Rights: You must be 13 years of age or older to submit material to us. Your submission of material constitutes your permission for, and consent to, its dissemination and use in connection with in all media in perpetuity. If you have so indicated on the form, your material will be published on (with or without your name, depending on what you have indicated). Otherwise, your response will only be available to approved researchers using . The material you submit must have been created by you, wholly original, and shall not be copied from or based, in whole or in part, upon any other photographic, literary, or other material, except to the extent that such material is in the public domain. Further, submitted material must not violate any confidentiality, privacy, security or other laws.

By submitting material to you release, discharge, and agree to hold harmless and persons acting under its permission or authority, including a public library or archive to which the collection might be donated for purposes of long-term preservation, from any claims or liability arising out the 's use of the material, including, without limitation, claims for violation of privacy, defamation, or misrepresentation.

has no obligation to use your material.

You will be sent via email a copy of your contribution to . We cannot return any material you submit to us so be sure to keep a copy. will not share your email address or any other information with commercial vendors.

Creator: Adina Langer

Contributor: Adina Langer

Item Type: Document

Text: The future of public history will be marked by increased collaboration among institutions and individuals, and by overlapping roles in the creation, experience, witness and analysis of the historical record and historical productions (scholarship).

One area in which this interplay of roles will become increasingly important is in the field of K-12 education. "Historical thinking" has become something of a buzz word among researchers and educators inside and outside of the academy. But what does it mean in the context of public history? Museum educators, archivists, teachers and administrators need to work together to create a learning community in which students are challenged to dig to the roots of the historical record, not only for the sake of practicing critical thinking skills but to connect to the "stuff of history," to gain an appreciation of how narrative and interpretation comes about. Like an art museum visitor who has played with clay or a science museum visitor who has witnessed the effects of gravity on feathers and stones, the student who has played with history will appreciate what it takes to both create and present history to the public.

Public historians will facilitate the creation, preservation and presentation of the historical record, teaching and inviting anyone interested to play roles along the interpretive continuum.

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Rights: You must be 13 years of age or older to submit material to us. Your submission of material constitutes your permission for, and consent to, its dissemination and use in connection with in all media in perpetuity. If you have so indicated on the form, your material will be published on (with or without your name, depending on what you have indicated). Otherwise, your response will only be available to approved researchers using . The material you submit must have been created by you, wholly original, and shall not be copied from or based, in whole or in part, upon any other photographic, literary, or other material, except to the extent that such material is in the public domain. Further, submitted material must not violate any confidentiality, privacy, security or other laws.

By submitting material to you release, discharge, and agree to hold harmless and persons acting under its permission or authority, including a public library or archive to which the collection might be donated for purposes of long-term preservation, from any claims or liability arising out the 's use of the material, including, without limitation, claims for violation of privacy, defamation, or misrepresentation.

has no obligation to use your material.

You will be sent via email a copy of your contribution to . We cannot return any material you submit to us so be sure to keep a copy. will not share your email address or any other information with commercial vendors.

Creator: Joel Ralph

Contributor: Joel Ralph

Item Type: Document

Text: Public Historians that embrace history, and history that embraces public historians.

The future of public history is a future where history has value and is valued. For history to be important in society is has to have some value – whether it tells someone about their own personal past, the society they live in, or the events that they face. Public Historians need to serve as gatherers and aggregators, using skill sets developed through sound research and analysis, to share the value of the work done by academic and local historians with an audience of informed and interested citizens.

A field that encourages high school students to study history, encourages graduates to take history programs in college and university, and encourages university and college graduates to continue working in the field – whether through academia, education, museums, archives or publications.

A modern inviting history that is urban and edgy in style and content. Content and presentation should be fresh and bold, that utilizes the style already relevant in other fields.

A participatory history that invites each citizen to provide their own story. Together these stories provide details and life while also illuminating the larger patterns that historians research each and every day. A public history that embraces the ability of new technology, life forward capture has, to include, invite, and reshape the role of the historian.

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Rights: You must be 13 years of age or older to submit material to us. Your submission of material constitutes your permission for, and consent to, its dissemination and use in connection with in all media in perpetuity. If you have so indicated on the form, your material will be published on (with or without your name, depending on what you have indicated). Otherwise, your response will only be available to approved researchers using . The material you submit must have been created by you, wholly original, and shall not be copied from or based, in whole or in part, upon any other photographic, literary, or other material, except to the extent that such material is in the public domain. Further, submitted material must not violate any confidentiality, privacy, security or other laws.

