Finding the intersection of technology and public history

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Digital technology has enabled public historians, cultural heritage professionals, and history students to collaborate with diverse audiences and explore history’s role in civic engagement in ways previously unimagined. The partnership between the Virtual City Project and the Restoration Group described by Andrew Hurley in “Chasing the Frontiers of Digital Technology: Public History Meets the Digital Divide” demonstrates the exciting possibilities as well as challenges advanced digital tools provide, especially in the face of limited budgets, long software development cycles, and varying levels of digital access. Read More

Around the field April 12, 2016

newspaper-in-fieldFrom around the field this week: Registration ends tomorrow for public history boot camp on collections assessment in Camden, New Jersey, U.S.; Visitor Studies Association takes on the Data Revolution; international symposium on Cultural Heritage Conservation and Digitization in Beijing; learning from LGBTQ lives in Oral History Review. Read More

Hamilton: The Musical: Blacks and the founding fathers

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This past August, I went with a group of historians to see the much acclaimed, and now Grammy-winning, musical, Hamilton. Our timing was just right. The ticket prices were reasonable (for the Great White Way), costing nowhere near the astronomical sums people pay now. Read More

Meeting our audiences where they are in the digital age

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In his article, “Chasing the Frontiers of Digital Technology: Public History Meets the Digital Divide,” Andrew Hurley does the public history community a great service. He does more than tell us a cautionary tale about rushing headlong into digital approaches to public history and leaving target audiences behind. Read More

Around the field March 29, 2016

newspaper-in-fieldFrom around the field this week: 20 years after Raphael Samuel’s death, a commemorative conference in London on radical histories; interdisciplinary symposium in Beijing explores the intertwined terms “vernacular” and “heritage”; Texas material culture symposium focuses on transition and change. Read More