Personal Military Records and the Virtual Footlocker Project Curriculum

Title: Personal Military Records and the Virtual Footlocker Project Curriculum

Description: 

This hybrid workshop is designed to help cultural heritage workers train active service members and veterans of the U.S. armed forces to collect, organize, store, and preserve their personal records by utilizing the Virtual Footlocker Project curriculum (VFP). The workshop will also discuss adapting the VFP curriculum to other audiences in the final module.

The VFP assists contemporary veterans and active-duty military with the preservation of their personal military records. As part of the IMLS-funded project, the VFP created a training curriculum for veterans that is available as an online or in-person workshop. Additionally, the VFP created a separate curriculum for cultural heritage workers to train them on the issues surrounding personal military records, best practices for working with military members, how to utilize the VFP veteran’s curriculum, and how to design and implement participatory recordkeeping projects with veterans. The proposed workshop will use the latter curriculum with an emphasis on the digitized and born-digital records created by veterans. The workshop will include a combination of presentation, small group discussion, and brainstorming. 

The workshop is divided into four 50-minute modules with a planned 20-minute break between modules 2 & 3. Each module will end with smaller group discussions or brainstorming activities.

Module 1: Introduction to Personal Military Records

Module 2: Working with active-duty military and veterans

Module 3. VFP Curriculum for Active-Duty Military and Veterans

Module 4. Creating and implementing outreach projects for veterans & adapting VFP curriculum for other groups. Note: This module will include a longer discussion & brainstorming period.

Learning Objectives:

Upon completion of the workshop, participants will be able to:

1. Discuss the key issues and challenges of keeping personal military records.

2. Implement best practices for working with veterans.

3. Deliver the VFP curriculum for active-duty military and veterans.

4. Design and implement participatory recordkeeping projects with veterans.

Location: 

Hotel Albuquerque

800 Rio Grande Boulevard

Albuquerque, NM 87104

OR

Online via Zoom

Time: 1:00-5:00 p.m. MST

Cost: FREE

Capacity: 30 in-person participants; 30 virtual participants

Required Knowledge and/or Equipment: No prior knowledge or skills required.

Instructor: 

Edward Benoit, III is Associate Director and Associate Professor in the School of Library & Information Science at Louisiana State University. He coordinates the archival studies and cultural heritage resource management programs. He received an MA in History, MLIS and PhD in Information Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. His research focuses on participatory and community archives, non-traditional archival materials, climate change, and archival education. He is the founder and director of the Virtual Footlocker Project, which examines the personal archiving habits of the 21st century soldier in an effort to develop new digital capture and preservation technologies to support their needs. He also directs PROTECCT-GLAM, an IMLS-funded project focused on identify climate-change-related risks for GLAMs.

Refunds: Full refunds for annual meeting and workshop registrations are available no less than 10 business days prior to the first day of the annual meeting. Refunds requested after that date will incur a $25 penalty.