Category Archives: Historical interpretation

Experiential Courses Offer Opportunity to Explore Places

Map of City Semester field projects in New York City.

If you hear the words, “experiential, expeditionary, or hands-on learning,”  “adventure education,” or “outdoor education director” in your school district, it may be an opportunity to present your museum or historic site as a valuable resource.  For decades, schools have focused on formal educational process emphasizing lectures and textbooks, but that seems to be changing according to Jenny Anderson in her New York Times article, “For Bronx Private School, All the City’s a Classroom in an Experiential Course.”  She describes the City Semester: The Bronx Experience, new educational venture by the private Ethical Cultural Fieldson School.  It’s a semester-long program that, “integrates history, English, science, ethics, language, civic leadership and the arts around the study of New York City- through the lens of the Bronx. Like other semester programs, City Semester offers a chance to step outside your everyday routine, have an adventure, challenge your assumptions and grow in new ways.” Each week the class combines classwork with at least one day in the city visiting businesses and historic sites (such as Woodlawn Cemetery and the Louis Armstrong House), Continue reading →

VSA: Why Teachers Visit Historic Sites

The April 2012 (15:1) issue of Visitor Studies, the semi-annual journal of the Visitor Studies Association, just arrived and it includes, “Motivating Participation in National Park Service Curriculum-Based Education Programs” by Marc Stern, Elizabeth Wright, and Robert Powell.  It’s a rare examination of the reasons why teachers visit (or don’t visit) historic sites.  For anyone that provides school programs, its findings provide some useful guidelines.

The study attempts to “understand why teachers at schools within the immediate vicinity of Great Smoky Mountains National Park attend, or don’t attend, the park’s curriculum-based programs.”  To discover the perceived benefits and disadvantages of participation, they conducted a preliminary focus group with teachers and then surveyed 400 teachers in fourteen schools and interviewed school administrators.  Although this study’s focus was on a national park’s programs for a middle and high school audience, there are some surprising findings that may cause you to question your assumptions even if you’re an historic site focusing on the elementary grade levels.  Here’s a quick summary:

  1. Administrators are most concerned about Continue reading →

2012 Webby Awards Point Out Models for Historic Sites

Historic sites are always looking for good models for online activities, such as websites and mobile applications, and one of the best places to look for inspiration is the annual Webby Awards, the leading international award honoring excellence on the Internet. Established in 1996 during the Web’s infancy, the Webbys are presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences.

The 2012 Webby Awards received nearly 10,000 entries from over 60 countries and all 50 states and awards were given in over a hundred categories for website, interactive advertising and media, online film and video, and mobile and apps. As a result, there is a lot to cull through but here are several that seem to be most related to historic sites (and hang on, this is a long list):

  • NPS’ Civil War: 150 Years features a Then and Now Timeline at the top and a Civil War Reporter sending tweets at the bottom.

    The Civil War: 150 Years has the form and content of websites that will be most familiar to historic sites, except that it commemorates “a defining event in our nation’s history and its legacy in the continuing fight for civil rights” rather than a specific place.  I like their use of Twitter to create a virtual “Civil War Reporter” whose tweets report on events from the 1860s but the major innovation is the featured Then and Now Timeline that compares similar events during the Civil War and today (although I was only able to jump months, not years).  Another way to compare the past and the present is demonstrated by Slavery Footprint, a website and mobile app that was launched on the 149th anniversary of the announcement of the Emancipation Proclamation.  It’s designed to raise awareness of modern-day slavery and can tell you approximately how many slaves have pitched in to make the goods you enjoy on a daily basis.

  • Timelines appeared in several other forms in the winning entries and along with the Then and Now version is Continue reading →

WebWise 2012: Managing Oral History Collections and Projects

The final session from WebWise 2012 that I’ll be reporting on is creating and preserving oral history collections.  If you think that oral histories are just about recording hour-long interviews with oldtimers, the digital age has changed that considerably.  Not only are oral histories collected digitally, but they are being presented in many new ways, including audio tours, podcasts, radio programs, and in websites.  Remember, if you want the complete details, the videos from WebWise are now available at online and you’ll find this session on Day Two.

