Website Review

The New Georgia Encyclopedia, http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/. Created and maintained by the Georgia Humanities Council in partnership with University of Georgia Press, the University System of Georgia/GALILEO, and the Office of the Governor. Reviewed November 20-22.

The New Georgia Encyclopedia (NGE) was created with the intention of making information on Georgia history easily accessible on one comprehensive website. The site is very readable and contains a vast amount of data on nearly any imaginable topic related to Georgia’s past from Native American history, to Georgia’s founding, to civil rights, to more recent history, and even articles on native Georgian plant and animal life, among many others. From the site’s homepage, users can click on their chosen subject in a list on the left hand side, ranging from “The Arts” to “Transportation.” Each topic is further broken down into categories. For instance, the “History and Archaeology” section is arranged by era, from prehistoric Georgia, to more contemporary events. Clicking on an era results in a list of links to articles related to that particular time period. The links presented in these lists yield compositions written in thoughtful, concise prose by scholars in related fields. The text of each article contains several hyperlinks which provide more specific information on certain details. Most of these links go to NGE pages, but a few lead to outside historical sites. Unfortunately, the articles do not cite sources as one might expect, but they do helpfully provide books and articles readers can consult for further information. Many of the pages also include illustrations and photographs to enhance interest and understanding. The pictures are embedded into the articles as thumbnails, which, once clicked, open a new window wherein the image is enlarged and accompanied by a caption.

NGE is an exhaustive source for Georgia history, and one would be hard-pressed to come up with neglected topics or events. Many of the subjects have broader appeal than simply local history, and many are related to national events. NGE provides a Georgia angle to well-known occurrences. While NGE offers information across the entire spectrum of history, the authors are remarkably unflinching in their coverage of past events. Users can learn about the poor treatment of Native Americans, Georgians’ roles in slavery, and the fight for civil rights, including atrocities committed in the name of the Ku Klux Klan. In addition to topics both broad and specific, NGE users can find information on particular individuals of local and national fame. Under each topic is a list of the influential people of the time period in question. While many are native Georgians, some are Americans of national repute with ties to the state.

The NGE is an excellent resource which would be helpful to scholars at many levels, beginning, most likely, with high school students, or possibly advanced middle schoolers. The NGE attempts to put forth content that is as accurate as possible so as to be a reputable resource for research and education. The website is an excellent model for a comprehensive and engaging history site despite a lack of multi-media content. The interface is extraordinarily user-friendly and the look of the site is quite appealing. Overall, the NGE would be an excellent starting point from which to learn about an extensive array of topics in Georgia history.

Digital History: The Final Frontier?

I loved the way all of the readings cohered this week. I think the defining aspect of this course has been that it’s laid bare a lot of my shortcomings and dislikes. And actually, this isn't a bad thing. Now I know the areas in which I need to improve. One of my shortcomings recently further exposed (I knew of it before) is a certain level of ineptness when it comes to technology. I’' not such a big fan of computers and the like and I have a sneaking suspicion the feeling is mutual. Sure, I'm proficient in all the ways that count, but not at doing things like creating and maintaining a website. I've certainly got to reckon with the burgeoning range of hardware, software, etc., that has developed quite rapidly as of late. The same is true for museums and historians.

As an aspiring archivist, the notion that paper and books won’t be around in physical form is fairly unsettling. Even just as someone who loves books, the idea is discomfiting. There is nothing like the smell of an old book, or the tactility of turning the pages of a spellbinding novel. Can’t get that from your Kindle.

Seemingly, some historians want digital archives to be free and accessible to all. My problem with this is similar to the one currently facing the newspaper industry: how would that enable the purveyors of digital archives to turn a profit? After all, everything comes down to making money. Also, once everything goes out onto the Web, how can historians discern the reputable from the bunk? The Internet lacks pretty much every check and balance of the publishing/academic/museum model of doing history. Then, there's no finding a rare first edition copy in the digital world. Part of the fun of books is seeking out different editions to view the evolution of a particular text over time. We're not consistently saving editions of webpages and I think that’s a problem. Lastly, turning everything into bits and bytes takes up far less space. History may look very different if nothing ever gets trashed or lost. I'm not sure if this is good or bad or both.

However, there are aspects of this new digital age that excite me. I love the idea of museums as being one of the last bastions of physical "things." That’s job security for sure. Additionally, utilizing technology effectively could be a really viable way to get young people engaged with and interested in history. The use of video games to achieve this as in museums as suggested in the AAM document is intriguing to me.

