In October 2011, the committee unveiled the Toolkit, sending announcements via the RAO listserv and the SAA listserv.
Goal of 2011-2012 was to publicize the Toolkit. To that end, the committee:
- Sent an announcement to all the regional archival groups for distribution through their communication tools.
- Eden Orelove, the RAO intern created the email list for us in her “spare time,” for which applaud her responsibility and thoroughness.
- Shaun and his colleagues created a publicity flyer for school librarians and media specialists, and committee members send these to state associations of school librarians and media specialist. Closer collaboration with the national group, rather than state by state, might be helpful in promoting NHD and helping school librarians include more primary sources in their instruction.
- Polina Ilieva added the QR code to the NHD Toolkit and set up a Google analytics account to evaluate the effect of our outreach.
- Presentation of sessions about NHD at Midwest Archives Confernence by Tanya Zanish-Belcher and Kathryn Otto and off-conference workshop about NHD at MidAtlantic Records and Archives Conference by Doris Malkmus, Matt Herbison, and NARA educator Andrea Reidell. Laura Smith and Sherri Berger presented about NHD to teachers in Connecticut and California respectively.
- Google analytics report showed heavy traffic from the NHD site to the Toolkit. This highlighted the extent to which working as partners with NHD was a tremendous success! Traffic from Google was also strong. Significant “Bumps” in daily site visits possibly reflected when announcements from our outreach to various groups were sent out. We were unable to corroborate this due to the lack of feedback from the state or regional organizations about when they sent out our publicity. This should be remedied in future outreach.
- Shaun setting up Marketplace for annual meeting.
Upcoming ideas:
- Further discussion with Brian Doyle about moving the toolkit to Drupal is in order.
- Add visuals to the site, improve overall appeal, especially for students
- Get toolkit on state NHD sites
- See if NARA would publicize it and the SAA Toolkit
- Work with ALA/School librarian section
- Publicize via teacher organizations, and influential teacher blogs and website.
Sincerely,
Doris Malkmus and Shaun Hays, co-chairs, RAO NHD Committee
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