In the digital age, history can become simultaneously easier and more difficult to keep track of, especially with physical media being phased out. Local and community history can be especially vulnerable, but Colorado State University’s history department and the Fort Collins Museum of Discovery are working to collect and preserve those stories and artifacts.
As part of a project for HIST 479: Practice of Public History, students in Associate Professor Sarah Payne’s class organized an event for community members to bring an artifact to the Museum of Discovery and have it included in their digital archive. Payne discussed the event as an opportunity to get a realistic, impactful archiving experience.
“It’s perfect, though, because it’s like actually doing public history instead of just inventing some kind of, like, fake project in a class that you just have to … make something up,” Payne said…