These are the slides for a Power Session I gave at the National Trust for Historic Preservation conference in Spokane, WA on 11/1/2012. The talk was titled "Using Mobile History Apps to Create Historical Communities." Feel free to contact me!

1. Going Mobile!
Using Mobile
Interpretation to
Strengthen Preservation
Communities
Larry Cebula
Washington State Archives
Eastern Washington University
LarryCebula@Gmail.com

2. How do you curate a city?

3. Multiple Eras

4. Multiple Stories

5. Some Are Right in Front of You
Tadajiro Muramatsu was born on
September 24, 1875 in Ueno village,
Nishi-Yatsusiro county, Yamanashi
Prefecture, Japan. For generations,
his family engaged in farming. He was
easy-going, enjoyed drinking, and had
many friends. He loved ancient poems
and would recite them when he had
been drinking . . . He married a woman
from the Aoki family, and they had a
boy named Tadao. This tomb was built
in his memory and on it, his overall life
story was told. January 7, 1919 Tadao
built this tomb.

6. How do we tell these stories?
• Maps and Guides

7. How do we tell these stories?
• Plaques and Monuments

8. How do we tell these stories?
• Walking
Tours

9. Enter the mobile revolution

10. There are two platforms

11. What can you do with mobile interpretation?
• Interpret any
site
• Geolocation
• Text, images
• Copy any
physical
interpretation

12. What else can you do with mobile?
• Multimedia
• Oral histories
• Low cost per site
• Multiple stories per site
• Changing interpretation
• Partnerships
• QR Codes
• Web presence

13. Choices When Going Mobile
• Make your own or join a project?
• Who is your audience?
• Commercial or non-profit partnerships?
• Native app or optimized website?
• Multimedia?
• Which platforms?
• Reuse content or develop fresh?
• Images and copyright?

14. A Few Best Practices
• Own your content
• Build a database
• Don’t reinvent the wheel
• Partner promiscuously
• Form an editorial board
• Use blogs as rough drafts
• Eschew perfection

15. A few Do-Nots
• Don’t repeat historical errors!
• Don’t scrape a database
• Don’t be boring
• Don’t get stale
• Don’t replicate a
paper tour

16. Spokane Historical

17. How does it work?
• Supported by Public History program at EWU
• Omeka database
• Android, iOS, and associated website
• Currently work of EWU students
• Research from Northwest Museum of Arts &
Culture, Spokane Public Library, Spokane Valley
Heritage Museum, Washington State Archives,
etc., etc.

18. Difficulties and Lessons Learned
• Some students are smarter than others
• Copyright and images
• Audio is better from professionals
• Stops can be built in stages
• It takes a village, or at least a team
• Promotion is almost another project
• Steady funding
• Huge public interest!

19. Contact Us
Larry Cebula
LarryCebula@Gmail.com
NorthwestHistory.Blogspot.com
SpokaneHistorical.org