By submitting material to you release, discharge, and agree to hold harmless and persons acting under its permission or authority, including a public library or archive to which the collection might be donated for purposes of long-term preservation, from any claims or liability arising out the 's use of the material, including, without limitation, claims for violation of privacy, defamation, or misrepresentation.

has no obligation to use your material.

You will be sent via email a copy of your contribution to . We cannot return any material you submit to us so be sure to keep a copy. will not share your email address or any other information with commercial vendors.

Creator: Suzanne Fischer

Contributor: Suzanne Fischer

Item Type: Document

Text: The future of public history will depend on how we tackle issues of community and diverse publics, on how we make public history a big tent. We need to cultivate an active movement of locally-rooted, digitally-enabled citizen historians.

Even some of our natural partners and allies, in the archives world, for instance, aren't sure if they're public historians or what value and meaning they might derive from thinking of themselves and their work as part of public history. The future of public history is empowering lone arrangers, county historians, members of groups neglected by historians, and others to become part of a coherent community of people doing history, people sited in their local communities, but connected through the web to collections, stories, data and other public historians.

Though it's clearly not necessary, useful or even possible for everyone doing history to identify as a "public historian," public historians can raise awareness of what it means to do history and expand opportunities for citizen historians to participate in the work of finding meaning through the past. This inclusive, community sensibility also requires us to think through our uneasy relationship with the academy and stop defining ourselves against it. The future of public history is going to be diverse, colorful, tempestuous, challenging. How big can a big tent get?

Original Format:

Rights: You must be 13 years of age or older to submit material to us. Your submission of material constitutes your permission for, and consent to, its dissemination and use in connection with in all media in perpetuity. If you have so indicated on the form, your material will be published on (with or without your name, depending on what you have indicated). Otherwise, your response will only be available to approved researchers using . The material you submit must have been created by you, wholly original, and shall not be copied from or based, in whole or in part, upon any other photographic, literary, or other material, except to the extent that such material is in the public domain. Further, submitted material must not violate any confidentiality, privacy, security or other laws.

By submitting material to you release, discharge, and agree to hold harmless and persons acting under its permission or authority, including a public library or archive to which the collection might be donated for purposes of long-term preservation, from any claims or liability arising out the 's use of the material, including, without limitation, claims for violation of privacy, defamation, or misrepresentation.

has no obligation to use your material.

You will be sent via email a copy of your contribution to . We cannot return any material you submit to us so be sure to keep a copy. will not share your email address or any other information with commercial vendors.

Creator: David Allison

Contributor: David Allison

Item Type: Document

Text: History's importance pales compared to, say, helping needy children or saving the environment. It seems to have very few real-life applications and is constantly under attack as a discipline from school administrators and academia. History has the misfortune of seeming outdated and irrelevant due to both its content as well as its presentation to the general public (dry lectures in high school and college classrooms about names and dates, outmoded museums that focus too heavily on content conveyed in declaratory and irrelevant ways, and navel-gazing books written for very specific academic audiences).

History, therefore, needs to be about more than the content and what "actually happened" for it to have relevance in society. I would like to posit that history only has importance when it can change people’s hearts and minds. To do this, it must be emotionally powerful. It must be first of all good stories that make human connections to us.

History MUST become stories to be coherent and useful to people. We cannot ever know everything about a certain moment in the past and we certainly cannot ever recreate exactly what the past was like. It is the past. It is gone forever. That means that we are left with bringing together evidence from the past (artifacts, diary entries, maps, oral history, etc.) to piece together a story about what a certain point in time was like. The more that we are able to tie that story to relatable emotions and events that anyone can imagine themselves going through, the better off our "history" will be.

