Found History

Yikes! Another Facebook Privacy SNAFU — Another reason to be happy I left Facebook: it seems a bug in Facebook’s code allowed its 400 million members’ email addresses to be exposed publicly for 30 minutes yesterday. As Mashable writer Jennifer Van Grove correctly noted in her report of the incident, while we may be inclined [...]

[Read more →]

Friends of the blog will know that I have long been skeptical of historical video game projects. One of several critiques is that our budgets are just too small to compete in the cultural marketplace with the likes of EA and Activision. I understand that we’re not in direct and open competition with those companies [...]

[Read more →]

[This week and next I'll be facilitating the discussion of "Learning & Information" at the IMLS UpNext: Future of Museums and Libraries wiki. The following is adapted from the first open thread. Please leave any comments at UpNext to join in the wider discussion!] In addition to the questions posted on the main page for [...]

[Read more →]

Old Sturbridge Village Shaping Up — I have spent more time at Old Sturbridge Village, which is two towns over from where I grew up, than at any other museum I haven’t worked at. So I’m very happy to see that its attendance and finances appear to be improving after a very rough decade for [...]

[Read more →]

Seton Hill University in Pennsylvania has announced it will give every full-time student a new Apple iPad upon arrival in the fall. This seems remarkably irresponsible to me. In a time of scant resources, does it really make sense to commit hundreds of thousands of dollars to a device very few people have ever even [...]

[Read more →]

Personalized URL Shorteners (Suggestions for CHNM?) — @sebchan explains how the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney started rolling its own tiny URLs using Yourls. Powerhouse employees can now shorten links to Powerhouse blog posts, exhibits, and collection items for easy Tweeting or inclusion on gallery labels. Any ideas for a good tiny domain for CHNM?

[Read more →]

I will be the first to say that I have been, and continue to be, extremely lucky. As I explained in an earlier post, I have managed to strike a workable employment model somewhere between tenured professor and transient post-doc, expendable adjunct, or subservient staffer, a more or less happy “third way” that provides relative security, creative opportunity, and [...]

[Read more →]

Omeka-Powered Digital Amherst Recognized by ALA — The American Library Association’s (ALA’s) Program on America’s Libraries for the 21st Century has recognized Digital Amherst with one of three awards for best use of cutting-edge technology. A project of the Jones Library in Amherst, Massachusetts, Digital Amherst is a collaborative Omeka-powered website celebrating the town’s 250th [...]

[Read more →]

In 2008, CHNM created THATCamp—The Humanities and Technology Camp—a yearly user-generated “unconference.” Organized on a shoestring and driven by participant interests, the new style of academic conference attracted a wide range of interest, and it spawned numerous locally-organized regional THATCamps in 2009, including recent events in Austin, TX, Pullman, WA, Columbus, OH, Los Angeles, CA, [...]

[Read more →]

I have just started listening to an new podcast from the BBC, A History of the World in 100 Objects, written and narrated by Neil MacGregor, Director of the British Museum. Aside from the obvious reductionism and the occasionally irritating interstitials (lots of ambient chanting and pan flute music), the show is excellent, taking one [...]

[Read more →]