The History Truck

Do you know about the Philadelphia History Truck?

In April, I had the opportunity to meet Erin Bernard, the creator, curator, and public historian of the Philadelphia History Truck at the National Council on Public History Conference in Nashville.

Like a food truck, the History Truck brings history to the people. Erin strives to tell the story of Philadelphia one neighborhood at a time. Her goal is to connect Philadelphians to their history and allow them to participate in the processes of museum work.

In this post, you will discover how the History Truck works and how you can support its efforts.

How the History Truck Works

Erin, her team, and truck operate in a 10-step cycle:

1. Partner with a neighborhood association

2. Build community relationships by participating in neighborhood activities

3. Facilitate 1:1 oral history interviews & host a storytelling block party featuring neighborhood memories and objects

4. History Truck staff conduct research to verify and contextualize oral histories about the community

5. Use the truck to transport and display an historically-based art exhibit in community green spaces

6. Hold meetings with community members to design a new exhibit about their community

7. Display the exhibit in a neighborhood space to help activate the cultural energy within the neighborhood and empower community members to see and use their neighborhood as a museum and art space

8. Host an exhibit opening that celebrates the artists within the community who helped to make the exhibit

9. Downsize the exhibit and use the truck to transport it across Philadelphia for display in other neighborhoods as a means of connecting neighborhoods with the community message

10. Select a new neighborhood. Start the cycle again

Tonight, June 19, 2015, the Philadelphia History Truck will host its second-annual community exhibit: They Say They Gonna Build, an exhibit that explores university expansion and community building in North Philadelphia.

Conclusion

Erin has proven that the History Truck model works.

She has enabled residents in two Philadelphia neighborhoods to connect with their past and participate in conveying their history to their fellow Philadelphians. However, like digital history projects, the work of the History Truck requires time, manpower, and funding to keep going.

In fact, the Philadelphia History Truck project needs a new truck!

For the past two years, Erin and her team have borrowed a truck while they demonstrated that the "History Truck" model of community-based history works. Now the project needs a new truck that will provide it with a permanent home.

Please consider supporting this endeavor. You can find more information about the History Truck and its Indiegogo campaign by clicking on the appropriate links.

Book of the Week: Magna Carta and Its Gifts to Canada

[simpleazon-image align="right" asin="1459731123" locale="us" height="500" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61MOh1uk7gL.jpg" width="500"]This week Magna Carta celebrates its 800th birthday. Therefore it seems fitting that this week's "Book of the Week" is [simpleazon-link asin="1459731123" locale="us"]Magna Carta and Its Gifts to Canada: Democracy, Law, and Human Rights[/simpleazon-link]. Harris and I will discuss Magna Carta's gifts to the United States too when we chat next week for Ben Franklin's World: A Podcast About Early American History

Book Description from Amazon.com

The year 2015 marks the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta, the Great Charter imposed on King John by his barons in the thirteenth century to ensure he upheld traditional customs of the nobility. Though it began as a safeguard of the aristocracy, over the past 800 years, the Magna Carta has become a cornerstone of democratic ideals for all.

After centuries of obscurity, the Magna Carta was rediscovered in the seventeenth century, and has informed numerous documents upholding human rights, including the American Declaration of Independence, the French Declaration of the Rights of Man, and the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights. For Canadians, it has informed key documents from the Royal Proclamation of 1763 that shaped the then-British Colonies and their relations with First Nations, to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This book complements the 2015 Magna Carta Canada exhibition of the Durham Cathedral Magna Carta and Charter of the Forest.

How Do We Monetize Digital History Projects?

How do we monetize digital history projects? This question preoccupies my mind. I am in a position where I need to seriously consider how I can make Ben Franklin’s World both self-supporting and a job that pays me for the time I put into the show.

In this post, you will discover how Ben Franklin's World has fared six months since its launch and six ideas for how history communicators might monetize their projects to earn the financial support they need for their work.

State of Ben Franklin’s World: 6 Months Since Launch

Ben Franklin’s World: A Podcast About Early American History launched just over 6 months ago. To date, it has 36 episodes and has received over 185,000 downloads.

Podcast Statistics

Statistically, Ben Franklin’s World has done exceptionally well.

Podcast hosting service Libsyn released statistics for January 2015. Libsyn hosts approximately 18,000 podcasts. In January 2015, new podcast episodes averaged 195 downloads within the first month of release. On average, each podcast experienced 1,921 total downloads over their entire catalog for the month.

New episodes of Ben Franklin’s World receive around 2,000 downloads within their first week of release and the entire catalog averages over 25,000 downloads per month.

Measurable Impact

Listeners engage with me to tell me how much they enjoy the show and specific episodes. Guest historians have told me that they have seen sales spikes in books after their interview aired. Recently, Mental Floss featured Ben Franklin's World in its list of “19 History Podcasts that will Delight Your Brain."

By all measures Ben Franklin’s World is a success. The podcast is realizing the goal I set out to achieve: create wide public awareness about early American history and the work of professional historians.

