Tag Archives: American Association for State and Local History

Early Bird Registration Discount on AASLH Meeting Ends this Week

The American Association for State and Local History just released its program for its annual meeting on September 18-21, 2013 in Birmingham, Alabama this year and it’s full of educational sessions, workshops, and field trips for people who work, volunteer, and love historic sites, including:

A tours of historic sites in Birmingham, Montgomery, and Florence
A visit to the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church on the week of the 50th anniversary of the bombing that killed four girls.
A workshop on interpreting slavery at historic sites and museums
A breakfast for professionals working in historic house museums with the provocateurs who wrote The Anarchist Guide to Historic House Museums.
Sessions on interpreting women at historic sites, incorporating the arts, integrating African American voices into historic plantation tours, strategic planning through scenarios, and the creation of heritage trails.

Lots of events happen at the same time so it’s always hard choosing, but this year’s meeting is being held in partnership with the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience, so along with the sessions that focus around historic sites, there are also many sessions on community engagement, organizational leadership, interpretation of controversial topics, and the incorporation of new perspectives. It’ll be a good meeting and I plan to be there, so I’m taking advantage of the early bird discount that ends this Friday, July 26. Registration is $325 for members, but this week it’s only $235 (staff of institutional partners get this same low price until August 16, so you have a few more weeks). For more information, visit AASLH.org.

AASLH Begins to Lead Itself Out of Challenges

AASLH Council Retreat, June 2013 in Ohio.

The Council (board of trustees) of the American Association for State and Local History took a big step at its June meeting to lead itself out of its challenges, rather than just trying to manage them. That’s one of the decisions we made in response to the impact of the 2008 economic downturn and the multi-year embezzlement by its chief financial officer. We recognize that our governance needs to expand from merely enacting stronger policies and procedures to also include a clear direction for the future when we get through these pressing challenges.

So on Saturday, June 29, the entire Council and many of the staff members participated in an all-day retreat at the Museum Center in Cincinnati, Ohio, to identify its strengths and weaknesses, determine what makes AASLH distinctive, clarify Continue reading →

History Organizations Gathering Awards

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 →

History News for Spring 2013 Arrives

History News, Spring 2013

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 →

Historic Sites Gather in Tennessee to Share Challenges and Solutions

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Last week I led an AASLH workshop with George McDaniel on the management of historic house museums at Oaklands, a mid-nineteenth century house in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Eighteen people participated, most from Tennessee, but we had a couple from as far as Alaska! Adding to the diversity were several graduate students from Middle Tennessee State University (which has strong programs in history, public history, and historic preservation) and even though it was near the end of the semester and finals were on their minds, they helped enrich the discussions.

One of the features in the workshop is that every participant brings an issue or problem that they’d like to address. The range is wide and unpredictable, but it’s a helpful way to check the pulse on the challenges facing historic sites. In this class, these issues were:

How to prevent staff burn-out (how to keep growing despite small staff; finding the right mix of skills for staff)
How to fund preservation and staffing. Continue reading →

Profiling Your Members Will Improve Engagement

This week I’m teaching a workshop on historic house museum management with George McDaniel for the American Association for State and Local History. It’s great fun working with people from all over the country because we learn so much from each other.

One of the most popular sections is membership (who doesn’t want more supporters?). George uses his experience from Drayton Hall to demonstrate some techniques in the tour for showing “membership dollars at work,” which gets visitors so excited that many join at the end of the tour. With members in more than 7,500 households in all 50 states, Drayton Hall must have one of the nation’s largest membership programs for an historic site, so their techniques work.

I provide a complementary perspective, using profiles to understand member motivations and interests. In an exercise, I have the class combine a mission statement with a member profile to develop a membership program or activity. I’m always surprised by Continue reading →

History News reprises Salt Lake City meeting and more

History News, Winter 2013

The Winter 2013 issue of History News, the quarterly magazine of the American Association for State and Local History, just hit my desk and focuses on the annual meeting held last fall in Salt Lake City. Featured are the speeches of out-going president Stephen Elliott, award-winner Robert Archibald, and keynote speaker Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, which include such memorable quotes about history and museums, such as:

Ulrich: “It is a truism that without sources there is no history, but we also need to understand those sources. Most people who had looked at Martha Ballard’s diary said it was filled with mundane detail of little interest, filled with trivia. The same has been said of Patty Sessions. What I want to emphasize is that there is, if not drama in these humdrum records, a powerful story. It is a history that pushes back against conventional sources.”
Elliott: “To appreciate who others are and where they’re coming from, it’s important to Continue reading →

Workshops for History Museums and Historic Sites

The American Association for State and Local History unveiled an assortment of workshops for spring (there’s one in every time zone!):

Project Management for History Professionals
Dates: March 7 – 8
Location: History Colorado, Denver, CO
Instructor: Dr. Steven Hoskins, Trevecca Nazarene University, Nashville, TN
Cost: $475 members / $550 nonmembers
$40 discount if payment is received by January 31 (coming up next week!)

This unique two-day workshop improves how history museums operate and serve their community by teaching the fundamentals of project management to history professionals. Everyday work—exhibitions, programming, fundraising, special events, outreach, and collections care—benefit from the knowledge gained. Registration for the onsite workshop also includes access to an online course with related material.

From Children to Adults: Public Programming at History Organizations
Dates: March 14 – 15
Location: Homestead Museum, City of Industry, CA
Instructors: Tim Grove, National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; Alexandra Continue reading →

History News looks at Historical Interpretation

History News, Autumn 2012

The autumn 2012 issue of History News arrived in my mailbox a couple weeks ago and its four feature articles on interpretation that will be of interest to historic sites:

“From Quiet Havens to Modern Agoras: Libraries and Museums in an Era of Participatory Culture” by Nancy Rogers, Susanna Seidl-Fox, and Deborah Mack is a report, including the key overarching messages, from an international seminar held in Salzburg, Austria in October 2011.
“‘No More Wiggle-Tail Water’: Interpreting the History of Morgantown’s Water Supply at the West Virginia Botanic Garden” by Barbara Howe is a case study on integrating history in a place that focuses on horticulture and nature.
“When Histories Horrify: Supporting Visitors’ Responses through Responsible Interpretation” by Linda Norris, Danny Cohen, and Stacey Mann is a continuation of a session at the American Alliance of Museum’s annual meeting on the roles and responsibilities of museums in preserving and mediating horrific histories of crimes, violence, terrorism, and oppression, with references to the Kilmainham Gaol, Majdanek, Robben Island, and the Greensboro Woolworth.
“Entering the Mainstream: Interpreting GLBT History” by Ken Turino and Susan Ferentinos addresses four common challenges (institutional policies on discussing sex, lack of documentary evidence, applying modern labels to historical figures, pressure to avoid controversial topics) using examples from Pendarvis, Walt Whitman House, Beauport, Sarah Orne Jewett House, Alice Austen House, and Charles Gibson House.

Also included are Continue reading →

AASLH and AAM Align Efforts to Raise Standards and Practices

The American Association for State and Local History (AASLH) and the American Alliance of Museums (AAM) recently announced they will work together to raise awareness of national museum standards and align their assessment programs in order to streamline application and self-study processes. The agreement outlines ways in which applicants of AAM’s Museum Assessment Program (MAP) will benefit after completing AASLH’s StEPs program, in other words, AASLH and AAM have linked StEPs with MAP. If you understand that sentence, you’ve been working in this field a long time.

What’s this mean for historic sites? Both StEPs and MAP are great programs for improving your organization’s work, but they’re very different from each other. StEPs allows you to Continue reading →

Engaging Places

Strategies and ideas to connect people with historic places