MCN 2026

How does a cultural institution position itself as the definitive educational authority on a historical subject — not just today, but for a new generation to come? The generation that lived through World War II and the Truman presidency — that fought in the Pacific, rationed food on the home front, listened to Truman's voice on the radio, and cast ballots in 1948 — is nearly gone. Within a decade, the living memory of these events will be gone. What remains will be collections, documents, oral histories, photographs, and the digital records and experiences institutions build right now to carry these critical histories forward.

This session presents two history museums navigating that transition in real time: the National World War II Museum and the Truman Library Institute. Both are engaged in long-term digital strategy work explicitly designed to answer the same question from different angles: how do you build digital experiences that preserve the weight and truth of history for audiences who have no personal connection to it and who are growing up in an often-chaotic information environment?

The answer both institutions are working toward is not nostalgia. It is education and storytelling. In both cases, that ambition has produced concrete, purpose-built digital foundations designed to meet the next generation where they are.

At the Truman Library Institute, that means a new web presence which intends to surpass the official federal (.gov) site in depth and usability, also doubling down on credibility at a tenuous moment in history, paired with a quote-based AI-driven chatbot, a tool that allows students and general audiences to engage directly with Truman’s words, decisions, and legacy through a conversational interface grounded entirely in the historical record. 

At the National World War II Museum, that means a sustained investment in purpose-built digital architecture: an authoritative infrastructure designed to establish the Museum as the trusted anchor for WWII education and storytelling online. In an era when students are as likely to encounter AI-generated summaries or algorithmically surfaced partial histories as they are to find rigorous scholarship, the Museum’s digital strategy is oriented toward a clear goal: becoming the place where diverse audiences can reliably find research-driven, editorially vetted, and perspectives-inclusive accounts of World War II’s full scope and complexity.

Both institutions reflect the same underlying conviction: that the best response to a fractured information environment is not to retreat from digital engagement, but to build better, more trustworthy digital experiences and to plan for their longevity. The session will trace how each institution arrived at its approach through deep stakeholder engagement, user research, phased implementation, and a sustained commitment to organizational alignment, and then open the floor for discussion of what this work means for the broader museum field.