Financial Realities

I love producing Ben Franklin’s World and being a part of its success, but what started as a side project and hobby has become my full-time, unpaid job. In fact, I pay the podcast to keep it going.

Each episode costs $90 to produce. This cost includes website and audio hosting services, the discounted fees of my professional audio engineer, and the fees associated with the tools I need to promote each episode and help grow the audience.

This fee does not include any of my start-up costs: recording equipment and software, graphic design, website theme, educational resources, and professionally produced segment bumpers (the Ben Franklin’s World intro, outro, and in-show music and voiceovers). Nor does $90 per episode include my time.

Like many digital history projects, Ben Franklin’s World has become a very expensive hobby. As an historian without institutional support, my family funds my podcast. This needs to change.

I want to keep Ben Franklin’s World going, but I need to find a way to make the show self-funding. Ideally, I would find a way to earn enough money so that Ben Franklin’s World could start paying me for my time too.

I would also love to generate enough revenue to hire people to help with the show so I can produce more episodes, shows, and historic event podcast series (i.e. 10 episodes on the American Revolution, Civil War, Native American History, etc.) and add educational resources to each episode.

This leaves me with the quandary: How do we monetize digital history projects?

Ideas for Monetizing Digital History Projects

Presently, I have six ideas for how I and others with expensive, but worthy digital history projects might earn revenue to help support our work.

1. Advertising

Website Advertising: Google Adwords offers the easiest way to place ads on your website. However, unless you have a high-traffic website, you most likely won't earn enough income from Google Adwords to cover your website hosting costs.

The most profitable way to earn money through website advertisements is to seek out partners who want to reach your specific audience.

Podcast Episode Advertising: Many podcasters offer ads in their episodes. Some have national sponsors like MailChimp, Squarespace, Lynda.com, and Audible.com. Others have more local sponsors that are unique to their audience or they advertise their own products and services.

Podcasters present sponsor ads by reading a blurb about their sponsor or by talking about their experiences with the sponsor and their product or service. These ads might be heard at the beginning, middle, or end of the show.

Podcasters need to consider sponsor advertising carefully. When podcasters read or discuss a sponsor they provide an implicit endorsement of their sponsor.

2. Consulting

People who start digital projects often attract the interest of others who would like to start a similar project. History communicators might consider charging for the times we offer more full-length advice on how someone else can do what we do.

3. Grants

Most digital history projects should be eligible for state, federal, and private grants.

Most often this model provides only temporary support. Many public historians refer to grants as "soft money" because they offer a pre-determined amount of support for a pre-determined period of time.

With that said, I noticed at NCPH 2015 that there are many historical consultants who make a living income by pursuing “soft money” opportunities.

4. Institutional Backing

Similar to a sponsor, historians with digital history projects could seek institutional support.

There are several history organizations as well as university initiatives that have mandates or missions to support public outreach and/or digital humanities work. There is a potential that one of these organizations might be interested in bringing in a proven digital history project to help bolster their goals.

I imagine that such a partnership would require public recognition on the digital history project, consulting work to help others in the program get their projects up and running, as well as use of the proven project to help launch new, organizational digital history or humanities projects.

5. Charge Admission

Charge visitors for use of our projects.

Historians with digital history magazines, databases, podcasts, or exhibits could follow the model established by The New York Times and other digital media outlets by offering some content for free while charging for other content.

Some podcasters provide free access to their most recent episodes and charge listeners for access to their back catalogs.

I am not a fan of this option, but it does exist.

6. Crowdfunding

Sites like Kickstarter and Patreon make it possible to fund digital history projects through crowdfunding. Patreon provides a particularly attractive model.

Patreon allows content producers (bloggers, vloggers, podcast producers, writers, etc.) to ask their friends, family, and followers to become their patrons. In exchange for a monthly donation or some other reward, support for your work comes from those who consume it.

Some content producers have created four- and five-figure monthly incomes by using the service, although most content producers earn significantly less.

(See: Loug Mongello of WDW Radio and Kinda Funny Games.)

Conclusions

Digital history projects offer historians an awesome opportunity to reach out to and interact with the history-loving public.

These projects have played, and will continue to play, a large role in historians’ work to bring history back to the forefront of the public mind.

Unfortunately, all of these projects come at a cost of time and money and few academic or public history institutions have the resources to support them. This means many digital history projects will continue to be bootstrapped and exist in a precarious state until we find ways to support them.

I don’t know how I will make Ben Franklin’s World self-supporting. But, I will choose a method that ensures that all of its valuable content will continue to be available free of charge to anyone who wants to access it. This is a goal that is important to me.

What Do You Think?

Do you have ideas about how we might fund digital history projects?

Are you or your organization interested in sponsoring or forming a partnership with Ben Franklin’s World?

Let’s keep this conversation going! Leave a comment, tweet, or send me an e-mail.

