A Look Back at Braddock

Another episode of the History Conversations podcast has dropped. This time, the volunteer historians of the Look Back at Braddock project join me for a conversation about the challenges and opportunities posed by local history. Located near the center of Fairfax County, Virginia, Braddock District has changed rapidly in the 20th century, and members of the community have taken it upon themselves to document the changes. Working largely without funding, John Browne, Mary Lipsey, Gil Donahue, and their colleagues have produced a rich oral history collection, a successful book, and a new website. What does it take for a group of committed amateurs to launch and sustain a multi-year history project and what keeps them going? Find out in Episode 3 of History Conversations.

Forty Signs of Rain

This post may be even shorter than usual. I’m writing from Breckenridge, CO where I’m enjoying a couple (very cold) days of skiing. (The conditions are epic in case you’re wondering.) But I didn’t bring my laptop, so I’m writing this on my Blackberry. It seems to be working fine, but I don’t think I’ll have the patience or thumb strength for more than a couple hundred words or so.

Once again this semester I’m teaching a history of science-focused Western Civ. survey, and once again I’m using Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Years of Rice and Salt to try to shake my students of their preconceptions about scientific progress and Western exceptionalism. I love Robinson, but I have read YRS several times now, so instead of YRS, I brought another of Robinson’s books with me on my vacation: Forty Signs of Rain, the first book in a trilogy about climate change in the very near future.

So far, FSR isn’t nearly as brilliant as YRS. It’s not even as creative as Robinson’s Mars Trilogy. Nevertheless, even in the first 150 pages of this comparatively unremakable effort, Robinson’s seemingly endless font of knowledge is revealed again in an extended passage about the NSF panel review process.

A lot of public historians and digital humanists are very rightly baffled by the grant application and evaluation processes of NEH, IMLS, and other federal grant-making agencies. It is indeed a pretty arcane process, especially to the novice, but one good way to wrap your head around it is to serve as a panelist for a program in your field. I have been lucky enough to serve on a couple panels for NEH and IMLS, and in addition to a great intellectual experience and a fantastic way to make new friends in your field, serving as a panelist is probably the best way to learn what makes proposals succeed and what makes them fail. I guarantee your own grant proposals will be vastly improved by the experience. If you get a chance (the agencies frequently put out calls for panelists), I’d jump on it.

If you can’t serve on a panel, however, take a look at Forty Signs of Rain. Ignoring the intrigue and vaguely dirty progam officer that assist the broader plot line (I assure you, in my experience, actual program officers are among the most honest, impartial, and helpful people), in the first half of the book Robinson provides a very good account of the proposal and peer review process at NSF, which is more or less the same as that at NEH and IMLS. I’m not saying it’s right on the money, but as an easy and readable glimpse at the grant making process (especially pp. 134-145, where Robinson describes the panel room itself), it’s definitely worth a read. And if you’ve never read anything by Robinson, this is as good a reason as any to get started.

A Matter of Trust

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.

*    *    *

Of all the amazing qualities Roy possessed — intelligence, generosity, creativity, industry, wit, and so many more — the one that always stood out for me was trust. Roy trusted in history. He trusted in hard work. He trusted in fairness. Most of all, he trusted in people.

Roy was a collaborator. He was brilliant on his own, but I think he was happiest and at his best when he was working with other people. And people flocked to him.

I think Roy was able to gather so many friends and colleagues around him because he trusted them, often without prior cause and always without prejudice, and so people trusted him back. Roy showed us that the way to gain trust is to give trust, which is the same thing as saying that the way to be loved is to love. It’s the best work lesson and the best life lesson I have ever learned, and Roy was the best teacher.

I trust and love and miss him very much.

History Conversations

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. Tom asks Peter about his daily work at the Museum, his straight and not-so-straight road into history, and the role of public history.

Click here to subscribe.

Colonial Williamsburg on SNL

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 it will be there for long. I’ll try to keep an eye on YouTube and if it turns up there I’ll post an update.

Late Update (10/31/06): It looks like NBC removed the Williamsburg video from its site, and I can’t seem to find it on YouTube or Google Video. For now, we’ll have to live with SNL’s summary.

Museums in the Metaverse

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 “inhabit” Second Life, making friends, doing work, buying and selling property, building homes, and doing most of the other things they’d do in “first life” (and some things that they wouldn’t). Lest you think it’s all a game, however, Linden reports millions of dollars worth of “in-world” business transactions among Second Life “residents” every month.

