A seasonal ranger ponders "The State of History in the National Park Service"

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report coverThe NCPH/OAH conference brought to light a subject near to my heart this afternoon – history in the NPS.  The panel consisted of Marla Miller, Gary Nash, David Thelen and Anne Mitchell Whisnant.  On the docket was the discussion of their report on how the NPS stacks up in the history department.  Read More

Lightning strikes once

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Today’s “Lightning Talk” session was a great one-hour showcase for about a dozen digital projects:

  • Larry Cebula:  Spokane Historical, a web and mobile platform for telling stories of Spokane and Eastern Washington, developed by the Public History program at Eastern Washington University using Curatescape and Omeka
  • Cathy Stanton:  History@Work (hey, that’s us)
  • Bobby Allen:  University of North Carolina/Chapel Hill’s Digital Innovation Lab, an American-Studies-based project that is developing, testing, and documenting best-practice models for faculty and graduate student work in public humanities that integrates community engagement, digital technologies, and interdisciplinary inquiry
  • Andrew Hurley:  the Virtual City Project, which uses three-dimensional imaging technologies to create electronic representations of lost historic landscapes
  • Trevor Owens:   Viewshare, a free web application developed by the Library of Congress for curators and collections managers to create and customize unique, dynamic online views of images from their collections.
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Conference preview: When historic sites close

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We have an ever-growing body of scholarship about how and why historic sites are created, but a panel today focuses on what happens when they close.  Chaired by NPS Ranger Chuck Arning of the Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor and featuring panelists Barbara Franco (Gettysburg Seminary Ridge Museum), Bob Beatty (American Association for State & Local History), Sheila Kirshbaum, Tsongas Industry History Center), and Bruce Beesley (Indiana State Museum & Historic Sites), the panel will offer ideas and best practices for making the best out of bad times. Read More

Conference Preview: Civil War Battlefields – Imagining Possibilities after 150 Years

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Historians, preservationists, government officials, and elected representatives stand at a frontier of possibility and hope, or anguish and betrayal as the nation enters the sesquicentennial years of the Civil War.  This proposed roundtable, in cooperation with audience members, dares to imagine how our Civil War battlefields should be managed for the next 150 years.  Read More

Digital history "genius bar" – Thursday afternoon in Milwaukee

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We’re trying something new at this year’s NCPH/OAH conference, with due acknowledgement to Apple:  a “genius bar” of experienced digital historians who will be available to answer questions on a wide range of topics, problems, and platforms. Our “Digital Drop-In” can be found in Exhibit Hall D Foyer, near the registration area, from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m.  Read More

History on a shoestring at Nido 20: A memory site in its infancy

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In Chile between 1973 and 1990, according to the 2004 National Commission on Political Imprisonment and Torture (The Valech Report), 1,132 sites were utilized as centers of detention, torture, and extermination.  They ranged from hospitals and soccer stadiums to police precincts and private houses.  Read More

Grad students and new professionals at the conference

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Graduate students and new professionals headed to the NCPH/OAH Conference in Milwaukee–let’s get to know each other! Please join the NCPH New Professionals and Graduate Students Committee for a social outing at Milwaukee Ale House (233 North Water St., downtown Milwaukee, a short walk from the Frontier Airlines Center) on Thursday, April 19th, from 7:30 to 10:30pm. Read More