Tool Shed: Virtual Building Blocks for Historic Preservation Jane Pojawawww.pojawa.comsave.the.adobe@gmail.com

Use Your Powers for Good! Your computer or your

phone may be the next frontier for you as an amateur historian!

You don’t need to be a programmer or learn any code to take advantage of research and preservation tools.

It can be hours of fun (without tears, frustration and throwing things)

Social Media and Your Organization - Objectives Learn innovative and cost-effective solutions

to generate public awareness and further a cause

Identify the most beneficial on-line tools for your organization

Demystify interactive media programs Defining your Facebook marketing strategy –

what/who/when

Advocacy My 2011 Presentation was about using internet

tools for preservation advocacy. You need to get the word out! What tools are useful and what is a giant time-

suck? How can you attract volunteers, contributions,

raise public awareness, sell your wares and promote your “brand”?

What is Your Brand? You, in your professional capacity A Product A Service A Cause An Organization A Historic Building A Historic District Your “brand” has an online life all its own.

Raven Jake’s Observations “Raven Jake” is a character I

developed with my husband Jeryd. Raven Jake, as such, does not exist.

He is a fictitious desert rat. As with many fictitious characters,

he has become real and even has something of a following.

The content of his blog, “Observations of a Western Legend,” centers mainly on nature, history and travel.

http://ravenjake.typepad.com/blog/

The Blogosphere Raven Jake’s blog, originally

hosted by VOX, is now on Typepad. Both are free hosting services with nice templates.

Blogs are one of the more reputable forms of social media.

They are free, easy to use, and can be an invaluable tool in the preservationist’s arsenal.

Blogs can be used by a person or by an institution or business and are frequently incorporated into a more “official” website.

One day, Raven Jake received a comment from a distraught fan…

The Blogosphere The initial advocacy was helped to a large

degree by a blog, “Raven Jake’s Observations.” In no way was that the only form of community

action being taken, or even the most important one.

Typepad, Wordpress, Blogger, LiveJournal and many other platforms offer free, dependable, nice-looking blogs. Start one!

The Michael White Adobe1840? – 2012http://sites.google.com/site/michaelwhiteadobe/home

But as an individual… Maybe you don’t have a “Brand” to promote Maybe you just want to do stuff Maybe a project-based approach would be

better than creating a uniform internet identity The question is – what do I have and what do

I want to do with it?

Project 1: Socializing Social media is like talking to people but

without the effort. Running your mouth will probably come back

to haunt you, like in life. It is very easy to share pictures, maps, and

interesting websites You can reach a wide audience (see the second

bullet)

Social Media FaceBook has become and

indispensable way to quickly share information and is gaining credibility.

It is free, allows easy interaction/feedback and can be used to raise funds.

It is also a good way to reach a broad spectrum of the public – particularly young people.

This is a “cause” page. Free!

FaceBook FaceBook is the most popular form of social

networking right now. Before FB there was MySpace and there’s also

Google+ and other, less popular, social networking options.

Join MySpace under a fake name and you can: (1) spy on your grandchildren (2) Keep up to date on the minute-by-minute

activities of everyone in the Morongo Basin

FaceBook Group Page

Organization Page

Who else is doing FaceBook?

Just about everybody!

Other social networking sites http://ndn.me/ Social media site for Native Americans Great place to post events Cultural resources News feeds, interest groups, tribal

affiliations, events Free to join

http://www.linkedin.com/ Social Networking for business

contacts. “Find past and present colleagues and classmates quickly. LinkedIn makes staying in touch simple.”

If you wish the high school reunion would never end, this is for you!

Basic/individual service is free; business accounts range from $20-$100/month

Project 2: Make a Meme Impress the world with

your pithy coolness. The Grumpy Cat has

become an international icon of dissatisfaction

Free! http://memegenerator.net/

Pinterest http://pinterest.com/ Pinterest is an online

pinboard to help you organize and share things you love.

You need to request an invitation.

Free

Project 3: Make a Pin Board Pinterest is an online community board for sharing

links, not unlike the one outside Food For Less. It could be used to share travel spots, points of

historical interest, charitable organizations, etc.

Project 4: Make a Newsletter Mike has the MBHS newsletter covered. There are still lots of other newsletters

(especially micro newsletters) begging to be created: a newsletter about general volunteer opportunities in the Morongo Basin, your housing development/neighborhood, cause-based newsletters like Black Lava Butte wind farm, or a newsletter about your family.

Mail Chimp - Newsletters Free email marketing service

from MailChimp. Design, send, and track HTML email campaigns with our simple tools. http://mailchimp.com

Basically, this means newsletters, but also think in terms of virtual flyers.

Also manages your mailing list. Great for sending your members

updates. Sliding scale. Less than 500

emails a month = Free. 25,000 – 50,000 emails/month = $240

Digital Newsletters Free! (up to a point,

then there’s a sliding scale for lots of recipients)

Nice-looking templates Variety of content Short entries, or

paragraphs that link to online content are most effective.

Project 5: Uploading Documents There are literally dozens of sites where you

can store photos, videos and other documents for free.

In most cases you can share them or keep them private.

Issuu is my favorite for pdfs of print materials, like newsletters, magazines, newspapers, or even boring stuff like building codes.

Issuu – Document Hosting http://issuu.com/ Issuu is the “leading digital

publishing platform delivering exceptional reading experiences of magazines, catalogs, and newspapers.”

Easy way to store a backup copy of any document

Great for newsletters Easily embeds in websites Flip through pages like you’re

reading a book. Free

Project 6: Create a Product This one is advanced, but potentially very

useful for history buffs. You can self-publish magazines, books and

videos with no minimum order. You can sell it yourself, or print-on-demand

from an Amazon store. They take a big chunk of $, but handle

everything from printing to shipping.

