In honor of me actually taking, and hopefully passing, the required comprehensive historiography exam, I’m writing about something much more fun: the 30th Annual Meeting of the National Council for Public History, which was held in Portland, Oregon, March 10-14 this year. It was held in conjunction with the American Society for Environmental Historians, but to in all honesty, I stayed with the Public History sessions. Still, it was a fantastic opportunity to meet with other public historians and find out what other sites and museums are doing, and really, there are some fantastic projects out there. The conference also which gave me a lot to think about in terms of how I do my job, and I always appreciate that.  

Many people have already blogged, tweeted, and otherwise shared their experiences already, and they’ve said some fantastic things. I tweeted my way through that conference (check out of the #ncph2010 tag over there), so this is more of an acknowledgement than anything else. I did already write up a review  for the volunteer’s newsletter at work, which talks about the issues and panels related to the work we do at Arlington House, including slavery, interpretation, competing histories, and historic preservation.   

Digital history really was a presence this year, though the lack of free Internet anywhere in the hotel made those sorts of interactions harder than last year. There was a lot of Twitter activity and a few blog posts, but I didn’t get into it past twitter, and that’s because it’s easy to do on my phone. It’s so nice to see the organization of the conference reflect the importance and growth of social media and digital connections in the field though! Museums and historic sites need to turn to the Internet to engage with visitors these days and NCPH provided workshops to learn some of the tools, such as Zotero for research and Omeka for museum collections (both produced by the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University), and discussions about the place of these tools in public history. Jeremy Boggs, a member CHNM and a teacher at both GMU and American University, talked about the importance of public historians getting involved in the process of creating digital tools for our own work. Why, he asked, should we rely on other people who don’t know exactly what we need to build the tools we use? We need to get educated, take charge, and create what we need on our own. Otherwise, we’ll have nothing but tools that don’t get the job done. The logical place to start this is in our education, in school where we can get a solid foundation in the basics of both using and creating digital tools. I have to agree with him.  Jeremy taught the “History in the Digital Age” class I took almost a year ago, and I’ve found the skills, such as using social media, how to build a website, and even XHTML coding, I learned in his to be one of my greatest assets.  

A panel on historic preservation showed how the local community is preservation’s best friend or worst nightmare, especially when it comes to neighborhoods. Though a preservationist or other public historian can bring new information and remind towns of other histories than the one they might be most interested in, in the end, the community decides what is important to it. Sometimes history is important to these people, sometimes not, and it was a great reminder of the need to balance what the audience wants with what we want to give them.

I found the projects the Minnesota Historical Society has been working on to be a great inspiration. Public history provides more than just a one—way stream of information, and they really are creating a discussion between themselves and their constituents with programs like Write On The Record, where users can make comments to help identify materials like photographs in the Society’s collection. The exhibit focusing on telling the stories of “Minnesota’s Greatest Generation” invites people to tell their own stories of the 1920s to 1950s, and read those of others via the Internet (and phone for those who don’t want to type). The 1968 Project also asks for personal stories, and the MHS also hosts a film contest to find out what the year meant to those who lived it.

And now to brag about my classmates. One of the groups from my Practicum class spring presented the project they did as a poster session. If you were there, it’s the one with the waysides on the history of Arlington National Cemetery.  

This year’s meeting was a tremendous success, bringing to light a lot of issues and topics for public historians in all areas of the profession to think about and engage with. The idea of competing histories and telling different stories in different ways linked the sessions I attended together in an enlightening way, one that can challenge us, or at least me, to be more open-minded when it comes to alternative histories and new methods of interpretation and engagement.

And finally, I must comment on Portland, for it is a fantastic city. Seriously, I’m including it in my job hunt. Not only is it absolutely gorgeous, but the people are nice. The coffee and beer are plentiful and, like the food, delicious. Public transportation inside the downtown area is free. And even during morning rush hour there’s no traffic. Not to mention the gorgeous, if slightly creepy, gigantic mountain overlooking the city. Really, what else could a girl ask for?