There's no way of predicting the future, but one thing's for sure: we're all about to become a lot more familiar with advanced technology. I'm working on brushing up and I hope museums and historians are, too. After all, we can't let museums become...history.

Memory and Public History

Yet another week in which I had strong reactions to the readings. I greatly disagreed with a great many of Alison Landsberg's interpretations of the literary works she uses as examples of memory in her book, Prosthetic Memory. I suppose that literary interpretations are neither here nor there for our purposes. Alas, having seen none of the movies she references, I can't speak on her interpretations of those. However, I can accept that there are various ways to interpret great literature as well as good movies. That being said, Landsberg stretched my incredulity a bit too far when she claimed that after having spent a prolonged amount of time in the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the experience affected her psyche so much that she wondered if she and the other attendees were being gassed when she saw smoke coming from a vent. That seems an outrageous assertion for someone who is not a Holocaust survivor. For me, that part of the book made Landsberg's other claims seem less plausible. This saddened me because I really wanted to buy what Landsberg was selling. I also thought that she relied entirely too heavily on long quotes to communicate her argument rather than using quotes sparingly and putting forth her beliefs in her own words.

I do think that museums can serve to create variations on screen memories (as in Freud's theory) which can be quite beneficial. As the readings have shown us this semester, people want to feel like they are a part of history; as if history has some relevance to their lives. I think that museums can utilize prosthetic memories to help history feel relevant to visitors. Clearly, people learn differently than previous generations, so technology needs to be a big part of the way museums integrate learning with entertainment if you will. I'm greatly interested in memory and oral history and I suspect that utilizing both will be an important part of getting people into learning about the past. I appreciate Landsberg's call to arms with which she ends her book, but I was left feeling like the entire text was a little too pie-in-the-sky, rather than serious scholarly work.

As for Jay Winter's article, "The Generation of Memory: Reflections on the 'Memory Boom' in Contemporary Historical Studies," I felt a little bit like a child overhearing her parents' conversation on a topic she's too young to understand. Winter has spent a lot of time overseas and writes from a different, more Euro-centric perspective than many historians I've recently read. The different perspective threw me a bit. I am intrigued by Winter's assertion that memory has become a popular way of thinking about the past because of greater affluence among both governments and people. Again, he asserts that people love to be able to connect themselves or their families to the larger historical picture. Clearly, it is our job as future public historians to wrangle that impulse and use it to get people back into going to museums.

Blame It All on TV

Nancy Raquel Mirabal's Public Historian article entitled, "Geographies of Displacement" provides me with the perfect way to clarify my position on public history and politics. I'm not advocating that we not admit to our own politics or hide the political reasons for what we're doing. I realize that politics dictate most of my daily choices, down to the foods I eat. This is just as true for any historic site; denying that there are political reasons for their existence is counterproductive. I object to the idea that public historians are not doing their jobs if they aren't constantly challenging the wrongs in society. To me, Cathy Stanton implied that public historians have no choice but to be crusaders for justice at all times. My objection lies in not being able to choose the battles one fights in the course of doing one's job for reasons that Mirabal briefly touches on in her article. Fighting for a cause takes a toll. Taking on an issue requires a lot of drive and energy, even when one believes wholeheartedly in that issue. Burnout is a very real possibility. For this reason, I'd like to be a historian first and a community activist second. A person spread too thin isn't able to do good for anyone. Fighting only for that in which one believes goes toward ensuring that one doesn't get worn out.

I think the Mirabal piece is an excellent example of combining political purposes with public history. I was fascinated to learn why gentrification was happening in San Francisco's Mission District. I also thought that Mirabal brings up uncomfortable, but excellent points. I've always thought of it as a good thing when neighborhoods "improve," when "nicer" shops come and things get cleaned up. But this is my white, middle-class perspective speaking. What is the true cost of these "improvements"? That's what Mirabal is asking us to consider and I think the answers might hit a little unpleasantly close to home.

As for Eric O'Keefe's "Auctioning the Old West to Help a City in the East," my only reaction was one of amazement. How unbelievable that Harrisburg's Mayor Stephen Reed spent $7.8 million in public funds without anyone noticing for so many years. I was surprised more details of the fallout weren't given in the article, but I suppose that wasn't the story's point and would've increased word count. However, Mayor Reed's encompassing vision of the items that create a comprehensive story of the Old West is impressive for a politician, excellent one he apparently was. He certainly seemed to cover all the bases.