MagCloud – Magazines Printed on Demand http://www.magcloud.com Service offered by Hewlett

Packard No minimum order Online store, print-on-

demand Brochures, catalogs,

newsletters, portfolios and recipe books – and magazines.

Base cost is .20/page

CreateSpace – Books & DVDs https://www.createspace.com/ Online store plus Amazon listing You might want to publish a book,

either to raise your profile or to sell as a fundraiser. (This one can be expensive – the less you pay “up front,” the more you pay on the back end. But you don’t have to lose your shirt. And you can do it for free)

You might want to publish a DVD. (Free-expensive. This one depends entirely on your ability to network and access community resources. It is also a high profit margin item) A DVD costs about $4.95 each to print on demand, includes ISBN number, box and printing.

Project 7: Genealogical Research If you don’t like your

own family, you can try somebody else’s.

Get the inside scoop on local “celebrities.”

Weirdly compelling! http://

www.findagrave.com/

Project 8: Audio Files You’ve made a recording, now what? Get it into a digital format. For sharing, it

should be an .mp3 You can upload it for playback to your blog

or to a website. If you don’t have a blog or website, there’s

Soundcloud

Endorsement: Gabriel Harley Gabriel Harley has a company called

tape2digital and he’s the cheapest/best game in town (well, not this town) for converting old reel-to-reel, cassettes and record albums into a file format that will go onto your computer!

www.tape2digital.com

Ethnomusicology https://soundcloud.com

Oral Histories https://soundcloud.com/toypurina/cabot-

yerxa-ufo-tape George Van Tassel’s Interplanetary Space

Craft Convention at Giant Rock starts approx. 14 minutes in

At 39:31 Portia launches into the Age of Aquarius. At 43:40 she talks about being given an Atlantean/Venusian writing sample after a “under Giant Rock” meeting.

Project 9: Making a Map The main industries of the Morongo Basin are

Medical Care and Tourism, let’s focus on the second part.

It’s easy to make maps with a Google account. This could be points of interest, or a historical tour or even a tour of places that no longer exist.

247 Map

More Useful Stuff Free tools and apps are being developed every

day. Content can be applied to a variety of

different applications. I am unaware of any online services

developed specifically for preservation issues (doesn’t mean they don’t exist) but existing services may be repurposed for your own nefarious requirements.

Project 10: Download a Phone App This only works for “smart” phones There are dozens of history-related

magazines, historical maps, a virtual tour of the American Museum of Natural History, genealogy-related, quizzes and trivia games, classes, and plenty of other goodies available in the app store – all for free.

Google Field Trip Google has a new app (this is short for “application”) for

iPhones and Androids It draws from a variety of sources to give you a tour of

anyplace you are. Depending on how you set your preferences, it will tell you where to find historic sites, interesting architecture, restaurants, etc. Near Yucca Valley, there are listings for: the Mission Creek Preserve, the Graham Residence, Warren’s Well, the Institute of Mental Physics, the teddy bear garden, the Mojave Sands Hotel, the Hicksville trailer Palace, Acido Dorado, Rhythms of Life, Old Woman Springs, and Krblin Jihn Kabin, among others

QR Codes This is a “super barcode”

that links to online content. QR Code Generator:

http://qrcode.kaywa.com/ QR Code Scanning App

allows users with smart phones to access.

Good for linking print media to online content or for identification badges.

Free

Online Resources Raven Jake http://ravenjake.typepad.com/blog/ Michael White Adobe

http://sites.google.com/site/michaelwhiteadobe/Publishing Issuu http://issuu.com/ Magcloud http://www.magcloud.com/ Website builders Google Sites https://sites.google.com Joomla http://www.joomla.org/ Wordpress http://wordpress.org/Social Media Facebook http://www.facebook.com/ MySpace (almost obsolete) http://www.myspace.com

/ Twitter http://twitter.com/ Timelines Dippity Timeline Generator http://www.dipity.com/ Blogs Typepad http://www.typepad.com/ Wordpress http://wordpress.com/ Blogger http://www.blogger.com LiveJournal (mainly for writers) http://

www.livejournal.com/

Genealogy Find-a-Grave http://www.findagrave.com/ Family Search https://www.familysearch.org/ Watch a video of anything - YouTube http://

www.youtube.com/ Another video host - Vimeo http://vimeo.com/ Create slideshows –

http://socialtimes.com/12-free-online-slideshow-creators_b5957

Kioza http://www.kizoa.com/ iPhone apps for historical tours (great for districts, could

also be a self-guided museum or cemetery tour) http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/strawbery-banke-

museum/id394289589?mt=8 http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/chester-revealing-

the-rows/id379853774?mt=8 http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/digimacq/

id379704226?mt=8 This is a company that creates iPhone apps for

custom tours. I have no idea if they’re any good or how much they charge:

http://www.productworld.com/index.php/product-tour/mobile-apps/

More ResourcesJane Pojawa’s personal website: www.pojawa.com

Social Media Facebook http://www. facebook.com/ Twitter https://twitter.com/ LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/ ndn.me http://ndn.me/

Photo/Video/Document Hosting Flickr http://www.flickr.com/ Instagram http://instagr.am/ YouTube http://www.youtube.com/ Issuu http://issuu.com/

Integration BrandYourself http://brandyourself.com/ Person.me https://about.me/ HootSuite http://hootsuite.com/

Other Pinterest http://pinterest.com/ Storify http://storify.com/ QR Code Generator (you will also need to

download an app for your phone) http://qrcode.kaywa.com/

MailChimp http://mailchimp.com Wiki Loves Monuments

http://wikilovesmonuments.us/

Print-on-Demand CreateSpace https://www.createspace.com/ MagCloud http://www.magcloud.com