Broadcastr, an app that finds stories and tours near you

Eileen McAdam discussed how she was using 21st century tools to reach new audiences.  She’s been working for many years to engage people in the Hudson Valley through stories through the Sound and Story Project of the Hudson Valley.  Rather than deliver audio tours as lectures, she presents stories from the people who live there.  She noted that it was difficult to find oral histories that were recorded previously (often they’re not catalogued or easily available) which led to a partnership project to identify what had been done, conduct condition assessments, access the content, and then use the materials to engage new audiences.  Much of the initial growth of oral histories came with the availability of inexpensive cassette tape recorders in the 1970s and this project’s work was to graduate these collections to digital formats.  In her presentation, she outlined the process of digitizing and editing files to select compelling content and create 1-2 minute stories, recommending Audacity (free), Garage Band (comes with Mac), and Hindenburg (inexpensive), and providing some examples of edited snippets and presentation methods, including Continue reading →

WebWise 2012: Using Volunteers Online

Much of the work at historic sites and history museums wouldn’t be possible without volunteers (and we just passed National Volunteer Week) but very few organizations have recruited volunteers for work online.  Is it possible? What would they do? A session at WebWise 2012 explored these ideas in a panel called, “Sharing Public History Work: Crowdsourcing Data and Sources.”

OldWeather.org, a project of the Citizen Science Alliance

Ben Brumfield of FromThePage Open-Source Transcription Software shared his experiences from small crowdsourcing projects.  He noted that many organizations often object to public participation in scholarly projects because they don’t have the skills or expertise, but he’s found that those people participating are self-selecting and highly focused.  Participation is not equally distributed but mostly done by a small number of people, thus it’s not really crowdsourcing but nerdsourcing.  He provided some examples of “well informed enthusiasts” conducting exemplary work, such as Continue reading →

Attractive Outdoor Interpretive Panels are Possible at a Bargain Price

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James Madison’s Montpelier in Virginia sports some very attractive interpretive signs that looked so good, I had to figure out how they were made. With a bit of prodding and poking, I discovered they were printed plastic attached with Velcro to a sturdy wooden frame.  Very clever!  The signs are great looking even after a couple years outside.

Peggy Vaughan, Vice President of Communications and Visitor Services, generously shared that the three signs cost about $900 total:  $90 for each 30″x 40″ PVC sign and $210 for each base. The content, design, and bases were created in-house (yes, Montpelier is fortunate to have a graphic designer and master carpenters on staff) and the signs were printed by FedEx Office (formerly Kinkos). This sign was created using Adobe Indesign, saved as a pdf, and printed directly on PVC–the image isn’t as sharp but they last longer outdoors than the alternative method of laminating a printed image onto PVC. Peggy said that, “The big advantage to these signs for us was that they are relatively cheap, and because everything around here is always changing, we did not want to spend $2,000 on a proper museum sign, as we had in the past, that would be out of date before it wore out. And, frankly, even if things don’t change at your museum, your messaging should change from time-to-time to keep up, don’t you think?”

If you’re looking for more ideas for signs at historic sites, I’ve collected dozens of images from places around the world—good, bad, and ugly—on several web albums.  Please note that one sign may serve several purposes (e.g., directional AND identification), so look in other categories, too.

Identification Signs

Directional and Wayfinding Signs

Informational Signs

WebWise 2012: Learning and Participation on the Move

WebWise 2012 in Baltimore.

It’s been a couple weeks since the WebWise conference in Baltimore, but the information hasn’t gone stale yet.  It’s still cutting edge and thought-provoking because most of the projects discussed are still underdevelopment and it’s unclear if they’ll succeed or not.  However, they do provide a glimpse of current and potentially future practices in the use of technology for historic sites. The webcast videos are now available except for LeVar Burton’s presentation, which is waiting for broadcast permission. Heritage Preservation will be using portions of the webcasts to create webinars that will be available later this summer including, “Crowdsourcing in Public History” and “Oral History in the Digital Age.”

