Looking for ways to give back, we can use your help. As mentioned before, the Iron County Historical Society is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization with no paid employees. Right now, we have multiple volunteer opportunities available:
Museum Volunteers
The first is an ongoing need for volunteers to help keep our museum open. We've been operating on a reduced schedule since 2020 and without an influx of new volunteers we will be forced to continue on this reduced schedule. Even with the reduced schedule, finding enough volunteers has been challenging at times.
The museum is open on Fridays and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and on Sudays from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. You don't need any special training to be a volunteer, just a friendly, helpful attitude. If you would like to volunteer or if you have any questions, you can call our Museum Director, Wilma Cofer, at (573) 546-3513 and leave a message. Thank You!
School Records Transcription Project
Spearheaded by historical society Board of Directors member, Judie Huff, a project is underway that will eventually create high resolution scans of all of our existing school records. Scanning the records preserves them against any future possibility from loss. To date some 5,000 pages of County Superintendent records dating from 1939 to 1954 have been scanned and transcribed.
The transcriptions are being used to create searchable records for each school in the Members Only area of the website and will be used to create a publically available index of all the students and teachers contained in this set of records. The actual images cannot be posted due to federal and state laws.
While the first part of this project is near completion, there are other school records to be scanned and transcribed. There is no firm date for when this next portion of the project will begin but, if you want to be part of the transcription effort please contact Project Manager, Judie Huff at jpichs@gmail.com.
Join our Board of Directors or Become an Officer
Our annual elections are held in April each year and we are always looking for new people to get involved in the management of the historical society. I can't stress how important this really is. The fact of the matter is this, we need a new generation to begin taking over for the old. If you care about Iron County's history and want to see it preserved, please consider joining our historical society (if you haven't already) and think about taking on an active role to take it into the future. If you are interested, contact John Abney via email at webmaster@ironcountyhistory.org and thanks!
Newsletter Editor and Newsletter Articles Needed
We are still looking for a new Newsletter Editor. If you like to do research and like to write, this is a perfect way to get your work into public view. We are also in need of articles for our newsletter. The only requirement is that they have some link to the history of Iron County. If you are interested in the Newsletter Editor position or would like to submit an article for publication, contact John Abney via email at webmaster@ironcountyhistory.org and thanks!
Have You Ever Wanted to Build a Website?
Our website host, EasyNetSites, recently introduced a new version of the website template software that allows for the creation of "responsive" websites. A responsive website adapts its display to the device that you are using to view the website. The new version of their software is called "ENS-R" while the version used to build our website is now being referred to as the "Classic" or "ENS-C" version.
Moving to the ENS-R format would require a complete makeover of our website. You might be able to use bits and pieces of what is there now, but doing so could and probably would require a bit of editing. It took me about four months to build the initial version of the ironcountyhistory.org website. I had no background in web design, but the folks at EasyNetSites have a great on-line video training program that allowed even a novice like me to build what I beleive to be a pretty darn good website.
The thing is, I don't have the time or the motivation to move our website to the new ENS-R format. Additionally, though I haven't set a firm date, I do plan on stepping away from my role as webmaster sometime in the next few years.
Moving to the new ENS-R format will allow us to take on projects that will allow us to share more of our collections, but it comes at a a greater annual cost to the historical society. I believe that the cost is justified, but what we need is someone with a vision on how to really take our website into the 21st century. If you think that you are that person, we would love to hear from you. You can contact me, John Abney, via email at webmaster@ironcountyhistory.org and thanks!
