This roundtable examines how two institutions—the American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC) and the National WWI Museum and Memorial (NWWIMM)—are rethinking the stewardship of World War I memory through digital partnership. Drawing on a collaborative digital exhibition and shared interpretive initiatives, panelists explore how federal and local institutions can build durable memory infrastructures that serve both public audiences and K–12 educators.

Ben Brands (ABMC) will situate the Commission’s origins in the immediate aftermath of the war and consider how federal memorialization practices have evolved in response to changing public expectations and audiences. Lora Vogt (NWWIMM) will examine how digital exhibitions and interpretive frameworks extend physical memorial spaces into networked environments, where search engines and AI systems increasingly mediate discovery. Allison Finkelstein (ANC), Senior Historian, will discuss the present objectives and arc of the federal landscape of engaging online audiences. Nicole Dobronski (NWWIMM) will address the implications for K–12 education, considering how digital memorial resources can support teachers navigating evolving standards, civic education debates, and AI-assisted student research practices.

By foregrounding digital stewardship as a form of memorial practice, this panel argues that historians and public institutions must reconsider how they curate, contextualize, and structure historical knowledge in an era when AI tools increasingly shape interpretation. World War I offers a critical case study for how institutional partnerships can sustain civic memory beyond monumentality and into algorithmic space.