Archival Innovator Award: NARA’s History Hub

The National Archives and Records Administration’s (NARA) History Hub is the 2021 recipient of the Archival Innovator Award from the Society of American Archivists (SAA). The award recognizes archivists, repositories, or organizations that show creativity in approaching professional challenges or the ability to think outside the professional norm or that have an extraordinary impact on a community through archives programs and outreach.  

History Hub is a crowdsourcing platform that offers tools, such as discussion boards, blogs, and community pages, to bring together experts and researchers interested in American history. History Hub’s team—comprised of NARA community managers Kelly Osborn and Darren Cole, and NARA archivist Rebecca Collier—adapted an online, community-based customer service model that not only better meets the needs of NARA’s customers but also makes historical research more accessible to everyone.

A History Hub supporter wrote: “The team demonstrated the ability to think outside of archival and NARA norms in deploying an emerging information technology and required great ability to translate their creativity, innovation, and new thinking into acquiring and deploying a platform, training reference staff on its use and community management best practices, and promoting the platform to the public.”