I absolutely love this idea.  The JFK Library is running a Twitter stream that documents the day-to-day of John F. Kennedy’s 1960 presidential campaign.  the project brings a slice of American history back into the present day and allows people – who knows the exact target audience – to tap into and feel part of it once again.

Whether you are interested in history or studying it in class, interested in the kind of events that would surround AMC’s series Mad Men or even just interested in the United States and/or political processes, the JFK Twitter stream has something for everyone. It’s not going to teach readers every last detail but it might prompt and inform people’s understanding at least, which can only be a good thing.

The campaign stream covers everything from the mundane “American Airlines flight to New York” to the more interesting “Universal Newsreel: JFK Announces Candidacy for President” with links to archive content on YouTube and other sites. So how do they accomplish the project?

Bringing History to Life

Well besides the content of their own archives at the JFK library, with scheduled tweets, the process of building the a stream is made super simple because it doesn’t need to be built in real-time.  Scheduled tweets allow you to build a plan of attack and add to and enhance the list of tweets with additional material, links or otherwise as you go.

Twitter doesn’t provide as much of a rich time line that you could achieve with any multimedia project, but it provides a simple and more complete way to accomplish the project using social media products that people in the here-and-now consume and understand easily, an important aspect of reaching out as quickly and as easily as possible.

Spreading the Word

Trans-media is a great way to tap into resources on many different levels and this certainly does that.  Whether promoting history or the present day, Twitter, in conjunction with other social media, sites, and archive resources brings things to life in imaginative ways.

The campaign is a great way to spread word of the JFK library and everything it has to offer and certainly helps fulfill its remit.  As I said, I love the idea and am looking forward to receiving the tweets and learning about a part of history that I know little about; and for those interested you can follow ‘JFK’ via the Twitter username @JFK_1960.

Photo from TellMeWhat on Flickr.