I'll use a personal example to illustrate my point. As a boy, I enjoyed listening to Fisher Price story tapes. The tapes had stories about the American Revolution, Ben Franklin, Daniel Boone and George Washington. I identify listening to these as the beginning of my infatuation with history. I liked these tapes because they had great stories told in engaging ways. The American Revolution tape began in Henry Knox's bookstore with a clock ticking in the background. A young man, Sam Maverick, enters the bookstore and talks to Knox about wanting to go throw snowballs at the "lobster-backs". I doubt that Maverick ever actually existed, and even if he did, it is doubtful that he spoke to Henry Knox...but it made a great story. Maverick goes to the square in Boston to see what is going on, and while he is there, gets caught in the angry mob of citizens and is shot by the troops in what became known as the Boston Massacre. The next part of the tape (after a stirring transition of heart-rending music) focuses on one of the soldiers who fired on the Americans named York Evelyn. He is obviously a composite character. The rest of the tape follows his life (as well as a young farmhand who fought against the British at Concord) through the major events of the war. Through it all, I constantly thought about what I would do in those situations. Would I obey my commanding officer if I were York Evelyn and fire on unarmed citizens? How would I have felt if I had to leave my family to fight the British? I think that subconsciously, I also realized the tragedy of war through this tape...a realization that still colors my feelings about war to this day.

History does have relevance, but we need to change our thinking and language so that we are talking not about details and themes over time, but rather people and universal emotions that can lead to personal and societal betterment.

Original Format:

Rights: You must be 13 years of age or older to submit material to us. Your submission of material constitutes your permission for, and consent to, its dissemination and use in connection with in all media in perpetuity. If you have so indicated on the form, your material will be published on (with or without your name, depending on what you have indicated). Otherwise, your response will only be available to approved researchers using . The material you submit must have been created by you, wholly original, and shall not be copied from or based, in whole or in part, upon any other photographic, literary, or other material, except to the extent that such material is in the public domain. Further, submitted material must not violate any confidentiality, privacy, security or other laws.

By submitting material to you release, discharge, and agree to hold harmless and persons acting under its permission or authority, including a public library or archive to which the collection might be donated for purposes of long-term preservation, from any claims or liability arising out the 's use of the material, including, without limitation, claims for violation of privacy, defamation, or misrepresentation.

has no obligation to use your material.

You will be sent via email a copy of your contribution to . We cannot return any material you submit to us so be sure to keep a copy. will not share your email address or any other information with commercial vendors.

Creator: Natalia Wobst

Contributor: Natalia Wobst

Item Type: Document

Text: I believe public history should be taught with the distinct idea that this is a field in motion. What we know about the past will affect our actions today. However, in doing so we must look at the past not as we see it today, but as it might have looked to the people for whom it was reality. Of course, we must teach not realitY, but incorporate realitIES to create the most accurate picture. This is why I advocate for cross-cultural historical learning, whereby we look at our own culture through the shades of various lenses.

Original Format:

Rights: You must be 13 years of age or older to submit material to us. Your submission of material constitutes your permission for, and consent to, its dissemination and use in connection with in all media in perpetuity. If you have so indicated on the form, your material will be published on (with or without your name, depending on what you have indicated). Otherwise, your response will only be available to approved researchers using . The material you submit must have been created by you, wholly original, and shall not be copied from or based, in whole or in part, upon any other photographic, literary, or other material, except to the extent that such material is in the public domain. Further, submitted material must not violate any confidentiality, privacy, security or other laws.

By submitting material to you release, discharge, and agree to hold harmless and persons acting under its permission or authority, including a public library or archive to which the collection might be donated for purposes of long-term preservation, from any claims or liability arising out the 's use of the material, including, without limitation, claims for violation of privacy, defamation, or misrepresentation.

has no obligation to use your material.

You will be sent via email a copy of your contribution to . We cannot return any material you submit to us so be sure to keep a copy. will not share your email address or any other information with commercial vendors.

Creator: Jon Olsen

Contributor: Jon Olsen

Item Type: Document

Text: One large impediment that exists for scholars who study the history of material culture is access to the visual sources that are housed in many of the museums, archives, and other repositories that comprise the public aspect of public history. Unfortunately, access to high quality images for scholarly work and publication continue to demand high costs or are completely prohibited.

Digital tools for historians, especially tools that can scan or create a digital copy of an artifact, have allowed historians to move in new directions and experiment with new modes of analysis. However, museums, archives, and the like also have it in their vested interest not to allow high quality images into the public domain.

In Germany, where I do most of my work, there is an initiative underway by the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science to pressure museums and archives to loosen up their restrictions when it comes to allowing scholars to have access to digital collections. I wonder if there is a need for a similar initiative here in the United States?

