How Many Hats Do You Wear? How Many Are You Compensated For?: A Case For Organizing Public Historians
By Stella A. Ress
How many hats do you wear? The first time I had heard that question, I was a Ph.D. student on a field trip to a local museum. One of my classmates asked the museum archivist this question and without batting an eye, the archivist nonchalantly ticked off: archivist, publicist, web developer, curator, librarian, administrative assistant, and IT professional. Her formal title, however, was “archivist;” she was part-time. Later, I learned first-hand the ins and outs of hat wearing and how to remove one and replace it with another at a moment’s time. As a part-time “museum assistant,” for example, I was responsible for maintaining the organization’s contacts list, drafting electronic newsletters, doing research on demand, attending and documenting board and community meetings, processing collections, giving tours, doing clerical work, presenting on the importance of historic preservation to the community, and organizing, recruiting, and training volunteers. As one of the few people I knew who got paid for that kind of work, I was thankful for my job.
Fast forward ten years later, and I am living my life’s dream: I am on the tenure track at a reputable regional university, my research has (finally) started to bear fruit, and my students and I are engaged in various public history projects around the community. All that being said, I want to address the elephant in the room: the system that I work in also underpays, overworks, and devalues others. The 2015 report from the Joint AASLH-AHA-NCPH-OAH Task Force on Public History Education and Employment confirmed this observation, noting that today’s public historians are often required to do more with fewer resources.[1] Furthermore, survey respondents were despondent as they noticed an uptick of qualified candidates vying for low-paying jobs with unstable working conditions.[2] Reflecting upon my own experience, as well as my role in maintaining this flawed system, last year at NCPH 2018, I suggested a public history guild or union. This year, joined by a small, though dedicated cadre of like-minded individuals, we have started exploring how to go about turning that from a thought-experiment into a reality.
How do you organize a diverse and factionalized group of people who are employed across industries around the country, in private, non-profit, and public sectors at the local, state, and federal levels, and who may not all refer to themselves as public historians?[3] We haven’t figured out the answer to that question, but we are trying. As historians, naturally, our first step has been examining what had been done in the past. Thus, each of the team members has done initial research on one or more groups and/or organizations that has tried this endeavor at some level. My own research has focused on the California Council for the Promotion of History (CCPH).[4] Other group members are in the process of tackling (among others) the Labor and Working Class History Association (LAWCHA), as well as determining if the model proposed by the Working Artists and the Greater Economy (WAGE) might work for us.[5]
We are still in the initial phases of this process and we have a lot of work to do. We are, however, determined and skilled. Our next steps will take place at the conference itself, where we will have a breakout session and continue to workshop ideas. If you are ready to add one more hat (organizer) to your collection, come join us. Hopefully, in the long run, you’ll receive remuneration for your efforts.
[1] Philip Scarpino and Daniel Vivian, “What do public history employers want?: A Report of the Joint AASLH-AHA-NCPH-OAH Task Force on Public History Education and Employment, 1.
[2] Ibid.
[3] John Dichtl and Robert Townsend, “A Picture of Public History: Preliminary Results from the 2008 Survey of Public History Professionals,” Public History News 29, no. 4 (2009), 1.
[4] California Council for the Promotion of History, https://www.ccphhistoryaction.org/ (last accessed 13 January 2019).
[5] Labor and Working Class History Association, https://www.lawcha.org/ and Working Artists and the Greater Economy https://wageforwork.com/home#top, respectively (assessed 12 January 2019).