Finally, Cary Carson's article for The Public Historian, "The End of History Museums: What's Plan B?" was compelling. Carson clearly knows of whence he speaks and his particular vision is also quite sweeping. How unfortunate that there are no national statistics on museum attendance, and that what there is, isn't standardized. I feel like in order to fix what's wrong, knowing attendance numbers would be useful. Also, it seems to me that someone should at least attempt to do the market research that Carson suggests at the top of page 12. Where are Rosenzweig and Thelen when you need them? Until we can figure out why people aren't enticed by history sites, it seems like we will be stuck in a cycle of finding alternative ways to fund their upkeep, such as the "jumble sales" to which Carson so objects. Clearly technology is the way of the future, but as Aaron Goldblatt pointed out when he visited our meeting, technology comes with it's own set of issues: high cost, upkeep and quick obsolescence are only a few. Carson seems to pinpoint the popularity of TV as the downfall of the "traditional" museum structure. Everyone needs to feel like he or she is important today, which is certainly unfortunate, but that's reality. Finding a way to incorporate technology and give people the feelings they want to have is the challenge we're facing now. Carson's visions may or may not solve the problem. I'm not sure that incorporating Second Life and YouTube is the long-term solution here. But I just keep thinking that the wave of retirements mentioned in the 2008 AAM report we read a while back might be the chance for a new generation of public historians to tackle some of these big issues facing museums today.

Interpreting Our Heritage

I have to admit to being thoroughly disenchanted last week by Cathy Stanton's The Lowell Experiment. That feeling wasn't aided this week by either the West or the Handler and Gable readings. The idea of politicizing public history is completely off-putting to me. I am certainly self-aware enough to know that public history in general and preservation more specifically is a left-leaning activity. I am also self-aware enough to know that my political tendencies are also quite liberal and I am driven by a genuine desire to help others and do good in the world. However, I didn't choose public history as a career out of any sort of political motivation. I left Washington, D.C., because I found out I did not want to fight political battles on a daily basis. This is my goal for a career in public history: I would love to have a job that would allow me to be surrounded by history, present the subject matter well and in a thought-provoking manner. If people make connections from past events to the present day, nothing would please me more. I firmly believe that we cannot move forward without working knowledge of where we've been. I do not think that the majority of public historians run or work a museum or historical site with the intention of shortchanging one group of people over another or with any other sort of malicious wilfullness. I think more often the case is that someone gets left out because someone is unsure of an alternative way to handle the situation. Most people are good people with good intentions; museums and others sites, along with those who run them must do their best to work with the resources they have in the environments in which they find themselves. Often, the resources and the average person's energy just don't stretch to fighting the battle of correcting every wrong in the surrounding community. Certainly burying one's head in the sand is not the way to go, but picking one's battles is essential to survival. Though, I could be wrong. I'm still unsure that I'm properly enunciating my feelings on this.

Onto Freeman Tilden and Interpreting Our Heritage. What a little gem of a book, though I did surprise myself with a couple of strong reactions to it. At first, all of his talk about "love" and other mushiness was getting to me. I'm all for having passion for one's work and probably would have felt better about it had that been the word used. I also thought that his writing style took a little getting used to. However, this could just have been a symptom of how disheartened I'd been feeling. Once I got into the book, I loved it. Tilden's 6 principles of interpretation are invaluable, though I'm unsure I have the storytelling prowess he feels is vital to a good interpreter. I thought that, "When in doubt, say 'no'" was wonderful advice both for interpretive work as well as life in general. I was also intruigued by Tilden's assertion that a good interpreter thinks carefully about words used in reference to, in, and around historic sites, but shouldn't overthink what he's going to say. Tilden's work is full of priceless insights such as these. I can see why many interpreters refer back to Interpreting Our Heritage so often.

Historic Preservation

As usual, this week’s reading spurred a great many thoughts. We finished Cathy Stanton's The Lowell Experiment: Public History in a Postindustrial City and read Diane Lea's introduction to A Richer Heritage entitled "America's Preservation Ethos: A Tribute to Enduring Ideals."

