Bringing the Columbus Jewish Historical Society website up to the level of its mission, history and archives.

When we were first approached by the Columbus Jewish Historical Society (CJHS) to create a new website, we weren’t that familiar with their mission, archives, and all they do to document the Jewish experience in Columbus.

But after meeting with Toby Brief, Executive Director and Curator, and Daniel Newman, Tech volunteer and all around good guy, we quickly became fans of them, and CJHS. It’s amazing how much a handful of dedicated people can accomplish when they put their minds – and  time – to it.

They had a great story to tell and together, we helped them tell it.

After a couple of mind meld sessions in person, and even a Zoom or two, we finally got a grasp of what they do, and why they are so important to the community. They weren’t just a museum, or a historical archive. They wanted to tell a story of both the past and modern times. CJHS is the only archive and exhibit space in the central Ohio region dedicated solely to the Jewish community. To tell this story, we wrote creative copy, and built an eye-catching Homepage Video to further explain what they do through a visual medium.

Filming, editing, photography and storyboards.

Sevell and I were both excited to create this homepage video for their website. Before we get to do any of the fun stuff like filming or photography,  the story must be created stuck in our chairs—sitting in our offices. The storyboard always comes first. This is where the concept is born. Once we have our concepts completed we presented them to Toby and Daniel, and they picked their favorite. After a few small changes from them, it was finally field trip time.

We headed down to their office to film, photograph, we even got some their younger members to become actors in our story. We filmed their archive space, the upstairs exhibit area and photographed individual pieces of their collection. After filming wrapped it was now time to head back and spend countless hours editing and creating the animations to tell our creative tale.

View Homepage Video

This new website design and development was a significant step up for them. Not just with in design, but its capabilities like, multiple archive databases, collecting donations and a whole new Shop area, for folks to purchase items online.

Updated and new features built into their website.

While a majority of the sections were in the previous Columbus Jewish Historical Society website, there were several new sections needed, which were:

• An Events section which listed the past events, current events, and upcoming events.
• Cemetary Mapping Project, an effort by the Jewish Columbus Cemetery Association to map the burial locations in Jewish designated cemeteries in Franklin County
• The Tifereth Project, in the oral histories section of the website
• Membership Access
• A Donation page
• Central Ohio Holocaust Stories
• Searchable Archive Databases (Screenshot Below)

The above image shows the CJHS searchable database sections we built. Each of these sections come with the ability to upload Excel documents they already have created. The excel doc gets formatted to fit the webpage, and the internal search engine is capable of finding any data in these table rows and columns. 

History is Happening.

History isn’t just about what happened long ago, although their collections date back to the 1800s. It’s also what’s happening today, since today will, eventually, become long ago!

History is made every day, and it’s Columbus Jewish Historical Society’s mission to collect and preserve it. Everyone in Columbus can be part of that history. Seemingly small moments that happen everyday can potentially become transformative change. What happens today might not be recognized until down the road, when their significance finally becomes apparent. When that happens, CJHS is there to document those events..

The folks at the Columbus Jewish Historical Society are actively curating the historical records that will become part of our collective history.

History requires upkeep.

Since CJHS is constantly getting donations of images and items from local residents (and formerly local residents), the website is requires constant updating to reflect all the new items.

Want to see how your website can better reflect the quality of your organization? Contact us and let’s start a conversation.