This is the last month we can accept community applications to host a touring Smithsonian exhibit on American "roots music" in 2009.

You can find a basic description of the exhibit on our web site. This article is all about why you should consider jumping in.

These exhibits are extremely popular in communities because they generate so much spirit and community involvement. The reason is, the exhibit is just the beginning! Host communities often create a local exhibit to go with the Smithsonian one. Where the subject is music, you can imagine the potential! Host communities also organize community activities. Again, just imagine the potential!

Do you have musical instrument makers in the vicinity? They could participate in fascinating ways? Do you have local people who compete in Bluegrass competitions or who represent other American musical traditions? How many people in your town do you imagine learned to play a musical instrument as some point in their lives?

Anything you can imagine about public activities or an exhibit can be enhanced, with our help, by setting a goal of creating some content for a web site. A library or museum might want to learn to create a downloadable audio recording of a local musician, or a podcast of an oral history interview with former students of a beloved band director. Or you might want to learn how to create an interactive feature where people in town can share pictures related to the theme of American music.

Involvement in the Smithson's exhibit program opens up all sorts of doors to involving the community and learning how to extend the life of your work on the internet. For any sponsor town that requests our help, we will organize training in techniques of gathering content so that it can be used in a variety of ways and of displaying content in a variety of formats.

We are very excited about helping people learn to function more comfortably in oral history, documenting, and disseminating. We'll help you set a goal and help you reach it.

The deadline for submitting an application is December 31, though. We want to give the six selected towns many months of lead time to create plans and work with us on ways and means of achieving them!

Contact my esteemed colleague, Patricia Zahn, if you need more information.