types. It is the U.S. implementation of international standards (ISAD/G and ISAAR/CPF) for the description of archival materials and their creators.
The easiest way to create the archive records is by using an electronic spreadsheet program. We can supply a data dictionary and spreadsheet template. Then, the archive records and media objects can be easily uploaded to The Rowing History Project site. We have already created the data mapping program that will take your archive records and post them to the correct fields in the digital repository. If you choose to use a different archiving standard, we can also map those fields to the repository, but this would take an extra step.
Once the archive records have been uploaded, the repository would automatically support search and display. But the most compelling way to present the collection is by creating digital exhibits. The records tell a story of notable people, places, events, milestones, etc. For example, a Club may have hundreds of searchable objects in the archive, but an exhibit, which is composed of a selection of these objects, may cover the story of a particular person or event. A Club can have many exhibits. This same technique is used by many museums to create their publicly-accessible digital exhibitions.
At the same time, each Member should develop a plan (Collection Management Program) for permanent storage of important original documents, preservation of important objects, and preventing further decay of aging objects and papers. This may include photocopying important papers and photographing objects. Members may choose to physically store important originals under the custody of a local historical society.
A collections management program may also address issues of object ownership, rights, accessioning/deaccessioning, gift statements, etc. We can provide example documents and guidelines on these issues.