David Crosson, the Executive Director of the California Historical Society, raised this question in a LinkedIn group:
Q: Is anyone aware of state, regional, or national studies that identify creative benchmarks against which to measure the effectiveness of a history organization’s website? Is there a bell curve out there for site visits, page visits, pages per site visit, etc? How do we know that our site is effective compared to other sites?
My “answer” is below. The thread is here. If any historical (or similar) organizations are interested in participating in an exchange of traffic information, please contact me.
A: This is an interesting question, and one that we’ve dealt with in our local historical society. While I know of no benchmark data for peer historical societies, even if such were available, the answer should really be derived from understanding the role that the site plays in achieving the organization’s goals. After all, for nearly all organizations, a website is a tool, not an objective unto itself.
In the case of an historical society, one can think of several goals for the organization, such as institutional growth (e.g., membership, fundraising, merchandise sales), outreach and education (activities in the community or in schools), increasing one’s collection and increasing engagement with the collection (e.g., by making it more widely available), and scholarship (research and publishing). The web (or e-mail or social media) could be used in each case.
The measure of success, then, becomes the ROI, comparing the success of an initiative with the resources (the web and others) used to achieve that result.
The great opportunity for historical societies of all sizes in using the web is to provide much greater access to collections. Moreover, to do so in a way that people anywhere can contribute to the collection and the understanding of the collection by adding descriptions and links, along with ratings and tags. Taking this one step further, various location-aware mobile applications, especially some of the new “augmented reality” applications, give historical societies the opportunity to connect a collection with a physical place, enriching the viewer’s understanding and appreciation of both.
The challenge that historical organizations (and others with archives) have in this regard is similar to the challenge that Encyclopedia Britannica (EB on EB; Wikipedia on EB) faced in its struggle to remain relevant in the face of Wikipedia [EB on Wikipedia; Wikipedia on Wikipedia]. Fundamentally it’s a struggle over who controls (or owns) the information, and the standards for contributing, editing, and approving content.
The outcome of that struggle should be informative. (Compared on Compete; Alexa for Encyclopedia Britannica and Wikipedia.) In the world of physical things, such as documents and other historical objects, the ability to provide scans or photos along with a platform for community contributions, such as descriptions, narrative context, links, tags, comments, and ratings, means that the traditional functions of preservation, interpretation, and presentation can be decoupled.
The restoration of the Star Spangled Banner at the Smithsonian in 1914.
And while the thought of this decoupling can seem threatening to individuals whose sense of self and whose standing in the profession comes from the physical control of objects others value, the web offers a tremendous opportunity to greatly expand the organization’s impact. Though few high-profile organizations have chosen this road–the Smithsonian is pursuing a version of this with their Smithsonian Commons (slide presentation below)–one can expect that as the cohort of individuals that have grown up with the web ages, we’ll see more and more organizations taking a platform approach instead of the traditional closed approach.
And it’s this transformation that will be the biggest contribution to the study of history. Whether historical societies wish to lead or follow is the question.
A 2009 presentation from Michael Edson, the Smithsonian’s Director of Web and New Media Strategy, describes their Commons initiative. The text is here—thanks to Michael for the reminder—and the slides are below.