Now it seems some Second Life residents have created museums in this parallel universe. Presumably some of them are history museums, though I’m not sure what that looks like in a virtual world. I have to admit I’ve never visited Second Life, but this meeting may just push me over the edge. Found History is dedicated to unintentional, unconventional, and amateur history. What could be more unconventional than history in another world?

Correction: Thanks to Nate for pointing out that Second Life is operated by “Linden Lab” not “Linden Research.” A second look at the website suggests that Second Life is actually owned by “Linden Research, Inc.” but operated under the trademark “Linden Lab.” In any case, the technorati (to which Nate certainly belongs) know the joint as “Linden Lab” and that’s what we should go with.

Historical Marker Mashup

Many of you know that over the past year or so CHNM has been trying to secure funding for History Here, a project designed to provide improved access to Virginia’s roadside historical markers through cell phones and other mobile devices. My primary interest in this project is the mobile angle—I think it’s well past time to start thinking about how we move digital history off the desktop and into the historical landscape—but I also have a long standing soft spot for historical markers in general. My first job out of college was with the Colorado Roadside Interpretation Program, and ever since I’ve held great respect and affection for the thousands of local history enthusiasts around the country and around the world that have made historical markers one of the most visible and vital forms of public history.

In recent years, these enthusiasts have established a formidable online presence, far surpassing the official efforts of most state historical societies and departments of transportation. For example, the best place to go for information about Virginia’s markers is not the official site of the The Virginia Department of Historic Resources, which manages the program, but rather historical-markers.org, which provides photos and descriptions of more than 1200 historical markers in the Commonwealth and has recently expanded to include nearly 500 more from other states. Other ambitious amateur efforts can be found at HistoricMarkers.com and in the markers category of Waymarks.

Many of these sites are using seriously forward-looking digital history techniques. We at CHNM have received lots of praise for our collaborative online collecting projects such as the September 11 Digital Archive and the Hurricane Digital Memory Bank, most recently for our use of commercial map API’s to present the collections. Yet amateur marker enthusiasts are using many of the very same techniques, often very effectively. All of the marker sites I have listed are peer-produced, and while some grow simply by means of email submissions, others have deployed sophisticated web-based collecting technologies to build up their collections. The Historical Marker Database, for example, uses a wiki-style system that allows users to create new marker entries and edit those of others. These amateurs have also recognized and quickly seized upon the opportunities new geo-location techniques present for markers’ place-specific historical information. Neither implementation is perfect, but both the Historical Marker Database and Waymarks’ marker community use the Google Maps API to maintain their markers’ ties to the historic landscape.

Historical markers tend to get a bum rap from professional historians. Very often they’re criticized as biased, one-sided, incomplete, or just plain wrong. Very often these criticisms are just. But professional historians should also remember that it’s tough to cover the history of an entire city in 50 words or less, that (in most cases) any history is better than none, and that what historical markers lack intellectual context they often make up in physical context. Few forms of historical production have such dedicated and enthusiastic followings and are so enduringly popular. I think this mostly has to do with reaching people when they’re ready and keeping it real (so to speak). A cast iron sign read on a windswept scenic overlook has something a hard bound monograph read in a library will never have, and we would do well to think long and hard about just what that something is.

Adults Only

Digg is running a story called “The best way to learn American history.” As a piece of amateur historical work, the link has a place on Found History. However this posting should in no way be construed as an endorsement, and I’m not going to say anything more except surf at your own risk.

Yellow Arrow

Here’s another instance of amateurs beating professionals to the punch.

There has been a lot of talk lately among a certain set of public historians (lots of it at CHNM, in fact) about moving networked historical information off the desktop and into the historical landscape using new mobile communications technologies like GPS, podcasting, WAP, and SMS. Unfortunately, none of this has gone very far. The Virginia Department of Transportation, for example, recently declined funding for CHNM’s first foray into this arena, a project called History Here.

But as with web history, amateur historians seem to be getting on with getting on. While we have meetings, Yellow Arrow is coming to Washington with an SMS walking tour of D.C. punk history. There’s a lesson in here somewhere.

Thanks to Josh—my partner in pushing us into the mobile space—for the tip.