Meet WisHistory!

Colleen Lies & Yvonne R. Muller

Director of Marketing & Communications & Lead User Experience Designer

Building Upon a Long-standing Legacy

Since 1846, the Wisconsin Historical Society has been on a mission to connect people to the past by collecting, preserving, and sharing stories. Today we launch a new brand along with a redesigned web experience inviting new audiences to experience the life changing power of history.

We are still the Wisconsin Historical Society, but we'd like to introduce you to “WisHistory” our shorter, more welcoming moniker to complement the new brand and enhance public engagement opportunities!

This is an important moment as we introduce a new look for our organization and more welcoming experiences both online and in person. We feel a sense of responsibility to meet people where they are at as new generations access and interact with history in evolving ways.

Christian Øverland

Ruth and Hartley Barker Director & CEO

Easy to Navigate, Easy to Discover

Thanks to everyone who helped take a survey over the last two years about your website experience; we could not have gotten this far without you. We've fully redesigned the website with enhanced navigation, organization, and improved accessibility features. The new site offers a more user-friendly experience for members, partners, researchers, educators, and anyone interested in staying connected to WisHistory services, resources, publications, and destinations.

History is for everyone, and the new website makes it easier for people to access and engage with us. Whether you want to read the latest news from the maritime archaeology team, plan your next visit to one of our WisHistory destinations, or dig deep into the archives, the new website puts it all at your fingertips.

Angela Titus

Assistant Deputy Director & Chief Program Officer

FAQs

We will be updating these FAQs as more questions come through

The new online experience and redesigned website are meant to make it easier for people to understand and access the wide variety of state and National historical resources, information and experiences available to them through the Wisconsin Historical Society.

Our previous website was built on an outdated platform that didn't allow us to make user-friendly updates or stay on pace with modern web design best practices. 

We also needed to create a more accessible website. We believe history is for everyone and that means making sure that no matter what your needs are, we're striving to meet them in a digital space. This includes mobile responsive webpages, alt descriptions on images, key board accessibility and more!

Please don't hesitate to reach out if you notice anything that we can improve!

The former website archive will be available at legacy.wisconsinhistory.org for at least one year. Search will still work on that site, however the information "archived" there will not be updated from April 14, 2026, onward. 

If you need to access bookmarked webpages from the old site, simply prepend the url with the word  legacy. 

For example
https://wisconsinhistory.org/records/Article/CS17363 can be accessed at

https://legacy.wisconsinhistory.org/records/Article/CS17363

Our website is also continually archived and retained on the internet history site https://archive.org/.

We did not carry over all the pages from the old website to the new website for a myriad of reasons. See the answer to “What is not online anymore and what options do we have to view that content?” below for more information.

See answer to “What is going to happen with the old website?” above for more information about our old website's archival strategy.

Many pages from the old website were not moved to the new website for a variety of reasons, including, but not limited to: 

The content was consolidated with other content. 
The content was duplicative.
The content was outdated and we will need more time to thoroughly review, make any necessary updates, and republish.
The content was rarely accessed or requested and therefore retired.

That said, we are not done building and more resources will continue to be transitioned to the new site!  Keep checking back as more content is added. This includes legacy content like historic preservation resources for homeowners, Wisconsin Historical Society Press book information, and additional information about our collections. We will also be adding new classroom resources and interpretive content to continue expanding the stories we share.

To ensure that the information available on our website can be regularly maintained and thoroughly reviewed for accuracy, we needed to start with a clean slate and review all materials before transferring them to the new website. This requires a significant amount of staff time—but we are continuing to transfer resources and reference materials, so keep checking back. We are also working on a long-term plan to continue expanding access to this type of information in a way that is sustainable, accurate, and results in history you can trust.

Please see the answer to “What is not online anymore and what options do we have to view that content?”  

If a similar page exists on the new website, you will be automatically redirected to the new page using the same link.

For pages that weren’t carried over or were rarely accessed, you will be redirected to a 404 page.

However, if you'd like to view the old page, prepend the url with “legacy.” to be linked to the archived page. 

example
https://wisconsinhistory.org/records/Article/CS17363 can be accessed at

https://legacy.wisconsinhistory.org/records/Article/CS17363

Note: the information "archived" there will not be updated from April 14, 2026 onward.

The new website was developed with DOJ Accessibility rule in mind!

The wisconsinhistory.org website has been developed using current techniques and meets Americans with Disabilities Act, Section 508 electronics and Information Technology accessibility standards. Pursuant to the Americans with Disabilities Act, reasonable accommodations, including the provision of informational material in an alternative format, will be provided for qualified individuals with disabilities upon request.

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are international standards from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) for making digital content accessible to people with disabilities. Structured around four principles—Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust (POUR)—WCAG 2.1/2.2 AA is the standard for legal compliance, including ADA Title II.

Accessibility scans are run periodically. We take action on those reports as quickly as possible. History is for everyone and we appreciate any feedback on where our accessibility can be improved!

Please don't hesitate to contact us!

Nearly every page has the most relevant contact person for that specific topic, but if you're still not sure who to contact, please fill out our organization-wide form and we will route your inquiry to the appropriate division.

The website operates as the new discovery layer for the information and assets housed at explore.wishistory.org, and should become your first point of search when seeking digital content. We greatly appreciate all the feedback you provided about the DAMS as it helped us make decisions on how best to design the new website experience when it comes to searching and discovering items in our collections (including what not to do).

The Digital Asset Management System (DAMS) will remain as a secondary option for discovery and access. However, public interaction with the system will be limited to instances where you already received a link pointing to explore.wishistory.org or we have not built out in our website a functionality that exists only in the DAMS. The main purpose of the DAMS will move away from public access to internal digital asset management. As we continue to add to the DAMS, more and more will be fed to the website for you to experience.

We are continually reviewing and updating our website to better serve you, using insights from surveys, usability testing and audience feedback. We invite you to provide feedback via our built-in browser feedback form.

In the bottom right-hand corner of your screen should be a thin navy button. Please click on that to provide specific feedback on the page you are looking at—this will help us more quickly diagnose issues and make changes to better serve site visitors.