The Lea piece was a fairly straightforward history of preservation, both of land as well as buildings. However, while reading the article, I started thinking about two things. First, America is a growing, ever-changing nation with limited space and land. How can we draw the line when deciding what gets preserved as historic and what doesn't? I certainly do not believe that everything should be paved over to make way for something new, but I think we must be smart about preservation and city planning in order to maintain the balance of community heritage and history with progress. For this reason, I was really interested when Lea wrote about how a desire to preserve led to improvements in city planning and developments in architecture. On the flip side, Lea discusses the use of preservation as a means of preventing overcrowding and overgrowth in cities. The dichotomy there is food for thought. Second, the issue of who makes preservation decisions is intriguing. Should wealthy individuals get to decide what to buy and preserve or should this be a community effort? Maybe the best solution is a balance of both. The answer to some of my questions may just be preservation through repurposing. For instance, living in restored old homes preserves the homes while keeping them usable. Or, turning an old, historic office building into apartments means that the building remains standing, but there is room for residential growth as well. For me, though, Lea's most interesting anecdote was that the federal government thought that the National Register of Historic Places was a list that could be compiled and then remain static as if new things would never become old.

I'm still not quite sure what I think about Cathy Stanton's book. Stanton is an anthropologist and an ethnographer; she clearly writes from a very different perspective than a historian. In her book, Stanton hopes to address whether or not public history can change or challenge the status quo and if so, how that might occur. What I took from the reading is that Stanton wants public historians to do two things. They should do good history which engages the community and makes the public want to learn about the past. But, she also wants public historians to bring attention to issues people are facing in the present. Clearly, she’s been disappointed with how Lowell National Historic Park did the latter, particularly in the case of the local Cambodian community. I feel that there is quite enough of a challenge in presenting good, accurate, interesting history which encompasses everyone’s voice and makes people want to come learn. In an ideal world, public historians might be able to be community activists as well, but I’m not sure doing both is possible. It’s something I’ll have to keep thinking about.

"If You Don't Tell It like It Is, It Can Never Be as It Ought to Be"

I think Roger Launius’s article, "American Memory, Culture Wars, and the Challenge of Presenting Science and Technology in a National Museum" might just be my favorite reading so far. Dr. Launius writes with self-awareness and humor which is much-appreciated. His article nicely demonstrates more pitfalls of shared authority in a museum setting. He candidly expounds on the trickiness of sorting through what history is versus what people’s perception of history is and shows just how difficult this can be with a topic as controversial as the moon landing. The challenge facing all public historians is how to address the zeitgeist while still doing accurate history that people will want to come and see in a museum. Is there some way to take a "customer is always right" approach while presenting good history that teaches people and encourages them to question what they know?

Launius’s article definitely showcases how harsh criticism of museums and their exhibits can be. Some of the critiques cited in the article were tremendously severe. However, I think that controversy is worthwhile when it starts important conversations and brings attention to little-known or vital topics. As I was reading, though, I was wondering if national, publically-funded, government-affiliated museums like the Smithsonian are more lightning rods than privately-funded museums might be. Are there different or higher expectations? Certainly, more voices must be brought into the mix.

I was really interested to read about the exhibits that Dr. Launius would like to see come to fruition, but which haven’t due to difficulty or controversy. Since we read the AAM’s 2008 Annual Report, I’ve been thinking that maybe the wave of upcoming retirements won’t be such a bad thing. It might be useful to get some new blood into museums which could result in some innovative ideas for tackling tough issues and controversies.

I also enjoyed James Horton and Lois Horton’s Slavery and Public History. Again, this book emphasized for me how public historians must find a way to address all the voices in a conversation, which is extraordinarily difficult. That being said, I don’t think we should shy away from controversy just because it’s difficult. I loved David Blight’s essay, particularly his use of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude as a metaphor for the role of memory in history. Blight also had one of the most striking quotes in his essay when he discussed the forum he participated in. Here, Fred Shuttleworth said, "If you don’t tell it like it was, it can never be as it ought to be." This sums up exactly why I’m doing public history, but Shuttleworth put it more eloquently than I ever could have.

The Hortons’ book also made me wonder why as a society we’re so much more willing to accept museums and exhibits about the Holocaust than about slavery. I think some of the answers might be obvious, but maybe we can learn from the way museums deal with the Holocaust in order to better address slavery. Overall, I thought the book did an excellent job of laying out the problems and difficulties of including slavery in public history, but I wanted more suggestions on how to remedy the issues. I did, though, love the quote they used to end the book: "We accept this and together we will transcend it." Would that we, as the next generation of public historians, further that goal.