This holiday season, Amazon.com is mixing business with charity in its newest project, AmazonSmile. By shopping at smile.amazon.com instead of plain old amazon.com, 0.5 percent of the value of their purchases will be donated to the customer’s preferred charity (i.e., a $100 purchase becomes a 50 cent donation). When first visiting AmazonSmile, customers are prompted to select a charitable organization from almost one million eligible organizations. What’s even more amazing is that there seems to be no limit to the amount Amazon will give to charity, although as of now auto-renewed subscription purchases and digital products aren’t included. Donations will be made by the AmazonSmile Foundation, so customers using AmazonSmile will not be able to claim donations as charitable deductions.
Charitable organizations can register for free to receive donations at Continue reading →
Angela Smith, assistant professor and director of the public history program at North Dakota State University shares this six minute general overview of the value of history and how the Public History Program at NDSU has contributed through several student projects. This video was presented at the College Honors Day on October 11, 2013.
Lee Wright at the History List created a Slideshare presentation of the 87 history projects that will be receiving awards today from the American Association for State and Local History at their annual meeting in Birmingham, Alabama. You’ll see exhibits, books, websites, preservation projects, outdoor multimedia tours, and much, much more. It’s an easy way to get ideas for your museum and historic site (perhaps your staff can watch it over lunch together?).
Lee also mentioned that he’ll be offering the “Make this Holiday Historic” at the History List again in December to promote events, gifts, and membership at historic sites and house museums but may include some tweaks to make it more engaging. If you are interested in participating (I especially encourage sites that are in a city or region that’s a tourist destination), contact Lee@TheHistoryList.com.
Charleston, South Carolina has one of the most active convention and visitor bureaus in the nation and it has embraced the value of history and historic preservation in its promotion of the region. This past year they launched a series of videos on different distinctive aspects of Charleston, including “History Lives,” which features interviews with George McDaniel of Drayton Hall, Kitty Robinson of the Historic Charleston Foundation, Charles Duell of Middleton Place, and Robert Russell of the College of Charleston. At 5:41, it’s a bit longer than most videos I’ve shared previously but it’s a good example of content, production, and pacing. If you’d like to see all of their videos, visit the Charleston Area Visitors and Convention Bureau website or their channel on YouTube.
Invention meets social media in a summer camp format. In 2012, MAKE held a Maker Camp on Google+, introducing an online summer camp inspired by the creative and diverse maker culture. It was a six-week program featuring 30 days of projects and activities for teens 13-18. Every day a different counselor posted how-to instructions and hosted a Hangout, giving campers a chance to ask questions and show off their projects. It was free and open to everyone with a Google+ profile.
How can new technologies transform or expand your programs? Can Google+ or Hangout help you work with colleagues to complete projects? Check out what the Henry Ford Museum is doing with Maker Faire Detroit. Can your summer camps incorporate some ideas from Maker Faire®?
The American Alliance of Museums announced the winners of its 2013 Museum Publications Design Competition, which identifies the best in graphic design in fifteen different categories. This is a juried competition and we send our congratulations to all, but especially to (given the bias of this blog):
Drake Well Museum for their journal, Oilfield
Kentucky Historical Society for educational resources.
US Holocaust Memorial Museum for their 2011-12 annual report
Museum of Flight (Seattle) for their 2011 annual report
Museum of the City of New York for the journal, City Courant
National Archives for their Girl Scout Welcome Activity Badge Cards
Peabody Essex Museum for their members magazine, Connections
Peabody Essex Museum for invitations to the Cultural Conversation and Ansel Adams events
Peabody Essex Museum for educational resources
Shaker Museum (Mount Lebanon) for the 2012/13 annual journal
I love good design and I applaud all the winners. One thing about design contests, however, is that they’re only about design Continue reading →
It’s mid-June and the spring 2013 issue of History News just arrived. If you’re wondering why it’s late, it’s my fault.
Katherine Kane and Bob Beatty invited me to write an article that would highlight this year’s annual meeting theme: “Turning Points: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Change.” I was honored—and challenged. Heroic stories of ordinary Americans changing history would be inspirational but too easy. So I focused on us —the ordinary people who work in history organizations—to explore how we can provoke extraordinary change in our communities and audiences. Nice idea, but it went through a dozen revisions that trampled deadlines in the process. I hope it’s worth the wait. I’ll be posting excerpts from it along with the entire article starting next week (have to give the AASLH members first opportunity!).
But if you don’t find my article satisfying, there are plenty of alternatives in this issue: Continue reading →
And now for something completely different, a one-minute video promoting the Museum of Architecture in Russia. Created by Saatchi Russia, it’s a humorous spin on the “little old ladies” that guard museums and historic sites. If you understand Russian, could you tell us what’s going on?
If you’ve ever been involved in researching or interpreting an historic site, you’ve no doubt assembled a timeline to keep track of events and understand connections between the site, region, and nation. After you assemble a lot of data, managing those relationships becomes incredibly complex and you’re continually updating charts and reshuffling cards. Help may be on the way through Aeon Timeline by Scribblecode, a timeline tool for fiction writers which can be easily adapted for historical research and interpretation. It’s currently only available for the Mac for $40, but next year they will introduce a version for PC.
Like any timeline, you can plot dates of events, put them into categories (e.g., local or national), and display them neatly and chronologically. Even better, it can zoom in or out so you can examine the details or see the big picture. That’s nice, and you might be able to figure out how to manipulate a document, spreadsheet, or database to do this for you. But Aeon Timeline goes further by allowing you to tag events and add notes to provide depth, and you can add layers for people or places to visually keep track of what happens to whom or where. If you’re exploring narrative non-fiction or using storytelling techniques in historical interpretation, it will help you construct arcs and identify turning points. Watching the introductory video can explain the features better than I can, but if you’re creating a tour, exhibit, or article, this might help you organize ideas much better than the traditional outline or stack of cards. You can download a 20-day demo version for free but if you want to buy it, Aeon Timeline is available for a 20 percent discount until June 14 at http://www.scribblecode.com/summerfest.html.
I’m always looking for ways to effectively work with groups to generate and organize ideas. My usual tactic is flipcharts and colored pens, but you quickly realize the limitations as you run out of space or illegibility reigns with scribbled words and connecting lines. One answer is to use a huge sheet of paper on the walls, but space isn’t usually available because of pictures hanging on the wall or windows. More and more I rely on a digital projector and a laptop with a program like MindManager or Visio. It’s much more legible, items can be easily moved around, you never run out of space, and you generate a nice clean document at the end. One of the major disadvantages is mind mapping programs force you to start at one point and work your way out (like a hub and spokes) and brainstorming doesn’t usually happen that way. Ideas come in randomly and are not always related, so there are several individual ideas floating around at the same time.
There may be a solution at hand with Scapple, a new application from Literature and Latte. It’s only available for the Mac but it’s simple (once you master a few keystrokes), handles random isolated ideas, can easily reorganize and group ideas, and can be exported to png, pdf, and txt. And for $15, it’s a bargain. I’m working with the free 30-day demo version to try it out on my current projects, but it’s definitely something I’ll consider for my next group meeting. Alternatives for Mac are Curio, MindNode, Tinderbox, and Omnigraffle (but I don’t recommend Shapely) and if you’re in a Windows environment, look at MindManager (which is also available for Mac) and Visio. Each offers different features and fill different needs for brainstorming, writing, presenting, and collaborative meetings. Indeed, you may want a couple different ones for different situations. If you found a program that works for you, share it in the comments below.
Engaging Places 