Today’s post is by historian and guest writer David Grabitske, who is the Site Manager for the Landmark Inn, a site owned by the Texas Historical Commission. Cliffhangers of History I remember the summer of 1980. I was 10 and it was the last summer my family lived in Maryland. The previous summer the family had gone to Ocean City, Maryland, on a premium of a time share company. The catch was the family had…
Historians are explorers. Their terrain is the past, Vast, deep, complicated. Their tools: Archival materials, Three-dimensional artifacts, Places and structures. Their discoveries are wondrous, Though-provoking, Potentially dangerous, Life-changing. They collect the past, Analyze it, And bring it into the present, So that it remains useful Now And into the future. Historians reanimate the dead. >>> Want adventure? Become a historian!
This post is likely to ruffle a few feathers. Let’s ruffle away, shall we? (If you are a donor to museum collections and you’d like to avoid the ruffling, see the caveat at the end of this post.) “If You Don’t Take It, It Will End Up in a Landfill” I can’t tell you how many times people who’ve donated items for museum collections have said, “If you don’t take it, it will end up…
I finished reading Sam Wineburg‘s “Why Learn History (When It’s Already on Your Phone)” and I’ve walked away scratching my head. I went into the book thinking Wineburg, who is is the Margaret Jacks Professor of Education and History at Stanford University and has written a number of books on history education, was going to make a resounding case for why it’s still important to learn historical thinking even if you have all the history…
A recent CityLab article caught my attention: Should Libraries Be the Keepers of Their Cities’ Public Data? A quote from the article: “As far as how private and public data should be handled, there isn’t really a strong model out there,” says Curtis Rogers, communications director for the Urban Library Council (ULC), an association of leading libraries across North America. “So to have the library as the local institution that is the most trusted, and…