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Presenting Michael Hillman, President, Emmitsburg Area Historical Society. Interviewed by: Ryan Trainor. About Michael Hillman. Has lived in Emmitsburg since 1988 ( www.emmitsburg.net/windy_meadow ) Founded the Emmitsburg Area Historical Society in 1996.
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Presenting Michael Hillman, President,Emmitsburg Area Historical Society. Interviewed by: Ryan Trainor
About Michael Hillman • Has lived in Emmitsburg since 1988 (www.emmitsburg.net/windy_meadow) • Founded the Emmitsburg Area Historical Society in 1996. • Previously worked for the Dept. of Energy and has a background in Knowledge Management. • Knowledge Management: harvesting knowledge from someone’s mind, and storing it so that a greater community can access the same information. • Historical primary documents can be accessed anywhere.
Michael Hillman’s home near Tom’s Creek, Emmitsburg, MD The historical society as an artifact of Emmitsburg history – the house was built for a relative of mine, Mary Welty, in the 1880’s.
Michael Hillman’s home near Tom’s Creek, Emmitsburg, MD The historical society as a residence
Emmitsburg Area Historical Society • Originally founded the EAHS as a digital historical society to provide three services: - Provide easy access to all the information in the historical society’s archives. - Share information with others, enrich knowledge, and store the information to build the society archives. - Act as a facilitator for researchers to collaborate/enrich their own knowledge, so that it then can be shared/made accessible.
Continued • Hillman was influenced by his experiences with Dept. of Energy, helping scientists to quickly share info between the East and West coasts. • Sought to Digitize historical documents and rare books with html (except land deeds) – .pdf’s and .jpg’scan’t be searched, html is searchable and accessible. • To provide services, search engine retrieves information from archives, and a discussion forum allows researchers to interact with one another.
Expanding Existing Services • In 1996, 25 historical documents were digitized; today, there are now over 4,000. • The physical historical society consists of 7 volunteer members, but 40-50 contacts regularly contribute to the archives’ content. • Visitors to the web page frequently contact the historical society with information to share.
Continued • Making primary sources available enables researchers of varying knowledge to draw firm conclusions. • Search engines do not assign meaning to the matches it retrieves, whereas hyperlinks provide enough context for a match to advise/inform someone seeking the information. • Hyperlinks create pathways and provide multiple avenues to the same content.
Challenges • The website has become so huge, the ability to create new pathways with more links is hampered by existing information overload. - Michael has been the architect of the website and hyperlinking related pages relies on his memory. -Doesn’t have the time to go back and take inventory of the site.
Continued • There is a generational disparity in skillsets. - Older members of the historical society know the history of the area but do not have the technical skills to hyperlink the pages and create the pathways. -Younger members know how to hyperlink things, but don’t know the history to be independent architects of these pathways.
