Found History

I originally posted this at thanksroy.org, the digital memory bank we set up in Roy’s honor. I’m cross posting it here because I think it speaks to what makes a good public historian and what made Roy the very best.
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Of all the amazing qualities Roy possessed — intelligence, generosity, creativity, industry, wit, and so many [...]

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Well, nearly four months after it launched, I have finally managed to record and post the first real episode of History Conversations, this blog’s sister podcast. Episode 1 kicks off with a conversation with Peter Liebhold, Chair and Curator of the Division of Work and Industry at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. [...]

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I was happy to read in this month’s Public History News that the National Council for Public History’s Long Range Planning Committee has posted its working definition of “public history” on Wikipedia. In the spirit of “sharing authority,” the committee invites thoughtful edits and comments at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_history

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Saturday Night Live had a funny sketch this weekend exposing the anachronisms inherent in living history museums and exploring how family- and employee-friendly public history venues like Colonial Williamsburg struggle with historical realities (e.g. slavery) that aren’t so family-friendly. As of this posting the video is still available from NBC, but I can’t promise [...]

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Late last week Richard Urban of Musematic announced the inaugural meeting of the “Museums in Second Life” group. In case you haven’t heard of Second Life, it is 3-D virtual online world maintained and governed by a company called Linden Research, but built and owned entirely by users. More than 300,000 people currently [...]

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