the men with the guns was another favorite one of mine I just thought it
was cool how they're posing with their guns this is from
1945 I just thought that was really neat seeing how everything's progress so much
I want to know what was here before me I like knowing where I live and I like to
be proud of
it we applied for museums for America Grant in 2004 to develop a comprehensive
digital history project for Johnson County Kansas we were interested in
expanding people's understanding of um our County's history its influences in
the metropolitan and the state of Kansas and so we developed a partnership with
the Johnson County Library with really that goal of establishing a
comprehensive resource a One-Stop online accessible place that the community
could go and do research and access materials we have digitized about 30,000
images from our collection that are online at the Joko history
site most of the historic pictures came from different kinds of County reports
the agriculture Department would go and do poultry farm tours and so there were
photographs of these ladies out in their dresses looking at these barnyards full
of chickens there was a mattress program
that was initiated by the county in the late 30s early 40s the thinking being
that if you have a good mattress you're going to get better sleep so you're
going to be more productive really fascinating stuff that were that was
just tucked away in some these reports the big deal about this time also
remember is the museum is a relatively small organization we have about 10 to
12 people on our staff we don't have our own it support staff for instance and so
um there were some resources that we really needed to to um partner to make
happen so that this project could move forward we have a close relationship
with the Johnson County Library who has a very aggressive online web presence
already and ask them if they would like to partner we were really looking
outward trying to see how the library could be of service to the community and
we were changing from an archive organization to a much more Progressive
forward-thinking Library it's really creating content in the community and
that's what we're after the museum is after that the librar is after that I
like how on the website when you click on the picture you can zoom in or you
can move around the picture you really had
to think about how people search and the different variety of users that are
going to be using this database for different purposes and trying to address
as many of those as possible there are many small historical Societies in our
community that have very small staff or no staff at all they may be all
volunteer but they've got some really rich wonderful Collections and so for
instance the Kansas School for the Deaf which is located in OA Kansas and is our
County Seat they have about 2100 images on the site from their history which
dates back to the 1860s when we were developing this
project Web 2.0 was the big deal and I knew we wanted to have some sort of
feature that would allow people to provide their own reaction to some of
the content that was in the site it's very comparable to having Community
curated exhibitions and losing that control or giving up that control to the
community to create content that is important to them and I think ultimately
if we're going to be relevant in our communities we need to be doing more of
that as museums that idea of revisionist history is in many ways connected to
this in terms of who's commenting on these objects who's who is the authority
um and do they have a right to talk about that we actively solicit feedback
about photos to help us with names uh to help us with places to help us with time
periods we have a a photograph here of little corner store which used to be
very common and someone sent in this comment my father and his wife and he
names them owned an operated this store as the South Ridge Market from
1927 until closing it in 1940 it had a full line of groceries vegetables fruits
in a butcher shop um he made chili and sold that in
the meat counter and I still have his recipe for the chili but I can't
decipher it it's written on a torn piece of brown paper and it's just notes to
himself
uh he closed out the store when he heard there was to be a supermarket U built
nearby and he thought he couldn't compete with the
supermarkets sometimes a photograph on the site will sort of cause a trip down
memory lane for people who visit and if they see a photograph particularly of a
relative or a place that was meaningful to them um they'll sort of feel moved to
contribute just to memory it's okay to come to our site and walk down memory
lane simply use it as entertainment and enjoyment in that sense it really fits
with the mission of both the museum and the Johnson County Library each year
that the site has been up we have had anywhere between five and 8 million
downloads so we're clearly reaching our audience at a much greater level than we
ever did before I think this website will last a long time people later on
will be able to look back at pictures of us and think of how much different it
has changed from then as a history teacher it's invaluable for me you can
see how much we've changed and how much how much smarter we're getting and like
learning from the mistakes of the past it's the closest to time traveling
in your local community that you can get and it really does become an interesting
and engaging online Center for people to come together and share those
experiences with each other with their children they can show their children
this is what used to be on this corner or this is what it looked like when it
was farmland and not a Suburban tract Housing
Development there were a lot of cross-pollination across both staffs
that really uh enabled it to be larger than any of us ever imagined