Regional Conventions Puts the Spotlight on Local History
Each summer and fall the 50,000-member-strong Wisconsin Council for Local History demonstrates the passion and dedication its members bring to the task of documenting and preserving their communities' past. In a series of ten regional conventions, local historians from every corner of the state come together to exchange information, seek solutions to problems, and report on successes of the past year. These confabs afford members of local historical societies within each of the ten regions with opportunities to network with their peers at other local historical societies and to compare notes on everything from techniques for gaining new members and fund raising to conducting local history research and mounting museum exhibits.
 Caption A Wisconsin Council for Local History banner depicts the council's ten statewide regions.
The 1903 Jacob Van Orden mansion in Baraboo serves as home to the Sauk County Historical Society.
A glimpse at the program for that daylong event offers an insight into the information-sharing venues the conventions provide. Following a plenary session featuring a roundtable discussion presided over by Wisconsin Historical Society Local History Coordinator Tom McKay, conventioneers can select from a trio of morning workshops. Paul Beck, director of the Area Research Center at UW-Lacrosse, will discuss the research resources offered by the Society's network of thirteen Area Research Centers located throughout Wisconsin. This network affords local historians the ability to use research collections relevant to their regions of the state at one of the centers, thus making the Society's archival collections more accessible for local history research.
Two other morning workshop electives offer insights into how technology is changing the ways in which even small local historical societies with limited budgets can use twenty-first century technology to improve their programs. Local historian Debbie Kmetz will discuss and demonstrate the use of PastPerfect Museum Software to manage and care for collections. And Paul Wolter, president of the Sauk County Historical Society, will present examples of a variety of local history Web sites and discuss how local historical societies can use the Internet to gain visibility and better market themselves to their existing and future constituents.
Along with serious discussions of professional library and museum standards and technologies, regional conventions also offer their participants fellowship and a little lighthearted fun. The August 9 southwestern regional convention, for example, will include a lunchtime presentation on circus hats and head pieces by the wardrobe department of Circus World Museum in Baraboo. The afternoon program will round out the day with a trolley tour of historic Baraboo and a tour of the Sauk County Historical Museum.
The regional convention schedule continues through October 4 and culminates in the annual state convention of the Wisconsin Council for Local History in Chippewa Falls on October 17 and 18.
Posted on October 13, 2003
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