How does the Historian make history relevant?

[oldsm 10]

I am curious how your troop handles the Historian responsibilities.

When I joined the troop, someone passed along a plastic tub with a bunch of memorabilia: old programs, correspondence, a few pictures. I don't know who maintained it: scouts? adults? Nothing is very well organized, although some items were inside a binder. It was definitely a manual process that appeared mostly to be a collection of stuff that would be of value only to someone who wanted to search through the troop equivalent of your grandmother's attic. I'm not sure how far back the "archives" go - the troop was established in 1966.

 

Today we expect a Historian to be the pack rat (troop rat?).

Pictures are more often digital than printed.

Few people use photo albums anymore - they like to look at their pictures online.

COH programs could be put in a binder, but then they get mangled with hole punching.

The Historian doesn't go on every outing, so some history-in-the-making doesn't get captured.

Does troop history include keeping a record of who participated in which event?

Some of the more visible achievements are part of old Eagle projects. Those get written up as part of the project, but the project documentation resides with the scout who did the project. How do you capture that?

What happens when your troop doesn't have a Historian for a year or few?

How do you handle Powerpoint slides?

Trying to track everything can be overwhelming. Where do you draw the line regarding expectations for a Historian?

 

I guess my most significant question is: How do you make all this stuff available and relevant to today's scouts (and maybe the parents)?

 

 

 

[Gunny2862 11]

The key is some degree of organization.

 

I don't know that a youth Historians job is to make things relevant but rather findable.

As current reports are filed, they should follow a system, any system that the records he has handed to him as archives can also be searched by.

 

If a Historian hasn't been doing the above and there is no commonality or filing system then a great service project for a senior Scout or Adult would be to create the organizing system for the Troop and leave an instruction binder for how to input new captures into the system.

 

The relevance comes from being able to go back and find things out about past Scouts and their activities. A jumbled archive does not facilitate this.

 

As to historian making every trip, well, there's no reason another Scout or group of Scouts couldn't capture trip data and e-mail or hand it over to the historian at the next Troop meeting. Then the Historian organizes and files it - not really that big a deal.

Now formats can be tricky, but a printed copy of everything is bulkier but always a welcome addition and eases worries about "The new program can't read the old file".

[shortridge 184]

Putting my history major hat on... a unit Historian doesn't have to just be relegated to assembling binders and files and collections of memorabilia. Just a few ideas off the top of my head:

 

- He can present programs on outstanding Scouts of years past ("Where Are They Now?"), locally and nationally;

 

- do a demonstration on old-time Scouting skills, using as source material handbooks and fieldbooks from past and present (especially neat with the new HB out!);

 

- put together a slideshow on troop history for Courts of Honor and the like;

 

- write a biography of Baden-Powell and other Scouting founders for the troop newsletter on the occasion of the centennial;

 

- conduct oral history interviews with senior Scouts and older Scouters, preserving memories and stories that would othewise be long-lost;

 

- contribute copies of photos to the local camp's history archives about that week in 1972 from the Curlew Patrol's victory in the cooking contest;

 

- assemble a history wall displaying camping equipment and uniforms used back in the day;

 

- organize a troop patch collection from camporees, summer camp, Philmont trips, etc.;

 

- write a history of the troop's favorite camping location, that little island owned by the farmer who was really friendly to us ... really, it goes on and on.

 

Anything that can connect the past to the present should be under the Historian's bailiwick.