Welcome to Managing History!

Welcome to the course website for Managing History. Here you'll find everything you need to navigate the semester. Be sure to subscribe to posts from this site as I'll use it as a primary vehicle for course announcements and other assorted stuff you'll need to be aware of. Note too that this site evolves over time with each iteration of Managing History. Browse around to find out who your predecessors were and what they've been up to.

Our theme for this semester concerns local public history controversies including dust-ups at the Philadelphia History Museum, The Barnes Foundation, the Pennhurst State School and Hospital, the USS Olympia, and the President's House. Lots of fascinating issues to wrangle with and right in our own backyard.

Looking forward to a great semester!

Hi everyone! I just wanted to share this with everyone, http://www.philaplace.org/ I actually did some work with HSP this past summer as my internship. I haven't had the chance to play around with the site but I think it's a great resource to have for Philadelphia.

I thought this post might be of interest in light of our discussion about digital media.  An additional way that digital technology affects public historians, or at least places where we work, is the ability for consumers to comment in a public forum.  A friend of mine had a negative experience at one museum and a positive one at another.  She shared her experience directly with museum staff while there.  She also blogged about it.  Her thoughts can be found here.  I also found interesting her reaction to rules museums set.

~ Lyndsey

The Task of the Curator:
Translation, Intervention and Innovation in Exhibitionary Practice

Location: California

Deadline: 2010-02-05

Description: CALL FOR PAPERS ACADEMIC CONFERENCE: FRIDAY, MAY 14
2010 THE TASK OF THE CURATOR: TRANSLATION, INTERVENTION, AND
INNOVATION IN EXHIBITIONARY PRACTICE Museum and Curatorial
Studies (MACS) at UC-Santa Cruz brings together museum
professionals and scholars from a variety of disciplines to
study the poe ...

Contact: macs@ucsc.edu

URL: macs.ucsc.edu/conferences.html

Announcement ID: 171961

http://www.h-net.org/announce/show.cgi?ID=171961

To go digital, or not to go digital--why is it still a question?

Here's a great starting point for discussions about making collections available online:

http://usingdata.typepad.com/usingdata/2009/03/web.html

The "Holy Land Experience" in Orlando
http://www.dailyfinance.com/2009/10/29/holy-land-experience/

A great new preservation resource:

http://www.ccaha.org/education/videos

Recall that, for next week, we'll be reading excerpts from Handler and Gable and Patricia West alongside Tilden's *Interpreting Our Heritage*.

Also, in preparation for November 30, please make the following adjustments to your syllabus:

-Include Cary Carson's "The End of History Museums" with your November 9 readings (currently scheduled for 11/30).

-Include "Museums and Society 2034" with your November 23 readings (currently scheduled for 11/30).

-Disregard other readings assigned for November 30.

-Note that class will not be held on November 30, but that your Wagner groups should plan on making use of the time to prepare presentations due the following week.

-Wagner groups will present final projects on December 7. Plan on submitting final portfolios, however, by Monday, December 14. Extending the portfolio deadline will create enough time for each group to include a narrative assessment of their accomplishments. More on this to come.

Dr. Charles McGovern, College of William & Mary, “It Will Stand!: Popular Music as Public History,” Thursday, October 29th 4:00—5:30, Temple University Gladfelter Hall 9th Floor, Weigley Room. McGovern is a former curator at the National Museum ...of American History; co-edits Duke U Press's Refiguring American Music series; and author of *Sold American: Consumption and Citizenship, 1890-1945 (2006)*.

I just stumbled upon this and I'm excited to share it!

http://www.lettersofnote.com/

WEB Reviews

It's not too soon to begin thinking about topics for your upcoming WEB review assignment. With that in mind, check out this great new site from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department: http://www.texascccparks.org/.

Civic Engagement

Art Museum Images in Scholarly Publishing

Public History as Deep Play

On the march toward Monday's conversation about popular historymakers and authenticity, check out this article in today's New York Times.

Museum/Exhibit Reviews

Toward identifying a museum or exhibit to review, consider this list of regional sites culled from a recent Inquirer listing.

Popularity, part II

A lot of the fun in blogging results from discovering how diverse one's audience can be. But how do you know who's reading what you write? If you'd like to get a sense for who is visiting your blog, when they visit, and what they do while there, consider using a free web tracker. There are many of these available--Google "free web tracker" for a sample. I've had good luck with StatCounter. Most of these will provide easy instructions for setting up your tracker. Once you do, I think you'll be surprised by what you learn.

Lump of Coal

Check out this new take on Becker's "Everyman his Own Historian" fresh from the pen of AHA president and historian extraordinaire, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. Does Ulrich's analysis require that we rethink last week's discussion?

For a good sum-up on THE problem facing Philadelphia public historians right now, check out Dana Dorman's recent post.

Popularity!

How quickly your blog appears in a Google search depends, in part, on how many websites link to your own. Toward building your popularity, and your peers' popularity too, try linking to one another's blogs. You're all linked on Temple's public history website and our course dashboard--try linking to those sites as well for added search hits. And, how about the Wagner? And, etc., etc., etc...

If you are trying to copy and paste your blog posts from Microsoft Word and finding that it isn't working properly, paste it into ms notepad first, then paste it into the blog.