Tag Archive

public engagement

Project Showcase: History Hub

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The Internet has changed the way nearly every profession shares knowledge and communicates with the public. In the last few years archivists and historians working for the federal government have joined the conversation. In December 2015, the National Archives created History Hub, a platform for collaboration between researchers, historians, archivists, and the federal government. Read More

Out of the academy and into public service: Changing expectations and new measures of success

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In June 2014, when I finished my PhD in history, with a research emphasis in public history, I thought I was pretty hot stuff. And rightfully so. I had worked for eight long years slogging through coursework, exams, conference presentations, fellowship applications, TAships, a year of research, and a solid year and a half of dissertation writing to achieve my goal. Read More

Digital community engagement across the divides

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In 2008, the Journal of American History published a conversation among several historians regarding the future of digital history. William G. Thomas III  said, “We might imagine a more proximate collaboration in which historians team up with [community] groups. The Web 2.0 movement might allow historians and the public to make history together rather than separately. Read More

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

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

Audience analysis and the role of the digital in community engagement

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As a public historian working on the collaborative digital platform Historypin, I second Andrew Hurley’s assertion, in his article “Chasing the Frontiers of Digital Technology: Public History Meets the Digital Divide,” that introducing more traditional methods of engagement can, and most often is required to, enhance the efficacy of the digital tools within a public history project. Read More