The first panel session, History Places and Spaces:  Learning and Participation on the Move, was moderated by Nancy Proctor and looked at the ways that mobile technologies (that is, technologies that are aware of your location) can provide new and better experiences for visitors.

Rob Stein at the Indianapolis Museum of Art opened the session by stating that the field already recognizes that location should be a required element in basic content but the challenge is the proliferation of software and hardware platforms.  Every digital device (website, cellphone, tablet) seems to be in a unique format and requires special treatment.  To overcome this, Stein suggested we rethink Continue reading →

NEH Announces Recent Awards

The National Endowment for the Humanities recently announced the awards for the applications submitted in August 2011 (yes, 2011) for the “America’s Historical and Cultural Organizations” grant program.  Out of the 25 major grants awards (I’m not including the small NEH on the Road grants), about a third are related to historic places including:

El Presidio de Santa Barbara State Historic Park Visitor Center Plan

  • Santa Barbara Trust for Historic Preservation, Santa Barbara, CA
  • Award: Outright; $40,000
  • Planning for interpretive exhibitions and programs in a newly constructed visitor center about the history of Santa Barbara.

Impressions of a Lost World

  • Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, Deerfield, MA
  • Award: Outright; $40,000
  • Planning for a website, mobile applications, hand-held digital and print tours, public programs, and educational materials about the early nineteenth-century discovery of dinosaur tracks in the Connecticut River Valley and the impact of this discovery on American thought and culture.

Continue reading →

Interpreting African American History if You’re NOT African American

Session on Interpreting African American history and culture, AASLH annual meeting, 2012

Last September, I had the privilege of moderating a session on interpreting African American history at historic sites in a room filled with some of the smartest people in the field during the annual meeting of the American Association for State and Local History.  The panelists–George McDaniel, Pam Green, David Young, and Tanya Bowers–gave outstanding opening remarks but even more engaging was the discussion that followed with the audience.  Because African American history can be a sensitive topic and to demonstrate a way to confront these issues among a group of strangers, I used a technique drawn from Great Tours (page 117).  Each person in the audience was given a 3×5 card and was asked to anonymously complete the sentence, “I would feel more comfortable talking about African American culture and history if…”  Among the responses I received were: Continue reading →

OAH Report Claims History is Imperiled at National Parks

The Organization of American Historians recently completed an evaluation of the “state of history” at the National Park Service.  Four prominent historians–Anne Mitchell Whisnant, Marla Miller, Gary Nash, and David Thelen–led the study, which was based on more than 500 staff responses to an online survey, interviews with current and former staff, site visits, discussions at national meetings, and a review of past studies and reports.

Their analysis revealed that much good work is going on in such areas as reinterpreting slavery and the Civil War, negotiating civic engagement, sharing authority, developing interdisciplinary partnerships, encouraging conversations about history through new media, and collaborating with historians in colleges and universities.  These are presented through a dozen profiles of projects at such National Parks as Manzanar, the Olmsted Center for Landscape Preservation, San Antonio Missions, Harpers Ferry, and the Martin Van Buren National Historic Site.

Although they discovered that good work is being done in a few places, it is not “flowering on the whole” due to several intertwined issues.  Most significant is the report’s contention that, “the agency as a whole needs to recommit to history as one of its core purposes, and to configure a top-flight program of historical research, preservation, education, and interpretation so as to foster effective and integrated stewardship of historic and cultural resources and places and to encourage robust, place-based visitor engagement with history.”  These concerns are presented as a dozen findings, and from my observations, many also reflect what’s happening at historic sites outside of the National Parks.  For example:

  1. The History/Interpretation Divide.  The intellectually artificial, yet bureaucratically real, divide between history and interpretation constrains NPS historians, compromises history practice in the agency, and hobbles effective history interpretation. The NPS should find and take every opportunity to reintegrate professional history practice and interpretation. [In museums, this is comparable to the tensions found between curators and educators, where those who conduct research are often separated from those who teach.]
  2. The Importance of Leadership for History.  Without visionary, visible, and respected leadership at the top, and Continue reading →