The museum I chose was the Community of Gardens.  Community of Gardens is a digital archive hosted by Smithsonian Gardens in partnership with our Archives of American Gardens created to preserve our diverse garden heritage.  Their goal is to create a digital archive of American gardens.  They ask people to submit videos, images, and stories to understand the meaning of gardens in American life.  They are asking people to share their community garden, share a story with a grandparent, or tell a story about a plant that has been grown by their family.  The strategy that they are using is a platform to keep family history data. This would mostly be effective with retired people and their grandchildren or people who own and create community gardens.  It would be challenging for a family with multiple jobs or a family of 5 or more to make time to maintain a community garden.  Gardening takes time, maintenance, and attention.  This is why I believe that someone who is retired or who has a dedicated community garden would likely have access and time to create the data sets the Smithsonian is looking for.

Their criteria are very straightforward and to the point.  They also give ideas on what makes a good garden story so that people submitting their audio or video know what to provide. When you submit a video or image, you need to be sure you are not using private information.  When you tell your stories, you would want to make sure that most of the information is all about plants or the heritage of the plant for your family. When you capture your videos, you want to be sure that you don’t have any street names or addresses in the videos.  I can see how you can make yourself vulnerable to identity theft while filming your garden, if it is at your home or a relative’s home. If someone wanted to steal someone’s personal information by using this platform, they could do so with a name and address, and you could probably figure out dates if they include ages in their stories.  If contributors are not careful, I can see how it will cause a privacy issue.  They understand how privacy can be a significant factor and list on their site that they reserve the right to remove personal information.

I would have contributors sign a waiver or release of liability if their story or information used from this platform was related to or used in a way that was not approved by the institution. There is a 4-5 day period before the story submitted will be posted to the archive. To submit a contribution, you have to be able to provide an e-mail address for communication and submission of your story. You retain ownership of your submission, but by making a submission, you give the Smithsonian and those authorized by the Smithsonian your irrevocable, perpetual permission to disseminate, modify, and use your submission, in whole or in part, in all media now known or later developed, for any educational, promotional, archival, or other standard museum purposes, without compensation to you. 

The most significant challenge I see is getting quality information and reaching your target audience.  You may spend too much time reviewing data that you can’t use.   Having a way to archive family history that may be otherwise lost is an excellent tool for museums. They may need to parodically change the criteria or ask for specific data or engagement at some point to try and increase diversity.  They may also want to go to other community events and maybe create a sub-social media platform to engage with a more diverse community and get the attention of a younger crowd with similar interests.