When cultural heritage organizations impose restrictive access fees and attribute this to copyright, then these institutions are also limiting the potential of digital media and the progress of scholarly inquiry. Hopefully, we can work together with the cultural institutions to codify a set of best practices that guarantees that gaining non-commercial rights for images, video, text or any other media should not be a barrier for the pursuit of knowledge.

To read the statement by the Max Planck Institute in Germany (in English), see: http://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/en/news/features/feature4

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Creator: Michael Mizell

Contributor: Michael Mizell

Item Type: Document

Text: I’m working on an article about the experience of collaborating with a local festival that celebrates the New Orleans version of the submarine sandwich, so I thought I’d take advantage of this new venue to build upon some of the public history trends already posted; I’m especially interested in how the online component of the Po-Boy Fest website has inspired various creative responses to and appropriation of local history.

My involvement with the Po-Boy Fest provided an opportunity for historians to capitalize on the post-Katrina nostalgia for all things connected to New Orleans culture and reach new audiences. The value of posting vetted information online is plainly apparent, but I am especially enthused about how some people are appropriating poor boy history in various ways.

In my favorite example, a 20-year-old built upon the festival’s sandwich focus and posted a video tour of an abandoned bread bakery in a part of the city that once held many family-run French bread bakeries and poor boy shops. The first of two video clips http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pm9yZBHGk9Q begins with a synopsis of our festival website’s sandwich history as the title card before the camera navigates the abandoned rooms, brick ovens, and other parts of the bakery that 79 years ago originated the extra-long French bread loaf tailored for serving poor boy sandwiches. New Orleans’ small bakeries are beyond endangered--nearly extinct, one could say. The city once boasted several dozen family-run bread bakeries; less than a handful remain. Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised, but I’m also fascinated by the fact that this person, nineteen when the video was originally posted, would be so focused upon what many would consider to be an arcane topic. (I have not yet received a response to the question I posted to his or her youtube account.)

I’m interested in finding out about any similarly indirect, creative responses other public historians may find regarding their work in online settings. We’re all accustomed to fielding questions directly from the public, and the top-down invitation to “Tell-your-story” via a website is now ubiquitous; however, the new media revolution seems to have encouraged more assertive responses. This video artist did not feel inclined to notify the festival organizers about his work. I stumbled upon it after viewing a more traditional video response posted by another attendee. I apologize for narrowing the focus and moving away from the “big picture’ topics to address a highly specific situation. However, I think this scenario illustrates one of the benefits of online connections with audiences.

Original Format:

Rights: You must be 13 years of age or older to submit material to us. Your submission of material constitutes your permission for, and consent to, its dissemination and use in connection with in all media in perpetuity. If you have so indicated on the form, your material will be published on (with or without your name, depending on what you have indicated). Otherwise, your response will only be available to approved researchers using . The material you submit must have been created by you, wholly original, and shall not be copied from or based, in whole or in part, upon any other photographic, literary, or other material, except to the extent that such material is in the public domain. Further, submitted material must not violate any confidentiality, privacy, security or other laws.

By submitting material to you release, discharge, and agree to hold harmless and persons acting under its permission or authority, including a public library or archive to which the collection might be donated for purposes of long-term preservation, from any claims or liability arising out the 's use of the material, including, without limitation, claims for violation of privacy, defamation, or misrepresentation.

has no obligation to use your material.

You will be sent via email a copy of your contribution to . We cannot return any material you submit to us so be sure to keep a copy. will not share your email address or any other information with commercial vendors.

Creator: William Turkel

Contributor: William Turkel

Item Type: Document

Text: In making the web, we've collectively created a vast and rapidly growing archive of primary and secondary sources in digital form. We're just beginning to understand the implications of this ... as historians we now have the potential to share our work with a billion people, a seventh of humankind. Barriers of access and language remain, of course, but it is still a larger 'public' than any of us can imagine.

What I'm most excited about right now is the possibility of putting this digital information back into the material world in various new ways. Locative technologies like GPS-enabled cellphones allow us to tie digital sources to the real-world places that they represent. Tiny, embedded microcontrollers and sensors allow us to build devices, exhibits or environments that provide a rich, physical interaction with people. Desktop fabrication will enable us to "print out" and handle replicas of material objects (fossils, potsherds, ancient coins, small mechanisms, etc.) And a very popular genre of online writing attempts to teach new skills, while conveying a hands-on, DIY mentality. Each of these trends opens up whole new worlds for practitioners of public history.

