Kristen Gwinn-Becker aims to give history a future with services and Web-based software that can help managers of historical collections organize, catalog, search and share their archives digitally. A Maine native, the CEO and founder of HistoryIT recently set up headquarters on Commercial Street in Portland, where the software development and executive teams will be […]
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Kristen Gwinn-Becker aims to give history a future with services and Web-based software that can help managers of historical collections organize, catalog, search and share their archives digitally. A Maine native, the CEO and founder of HistoryIT recently set up headquarters on Commercial Street in Portland, where the software development and executive teams will be based.
Kristen Gwinn-Becker, 35, who is a self-taught database and Web developer with two degrees in history, recently talked to Mainebiz about her plans to hire 16 people this year and tackle new frontiers for digital collections. Following is an edited transcript.
Mainebiz: How did HistoryIT get started?
Kristen Gwinn-Becker: When I was working as a consultant, I worked a lot in the world of digital archives. A lot of the kind of proprietary systems I built were big and expensive. But I increasingly heard from the places that actually contain the bulk of our historical records — that is the towns, historical societies, small libraries, church basements and synagogue collections, places that are mostly volunteer-managed. They have very little to no budget, there's no technology staff and so what a lot of these organizations needed in order to share their collections and their catalogs was a very easy-to-use, set price, affordable system. We designed our ArchivesTree product with that market in mind, but also so we are able to scale it for organizations, businesses and groups of all sizes and all kinds of needs. We were founded in Illinois in 2010, but in late 2012 I decided to rebuild HistoryIT with a very specific approach, and I knew it was time to move it home to Maine. We reincorporated the company late in 2012 in Portland. We're now up to four full-time people in Maine, the Midwest and Washington, D.C., and we're set to hire 16 people in those areas in the next two months.
MB: What need did you see in the history market that wasn't being fulfilled?
KGB: We bridge between the traditional archive, which would be done with paper, and collections of objects such as the physical collections in museums. Also increasingly, the challenge is more digital material like emails, websites and social media content. Part of our model is about expanding who these collections are shared with. When we look at a historical collection, for example, the papers of a public official, we would not just digitize them. We tag each item so that it becomes findable, not just scanned. You need to note various fields that can be searchable, a description of the paper and the people who are associated with it, so this is a high-level, curated tagging. A Ph.D. candidate is going to search using very different words than a fifth-grader. For example, we digitized some of the journals of Frances Willard, the leader of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. If you wanted to know her opinion on God, for example, you'd think of typing “God,” but she doesn't actually use that word in her journals. She uses words like “father.” So it's important that the software platform is able to say, 'This is a section where Willard is discussing her views on religion' and to tag it with those search terms.
MB: How are you funded and how do you make money?
KGB: We launched our first product this past spring and are developing an improved version two now. We got a $25,000 seed grant from the Maine Technology Institute, and we matched it with $38,000. The funding allowed us to create the Web-delivered software. We provide a range of services and have four product packages [$600 to $2,500]. Services are the majority of our revenue now. Contracts run from $800-$6 million per project. We expect product revenue to increase significantly with the release of new versions accessible to different markets. By the close of 2014, product income should be closer to 10% of revenue, and then it will increase. Gross revenue at the close of 2014 will be about $8 million-$12 million. One of my recent clients is former Maine Gov. John Baldacci. We will review and handle his political papers.
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