[MassHistPres] a website creation question

[Lee Wright]

Sharon--

Glad to read that you're planning to make your information widely available.

I serve on both the board of our historical society and on our historical
commission, and in 2008 felt that we should make our city's historic
property survey available to all by posting it online.  The board of the
historical society agreed, and over a few months two volunteers, neither of
whom has any technical or traditional web development skills, scanned and
posted the information.  They spent less than $100 in total.

Complete information on what we used to create the site, including scanning
the forms and posting pictures and other documents, is here:
http://historicmarlborough.org/Creating_this_site.html.

The narrative from the study is here:
http://historicmarlborough.org/Architecture.html.

The property survey is here:
http://historicmarlborough.org/Property_Survey.html.


One comment: Shouldn't we all assume that the Web is the first and most
important place for this (and all other) information?  Is there any effort
at the Massachusetts Historical Commission to roll out a web-based approach
for property survey data collection, editing, posting, and updating?

Regardless of what's done at the state level, communities that are having
new surveys conducted should require that the individuals and firms they
work with use modern (and cheap and easy-to-use) tools so that the
information can easily made available to all online.

Good luck with your project--

Lee Wright | Marlborough



-----Original Message-----
From: masshistpres-bounces at cs.umb.edu
[mailto:masshistpres-bounces at cs.umb.edu] On Behalf Of Sharon Genin
Sent: Wednesday, July 07, 2010 10:48 AM
To: masshistpres at cs.umb.edu
Subject: [MassHistPres] a website creation question

hello all - Egremont Historical Commission, located near Great Barrington in
the Berkshires, is planning to create an interactive website to make our
Archive holdings more widely accessible. Information to be presented on it
includes the MHC inventory sheets, maps, a variety of written data and
photos of historic articles relative to the town's past.

Our budget is limited, so...if  anyone can recommend website creators you
have worked with (and therefore who might already be familiar with the kinds
of website structure we'd need) , or know of any pro-bono "angels" to help
out this process, we'd be very grateful to have them.

Thanks,

Sharon Genin - Egremont Historical Commission PO Box 218 Egremont MA 01258


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