03.1Local Historian
[03.1] Appendix
A civic AI platform that turns public meeting recordings and oral histories into searchable town portals.
I made this film for the Local Historian home page. The pictures are generated, not filmed: I assembled it from seventeen generated clips, through a lot of trial and error and editing.
On the site, scrolling moves the film, and the copy appears over it at set points. At seven of them the film holds still while the copy is read. Below, it runs as it does there, with the site’s own copy and timing.
938 frames · 8 frames a second · one video, 13.6 MB on a desktop, 8.0 MB on a phone
localhistorian.ai, home page
localhistorian.ai
LOCAL HISTORIAN
THE SYSTEM OF ACCESS FOR AMERICAN TOWNS
Local Historian
Meetings, minutes, local laws, and oral histories — searchable, citable, and answerable in one place. We don't replace the systems your town already pays for. We make them legible to the public.
Who It Helps
Local Historian serves everyone who touches the public record — the staff who keep it, the residents who need it, the institutions that preserve it, and the students who learn from it.
Clerks, FOIL officers, administrators, communications
⏱️ Common workflows go from hours of review down to minutes — and every self-served answer is a records request that never gets filed.
Parents, homeowners, journalists, community groups
Directors, archivists, volunteers
Teachers, students, curriculum leads
What It Saves
Access isn't a luxury line item — it pays for itself in staff hours, avoided friction, and grant dollars. The measurable outcomes:
FOIL/FOIA responses
hours → minutes
Meeting recap preparation
1–2 days → instant
Finding past decisions
15–30 minutes → 1–5 seconds
Based on typical municipal workflows.
Your record already exists — streamed, archived, filed. But it lives in five systems from four vendors, and the resident's path between them is nobody's product. We measure access on four pillars:
Can a resident who starts at the homepage actually reach the record?
Once reached, can it be read, searched, and cited — minutes, video, and the code itself — or is it scanned images and one-section-at-a-time click-throughs?
Does the record work for residents who rely on captions and transcripts?
Is the record whole — or does it start when the last vendor contract did?
These four pillars are exactly what our free Public Access Report Card measures.
Access, Funded
01Run the Free Report Card
Sixty seconds, public data. Four pillar grades, free fixes your webmaster can make this week, and the documented gaps a funding application needs.
02Find the Funding Path
Records-access work is fundable — through state records-improvement funds, heritage and preservation programs, and commemoration initiatives. In New York, awards run up to $75,000 per project; other states have their own rails. The card's findings are the application's evidence, and we help you scope a fundable project.
03Launch the Access Layer
We digitize, restore, transcribe, and connect your record — meetings, minutes, laws, histories — into one searchable public portal. Then we re-run the card, and your town keeps the receipt.
Funding availability and eligibility vary by state and program; awards are competitive and applications are made by the municipality or institution. Local Memory LLC is not affiliated with any state archives or funding agency.
Live Demo
Glen Cove, NY is the first town with a live Civic Portal. Search public meetings, ask questions in plain language, and watch every answer cite its exact moment in the record.
Live Demo
A working system of access: searchable public meetings, AI-assisted Q&A with timestamped citations, and heritage oral histories from the leaders who lived the decisions.
"This town has a story worth telling. We're just helping people hear it."
Heritage Layer
Oral histories and interviews are not a separate product — they're the human half of the public record. Mayors, council members, and longtime residents, restored from aging tape and made searchable beside the meetings they once led.
Heritage content layers into the same portal, so a resident can travel from a 2026 vote to a 1974 voice in two clicks.
One pipeline, three doors — measured, funded, and delivered as a single system of access. Start with your town's free Report Card →
Public Access Report Card
Free. Sixty seconds. Four pillar grades on how findable, usable, accessible, and complete your public record is — with fixes and the funding path attached.
Civic Portal
The access layer for the town's business: meetings, minutes, and the local laws themselves — charter, code, and zoning — searchable and answerable, with every response citing the exact section or the exact moment in the record.
Heritage Portal
The access layer for the town's memory: oral histories and archival AV, restored, transcribed, and explorable by residents, researchers, and students.
For Libraries & Historical Societies
Start where your collection is. We digitize cassettes, VHS, reels, and legacy formats — restoration and transcription included — with a pathway from a preserved collection to a fully searchable public archive. Heritage and commemoration grant programs fund this work; ask us about the funding path for your collection.
Local Historian is a records-access firm. We take the public record a town already keeps — meeting video, minutes, local laws, oral histories on aging tape — and make it findable, readable, and answerable by the public.
Your vendors are systems of record — where the record is made. Local Historian is the system of access — where your residents actually use it. We don't replace anything; we make what you already pay for legible.
The model started with the Seneca Falls Historical Society: a box of deteriorating oral-history cassettes, digitized, restored, transcribed, and made searchable. Today we measure any town's public access for free, help route state and heritage funding toward closing the gaps, and deliver the layer that makes the record public in practice, not just in principle.
Tell us about your town or collection — or ask about the funding path. We'll follow up within 2 business days.
Stay Connected
Updates on new town launches, the State of Public Access research, and funding-cycle reminders for records grants.
Local Historian
The system of access for your town's public record
© 2025 Local Memory LLC. Built to strengthen civic transparency, public access, and digital preservation.
03.1b The site
Towns record hours of public meetings that nobody can search. Local Historian transcribes them and answers plain questions with the exact moment and the person who said it. It also opens up oral-history interviews for researchers.