DCHS restoring VP position

The Dutchess County Historical Society is restoring the long-held tradition of having town Vice Presidents as a way to establish a clear point of contact to collaborate on mutual interests, if and as any are defined. To ensure a consistent approach, we are reaching out to each municipal historian (city, town, village) and asking them to either consider the position for themselves or recommend someone who might be interested and a right fit.

What is the job?

The function is to be lead contact with DCHS such that sharing information and ideas helps support the goals of the local organization. We believe we will able to to improve quality, comprehensiveness and sustainability of exhibitions and programs — online and physical. And will be able to share ideas and “best practices” to close skills gaps, for example, in digital work like websites and social media.We all face similar questions from the very broad: what kind of organization should we be in five years? To the very practical: Who could speak on this topic? Who could help with data management in Past Perfect? In short, we believe the benefit to the town historical community is many-faceted and new ideas for the role are not just welcome but sought out.

How are they determined?

To ensure a consistent approach, we are reaching out to each municipal historian (city, town, village) and asking them to either consider the position for themselves or recommend someone who might be interested and a right fit.

What will we focus on, what will I do?

Example:

Share limited, specialist resources

Speaker/program pool
Volunteer pool (e.g. xls mail merge or Past Perfect)

Understand best practices

Ebay monitoring
Website management
Social media role/use
Email database best use

Share common research tools

Online county-wide maps
Online county-wide newspapers

Larger questions

How do we develop and maintain a strategic plan?
What are new sources of revenue and donor possibilities?
Can you make money with collections?

Are there a lot of meetings?

We may occasionally want to meet, but will always have the option of calling into a conference phone to avoid a lot of travel time for some.

Very specifically for 2018 — The Year of the Veteran in Dutchess County

DCHS will equally share ideas as vice versa.  For example, in 2018 DCHS is uniting its work under the banner of “2018: The Year of the Veteran” in Dutchess County so that local and county efforts align with state and even national efforts, given greater context and larger platform.

DCHS is working with NYS Archives to get hundreds if not potentially a few thousand documents gathered by the state from local Dutchess towns about WWI in the early 1920’s that would be of interest to each town in the county. DCHS was able to negotiate an exhibition for the Veterans concept in 2018 with FDR Presidential Library and the County Fair, and established partnerships West Point, Bard College and other key County government functions that will aid in enlarging publicity and comprehensiveness. But by definition, stories and artifacts need to come from “ground-up” locally and DCHS would hope to help provide a more visible platform.

Summary

With this function we hope to better facilitate communication between municipal and historical society organizations, and between local, county and state levels. Ultimately, though, we should collectively shape the role in a way that makes the most sense and greatest benefit to us and to our respective communities.

The VP for Hyde Park was Franklin Roosevelt for many years (see full 1937 list above). Incorrect, incomplete work in progress chart below!