Tag Archive
28 April 2026 – Mary Rizzo
Editor’s Note: Mary Rizzo and her collaborators have been chronicling their work with the Chicory Revitalization Project on the History@Work blog since 2019. The following post marks the culmination of their reflective practice and anticipates the publication of a new book about it. Read More
23 October 2025 – Ánh Adams 1
Editor’s Note: This post is part of a 2025 History@Work series authored by members of the NCPH Labor Task Force in response to our Special Open Call on “#Advocacy in the Field.” In addition, this piece is part of a series based on Rutgers University student interviews with practicing public historians. Read More
17 October 2023 – GVGK Tang
public engagement, sense of place, urban renewal, archives, storytelling, project showcase, community archives, grassroots, projects
Kin/Folk/Lore (KFL) is a community-led history project that uses grassroots storytelling to incite meaningful dialogues across cultures, generations, and localities in Philadelphia. Participant-audiences forge unlikely connections while considering changing landscapes, core values, and hopes that define their lives—past and present. KFL’s collection exists as a free, publicly accessible digital oral history database, exhibit, and album series. Read More
17 August 2023 – Roman Cain 4
In the depths of unexplored historical niches, historians often find information scarce in public records and archives, leading them to underutilized family and personal collections. Approaching research from such a personal angle has many benefits, but it’s also important to consider the logistics and ethics of utilizing personal and family records for research. Read More
23 May 2023 – Danielle Afsordeh
Community engagement has become an essential part of post-custodial collections work. Through community engagement, archives can grow trust with underrepresented groups. The Central Arkansas Library System’s (CALS) Butler Center for Arkansas Studies is currently employing these methods to document the history of the historically Polish Marche community in Pulaski County, Arkansas, while also working to build sustainable community relationships and trust. Read More
07 February 2023 – Sarah H. Case
archives, museums, The Public Historian, Digital humanities, American Revolution, 2022 Annual Meeting, memory, Poverty
Editors’ Note: We publish the editor’s introduction to the February 2023 issue of The Public Historian here. The entire issue is available online to National Council on Public History members and to others with subscription access.
This issue begins with Jean-Pierre Morin’s “Considering the Revolution: The Identities Created by the American Revolutionary War,” the second in a five-part series that arc from the origins to the legacies of the American Revolution (see part 1, “Considering the Revolution: Indigenous Histories and Memory in Alaska, Hawai’i, and the Indigenous Plateau” and “Decolonizing Museums, Memorials, and Monuments” in the November 2021 issue). Read More
16 June 2022 – David Rotenstein
On the morning of April 1, 2022, I was among throngs of remote researchers who visited the National Archives and Records Administration website to access data from the newly released 1950 Census. I had waited thirteen years to answer one research question: Who was the Black woman working in a family home that I had first researched in 2009? Read More
31 May 2022 – Chelsea D. Chamberlain and Elliott W. Simon
Founded in 1852 as the Pennsylvania Training School for Feeble-Minded Children, Elwyn is the oldest continuously operating educational facility for people with intellectual disabilities in the United States. Today, headquartered just outside Philadelphia, it is a large multi-state provider of community-based and residential supports to people with a wide range of disabilities. Read More
07 April 2022 – Jenny Barker-Devine and Samantha Sauer
The COVID-19 pandemic requires innovative solutions for remote and socially-distanced learning. During the 2020-2021 academic year, we designed teaching kits, or mini-teaching collections, that permitted undergraduate students in an archival methods course to safely engage in hands-on activities. The kits formed the basis for several assignments throughout the semester and fostered a meaningful sense of connection among students during a highly disconnected period. Read More
15 February 2022 – Melody Hunter-Pillion
climate emergency series, preservation, Caribbean history, archives, environment, oral history, climate change, African American history
Editor’s note: Today we continue the “Our Climate Emergency” series with a post by Melody Hunter-Pillion that centers oral history methods as a way to battle climate change.
Read More“It’s different and it’s more severe . . . I’m not the scientists, but I can definitely tell you, it’s happening.”