Your history is more than just memories — it’s a strategic asset. Independent and private schools have rich traditions, transformative stories and decades of materials that shape your community’s identity.
HistoryIT transforms yearbooks, photographs, letters and founding documents into dynamic, searchable digital archives. These tools fuel alumni engagement, elevate communications, support fundraising efforts and reinforce your school’s distinctive brand.
“McCallie is looking forward to working with HistoryIT over the course of the next few years to help make its school history visible and accessible.
There are letters, speeches, memoirs, lesson plans, old progress reports and report cards, letters home detailing life at school, and so much more that tells the story of the school, its values, mission, and community. We are excited about having found a partner to help us organize and share this history.”
Jamie Baker
Director of Marketing and Communications, McCallie School
The Challenge: Inaccessible Archives
Independent and private schools face unique challenges managing and utilizing their historical materials:
- Historical materials are scattered across basements, offices and personal collections.
- Existing archives are unorganized, unsearchable or deteriorating.
- Alumni relations and advancement teams struggle to access engaging content for campaigns.
- Marketing teams lack easy-to-use historical assets for storytelling and differentiation.
- Internal resources are stretched thin making digitization projects feel overwhelming.
- There’s no clear plan for long-term preservation, access or growth — leaving the school’s legacy at risk.
The Solution: Strategic Digital Preservation
HistoryIT provides comprehensive digital preservation strategies and tools designed specifically for schools:
- Comprehensive assessments of historical materials to identify opportunities and determine priorities.
- Professional archives team exceeds industry best practices — creating searchable, future-proof digital archives.
- Dynamic digital museums with interactive features including timelines, profiles and curated exhibits.
- Ability to easily locate and integrate relevant historical content across alumni, fundraising, marketing and academic initiatives.
- Ongoing partnership to support growth, updates and evolving school needs.
Digital Preservation Services
- We provide surveys and questionnaires to your organization’s contact person to collect information about your historic materials.
- Online or in person, we assess the condition and content of your archival holdings as well as your technology support needs.
- A HistoryIT expert leads stakeholder meetings and interviews in order to effectively collect data for your customized digital archiving strategy.
- Based on results gathered during assessments, HistoryIT develops a customized strategy to organize and digitally preserve your archival holdings.
- HistoryIT experts work with you to pack and ship all materials.
- We handle the digital preservation imaging, tagging, rehousing, and management of the selected archival materials to include in your digital museum.
- You receive a license to Odyssey®, HistoryIT’s digital preservation platform, allowing you to store, tag, and manage items in your digital archive and share them in your digital museum.
- Your Odyssey® license includes an online timeline, biography portal, milestone celebration retrospective, and storytelling platform that give you the freedom to build and share exhibits that are fully accessible to the public.
Impact on Fundraising
Use your history as a strategic asset to strengthen donor relationships and fundraising outcomes:
- Support capital campaigns with visually compelling, emotionally resonant content.
- Create powerful storytelling tools to inspire major gifts and legacy giving.
- Reinforce the impact of your mission through a dynamic alumni and donor engagement platform.
- Provide unique, differentiated experiences for stewardship and donor recognition.
Enhanced Communications
Empower your marketing and communications teams with rich, accessible historical content:
- Deliver fresh, authentic stories across your various platforms.
- Elevate your brand’s distinctiveness with visually compelling, search-friendly content.
- Mark milestone anniversaries with meaningful campaigns.
- Support admissions with storytelling tools that showcase legacy and impact.
- Enable cross-departmental collaboration through centralized historical assets.
Improve Operational Efficiencies
Streamline access, management and usage of your school’s historical materials:
- Eliminate time-consuming searches through physical archives.
- Provide user-friendly, self-service access to staff across departments.
- Organize fragmented collections into one comprehensive, searchable archive.
- Reduce reliance on ad hoc or outdated systems including Dropbox or shared drives.
- Ensure long-term sustainability of institutional knowledge.
Long-Term Strategic Benefits
Invest in your school’s legacy with a future-focused preservation strategy:
- Ensure irreplaceable materials are protected and accessible now and in the future.
- Create an enduring resource that evolves alongside your institution’s growth.
- Reinforce your reputation as a leader in innovation and a steward of history.
- Foster stronger connections across alumni, donors, students and faculty.
- Build a foundation that supports future fundraising, engagement and institutional storytelling.
Our Process
We transform archival materials, from whatever state they are in, into a 21st-century digital museum.
We help you envision, create and sustain digital collections that deepen engagement and deliver long-lasting value to your organization.
Independent & Private Schools Resources
On-Demand Webinar
Historic Preservation for Private & Independent Schools
Your history lives in the priceless and irreplaceable yearbooks, correspondence, albums, memorabilia and more.
Learn best practices to preserve your stories and your legacy from the experts at HistoryIT. Discover specific steps you can take to preserve your materials now and in the future.
On-Demand Case Study Webinar
Innovative Approaches to Preserving and Sharing Private School Histories
Discover ground-breaking strategies and tactics for saving and sharing the history of private schools.
Team members from the Ursuline Academy of Dallas, Germantown Friends School and Lick-Wilmerding High School come together to discuss the forward-thinking preservation methods being implemented at their institutions.