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Language: eng

Rights: You must be 13 years of age or older to submit material to us. Your submission of material constitutes your permission for, and consent to, its dissemination and use in connection with in all media in perpetuity. If you have so indicated on the form, your material will be published on (with or without your name, depending on what you have indicated). Otherwise, your response will only be available to approved researchers using . The material you submit must have been created by you, wholly original, and shall not be copied from or based, in whole or in part, upon any other photographic, literary, or other material, except to the extent that such material is in the public domain. Further, submitted material must not violate any confidentiality, privacy, security or other laws. By submitting material to you release, discharge, and agree to hold harmless and persons acting under its permission or authority, including a public library or archive to which the collection might be donated for purposes of long-term preservation, from any claims or liability arising out the 's use of the material, including, without limitation, claims for violation of privacy, defamation, or misrepresentation. has no obligation to use your material. You will be sent via email a copy of your contribution to . We cannot return any material you submit to us so be sure to keep a copy. will not share your email address or any other information with commercial vendors.

Creator: Kathleen Hulser

Contributor: Kathleen Hulser

Item Type: Document

Text: As archives turn to VodCasts, cell phone tours, iTunesU, Flckr, Facebook, etc. history is being projected onto everyday environments. At the New-York Historical Society, the barriers to the primary sources have come down, as people deploy materials in virtual ways that take the historical imagery and objects back to their original urban contexts. For example, the ability to tune in to handheld devices, means that we could take our exploration of slavery in the North to the actual streets of downtown Manhattan where the hidden sites of slavery, freedom and the underground railroad still exist. Only with the imaginative addition of these historical images, can we add that history back into the cityscape, in small bites that provide a starting point for further explorations. So, I see public history's future as one of a wider public and variety of uses that spread the history around public space -- not just the museums and documentary sources of memory. Producing and exchanging history digitally is sure to revitalize the public history field, and waking up the museums, historical societies and heritage sites.

-- Kathleen Hulser, public historian

Original Format:

Rights: You must be 13 years of age or older to submit material to us. Your submission of material constitutes your permission for, and consent to, its dissemination and use in connection with in all media in perpetuity. If you have so indicated on the form, your material will be published on (with or without your name, depending on what you have indicated). Otherwise, your response will only be available to approved researchers using . The material you submit must have been created by you, wholly original, and shall not be copied from or based, in whole or in part, upon any other photographic, literary, or other material, except to the extent that such material is in the public domain. Further, submitted material must not violate any confidentiality, privacy, security or other laws.

By submitting material to you release, discharge, and agree to hold harmless and persons acting under its permission or authority, including a public library or archive to which the collection might be donated for purposes of long-term preservation, from any claims or liability arising out the 's use of the material, including, without limitation, claims for violation of privacy, defamation, or misrepresentation.

has no obligation to use your material.

You will be sent via email a copy of your contribution to . We cannot return any material you submit to us so be sure to keep a copy. will not share your email address or any other information with commercial vendors.

Creator: Kate Freedman

Contributor: Kate Freedman

Item Type: Document

Text: I think that "collaboration" and "access" will become the two terms that most define the practice of public history in the future.

As the Internet makes more information available to more people, and as historical writing for a popular audience continues to grow as a genre, I feel that there is great potential for public history to take a more central role in the discipline of history as a whole. Public historians are invested in shared inquiry and broadening dialogues. These skills will allow public historians to tap into the increasingly participatory nature of popular culture that has been made possible by the Internet. The practice of history will become a much more collaborative enterprise. The image of the lone historian researching in a dusty archive will still exist, but it will no longer be the primary image of the historian. Instead, historical information will often be gathered by groups working together (think the Flickr Commons). Trained public historians will primarily be needed to provide guidance and direction to these broadly collaborative historical projects. In this sense, I see the field of public history overlapping with, and to some extent merging with, the profession of librarianship. In addition to their traditional roles as interpreters of historical information, public historians, like librarians, will become information organizers, guides, and managers.

Mobile computing will allow historians to reach audiences anywhere. History lessons, featuring multimedia and digitized primary source material, will be able to be tailored to a user's location via GPS tracking. And people will be able to listen to podcasts, watch videos, and read about history anywhere that can be reached by the Internet. This type of mobile access to historical information will allow our audiences to feel much more connected the historical fabric that overlays physical places.

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