In my last post, I discussed the bottom level of History’s Hierarchy of Purpose, which was Resource Location & Preservation, the foundation for all of history’s other purposes. Today and over the next few posts, I will issue a number of challenges in order to enhance your ability to locate and preserve historic resources. Challenge – Investigating an Everyday Item’s History Find an item in your home that you are curious about. If it has…
Unpacking the Hierarchy I introduced a colorful, pyramidal, teapot-esque graphic showing “History’s Hierarchy of Purpose” a couple of blog posts ago. I want to spend some time unpacking each of the levels of this hierarchy, so let’s get started with the base of the pyramid, which is Resource Location & Preservation. Resources That Reveal History In order to study history and make use of it, we need resources that can reveal that history. Lots of…
When you’ve been in the history field for 20+ years, you develop ideas about history’s larger context and how it works in both the history field and society. When you get several long-term historians together for discussion (as has happened for 2 years now at the Minnesota History Whatever), those ideas become more cohesive. That’s what bouncing thoughts off of numerous knowledgeable folks does (aside from keeping us super-entertained in a field where we love…