Volunteers

American Guides Project
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Whether a tourist, student, teacher, amateur scientist or historian, we can use your help - tell us about your favorite people and places in America!

Even though Guides are organized by County, you can contribute in a variety of ways. If you are a student or teacher, consider submitting, through your teacher, class works, including interviews, to our Student Heritage Guide for your County. If you are an amateur writer, maybe you can develop one of the longer General County sections of a Guide. Many people just want to tell one story, or submit a photo/video of a particular place - our Heritage Points of Interest. And some just want to give us basic data for the National Heritage Database. You should be able to do one of the above! By the way, you don't have to be a resident of the County to write about it - you just need to find it interesting.

We encourage documenting Heritage POI’s as a class project. Or maybe you're on vacation, and learned about a place known only to the locals. Your family has an interesting history in a Depression-era farmhouse, or you want save a building from neglect. It's easy to share what you know - just gather some information and email it to us following the guidelines below. We'll edit it, and you will be part of the new American Guide Series.

Collecting data alone can be fun & pretty easy; POI’s may be in town, a place nearby, or your favorite vacation spots; you can report on historic, cultural, or environmental POI’s. Even if a site is already recognized by local authorities, you can add value with the following information. You can check AmericanGuides.org or email us to see if we already have information on that POI.

Name: The name to be used in the Guide as title of the site. This need not be the official name – in fact, we’d rather use the common name used locally to refer to the site. A building may be Yancey’s Farmhouse, an event site may be Site of Union Pacific Train Accident, or nature - Former Site of Wetlands, for instance.

Address: Street Address. If this is an area, other geographic description, explain in the reference section.

Significant Year: Original construction year. Date of Event. Date designated/established. Explain in narrative.

Sources/References: Other researchers may utilize this reference material or cite AG works, so please list the sources of information: government documents, news articles, or interviews; any standard bibliographic reference format will do.

A narrative is optional, and it takes a bit more thought. If we don’t have a narrative, we usually include your POI in our database, and later someone else (perhaps) will do a narrative. The content of a narrative is up to you; but our editors may combine two submissions about the same place, or otherwise modify your work. Usually, this section is a history of the POI, a biography of a related person/family, a description of this natural feature, how formed, etc. However, it may also describe plants, animals, and geological features, or things like equipment, cooking styles, songs, etc. See the original AGS books on our web site for many examples. The length may vary from a short paragraph up to about 500 words. We’ll credit you (and perhaps others) at the end of the narrative.

The American Guide Series will eventually be contributed to the public domain. Contributors must sign a release, which enables the Project, as a tax exempt charity, to edit, alter, modify, re-use, publish and license all materials submitted to the Project in draft or final form. Please submit text via email in Word, or in the body of your email. You may submit 1 photo <500k size with caption – must be your own photo, or you must provide proof of copyright ownership. If you have any questions, please email Editor@AmericanGuides.org.