Book of the Week: Independence Lost

[simpleazon-image align="right" asin="1400068959" locale="us" height="500" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61FsJt3CicL.jpg" width="335"]This week, I am reading Kathleen DuVal's new book [simpleazon-link asin="1400068959" locale="us"]Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution[/simpleazon-link]  

Book Description From Amazon:

Over the last decade, award-winning historian Kathleen DuVal has revitalized the study of early America’s marginalized voices. Now, in Independence Lost, she recounts an untold story as rich and significant as that of the Founding Fathers: the history of the Revolutionary Era as experienced by slaves, American Indians, women, and British loyalists living on Florida’s Gulf Coast.   While citizens of the thirteen rebelling colonies came to blows with the British Empire over tariffs and parliamentary representation, the situation on the rest of the continent was even more fraught. In the Gulf of Mexico, Spanish forces clashed with Britain’s strained army to carve up the Gulf Coast, as both sides competed for allegiances with the powerful Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Creek nations who inhabited the region. Meanwhile, African American slaves had little control over their own lives, but some individuals found opportunities to expand their freedoms during the war.   Independence Lost reveals that individual motives counted as much as the ideals of liberty and freedom the Founders espoused: Independence had a personal as well as national meaning, and the choices made by people living outside the colonies were of critical importance to the war’s outcome. DuVal introduces us to the Mobile slave Petit Jean, who organized militias to fight the British at sea; the Chickasaw diplomat Payamataha, who worked to keep his people out of war; New Orleans merchant Oliver Pollock and his wife, Margaret O’Brien Pollock, who risked their own wealth to organize funds and garner Spanish support for the American Revolution; the half-Scottish-Creek leader Alexander McGillivray, who fought to protect indigenous interests from European imperial encroachment; the Cajun refugee Amand Broussard, who spent a lifetime in conflict with the British; and Scottish loyalists James and Isabella Bruce, whose work on behalf of the British Empire placed them in grave danger. Their lives illuminate the fateful events that took place along the Gulf of Mexico and, in the process, changed the history of North America itself.   Adding new depth and moral complexity, Kathleen DuVal reinvigorates the story of the American Revolution. Independence Lost is a bold work that fully establishes the reputation of a historian who is already regarded as one of her generation’s best.

What are you reading?

Boogie Board Sync: An Awesome Research and Writing Tool for Historians

Are you an historian who would like to go paperless, but can’t quite seem to kick your pen and paper habit? If so, you should check out and try Boogie Board Sync. This tablet captures handwritten notes or drawings and wirelessly transfers them to your smartphone or Evernote account.

In this post, you will discover Boogie Board Sync, a writing tool that has increased my productivity and helped me to go almost paperless.

Boogie Board Sync

Overview

[simpleazon-link asin="B00E8CIGCA" locale="us"]Boogie Board Sync[/simpleazon-link] is a tablet device that functions as a notebook.

This lightweight tablet comes with a stylus that feels good to write with. It has internal memory that will save around 200 written pages before you need to sync it with your computer or Evernote account. All notes save and transfer as PDF files.

Field Test Review

I have been using my boogie board since February. I use it to take notes at meetings, when I am reading, and when I am doing some quick research.

I am one of those historians who desperately wants to be paperless, but cannot rid myself of pen and paper because I retain information best when I write it down. I have tried using a stylus with my iPad, but this practice never felt natural; it lacked the feel and sound of pen and paper writing. Boogie Board feels different and better to me.

The Boogie Board stylus has a weight similar to my Pilot Precise V5 pens (my pen of choice), writes with a fine nib, and when placed on the Boogie Board screen, it has the familiar resistance and sound of putting pen to paper. Writing on Boogie Board feels natural.

To date I have saved just over 200 paper pages by taking notes on my boogie board. The pages sync to my designated Evernote folder through a bluetooth connection with my smartphone.

Major Plus: I have found that if I print my notes, as opposed to writing them in my script, Evernote can search them when I perform a keyword search.

Cons

I love my Boogie Board Sync, but the device does have three downsides:

1. You cannot erase within your note.

With the exception of a full-page erase option, the Boogie Board stylus cannot erase a written mistake. If you make a mistake when you write your note, just like pen and paper, you must cross out your mistake and move on.

2. You cannot gather like notes into a single PDF file from Boogie Board.

Each page of notes saves as a single page. Sometimes I will take multiple pages of notes on a single book or subject. All of these pages sync individually to Evernote. If I want to save these pages as the one document they comprise, I use my DocScanner app to consolidate them. This adds an extra step to my organization process.

3. You need the case.

If you intend to travel with your Boogie Board in your backpack or briefcase, you will need to purchase the [simpleazon-link asin="B00G41F2LQ" locale="us"]folio case[/simpleazon-link]. The screen marks up easily when jostled among items in your bag. The case adds an additional $20 to the $85-$95 price tag of the Boogie Board.

Conclusions

If you desire to be paperless and keep your pen and paper writing habit, then [simpleazon-link asin="B00E8CIGCA" locale="us"]Boogie Board[/simpleazon-link] is a fantastic tool.

Share Your Story

What awesome tool are you using that has helped you with your research and writing?