Introducing the Consultants' Corner on H@W

14 March 2012 – Adina Langer

2012 is an ambitious year for NCPH, marking the launch of a true locus for our craft on the World Wide Web: the “History@Work” blog located on the new digital Public History Commons. Like the field of public history, this space will take advantage of every phase the Internet has to offer: its content delivery mechanisms will be multi-faceted, its content fluid, and its reach will encompass the entire cloud.  At least that’s our hope, but we public historians like to dream big.

As the editors of the Consultants’ Corner section of the History at Work blog, we are pleased to provide a tiny glimmer on a single facet of this ambitious enterprise. And with the joy of being tiny and specific comes an opportunity to define our terms even before we begin.  In that spirit, we invited current and former members of the NCPH Consultants’ Committee to respond to the following questions:

1) What does “public history consulting” mean to you?

2) Are there particular skills or attitudes that all consultants should have?

3) What has led you to define all or part of your career trajectory as consulting?

4) What is your favorite thing about public history?

For most of our respondents, the “consulting” aspect of this definition proved the least important.  Being a consultant means that you work for clients, often clients outside the normal confines of the historical field (individuals, institutions, hospitals, societies, etc).  Being a consultant is in itself a fluid state– sometimes people consult for a time on their own and then they join a larger firm, or they may employ only certain aspects of being a consultant while working full-time for a single employer (i.e. working remotely, or working on discrete projects on their own time).

Essential to consulting in any of its iterations is a keen business sense. Morgen Young describes the need for a “feast or famine” mentality and the importance of taking on as many jobs as come your way (provided your hourly rate is met), and Michael Adamson and Darlene Roth both emphasize the importance of flexibility and client-service given the necessity of relying on connections from one client to another. In his role as an in-house consultant for a government agency, Hugh Davidson emphasizes the importance of transcending mere regulatory compliance, creating a body of “gray literature” that can be “redeployed as foundational to establishing community heritage, and to chart former environmental conditions embodied in historical cultural landscape.”

But no matter what we do as consultants and for whom, the essence of what we do is good, solid public history. Todd Jones provides a fantastic accounting of the skills employed by public historians in their various spheres:

“The varied types of historical consultants compose a superhero team of professionals with unmatched skills and abilities.  The historic house inspector, for example, has X-ray vision, possessing the power to see through walls and understand the story of a home through time and space.  The genealogist has the ability to speak with the dead, and understand the trials of ordinary people who share the most personal aspects of our past.  Preservationists attempt to grant the gift of immortality upon unique features of the built environment and shared landscape, either through physical preservation or documentary perpetuation.  Within countless research libraries and museums, one finds public historians with the ability of microscopic vision.  They can discover and recall even the smallest nuances from the human experience, found through historic letters, books, and artifacts of material culture.

All public historians have the power to travel back in time.  They relate to the people and places that they study, using the skill of historical empathy to view the present world in a dimension too few others can see: the dimension of past and contingency.  In many ways, public historians have the power of precognition, and can make educated perceptions about our future, based on a keen understanding of the past.  Yet, all too often, the public historian falls victim to an unwanted power which society many times bestows: invisibility.  Even with so many superhuman strengths, perhaps the greatest power a public historian can have is the influential power to be heard.”

Although it can be a struggle to find an audience, it is precisely that engagement with the world writ large that attracts people to the field of public history.  Respondents to our questions invariably talked about the satisfaction that comes with knowing that their intended audience (whether a client, or an even bigger group) made a connection with their history. Darlene Roth writes: “My favorite thing in public history is the look in the eyes of those who ‘get it’ once it’s done.  Nothing beats that.”

So what then is the essence of public history consulting?  Public history consulting is defined by freedom:  the freedom to transcend location, audience, genre and display modality. Of course, this freedom is constrained by the availability of clients, but the client-base can be expanded as long as you deploy creativity and a drive not to under-represent your skills as a historian providing a valuable service.   So whether you are currently a public history consultant, think of yourself as a consultant in some aspects of your work, or hope to become a consultant at some point in your career, come back to the Consultants’ Corner for pearls of wisdom and pitfalls from the field.  We hope to see you often!