At the first THATCamp NCPH, two years ago, we brainstormed the Public History Commons into existence. By this time last year, we’d created the site and launched the History@Work blog on it. At this point, we’re seeing lots of new possibilities coming into focus, but they’re still pretty inchoate, and I’d love to see a session at this year’s THATCamp that moves our thinking along a bit more. Specifically, I’d like to think about how we might use the Commons to house, pull in, aggregate, or otherwise connect to the wide range of digital and perhaps other work being done around the public history field: “gray literature,” blogging, web-based projects, apps, mapping, individually-created digital archives, so much more.
- What role should NCPH envision for itself in relation to all of this work?
- How can we (or should we) respond critically to it, including through published reviews and awards?
- What additional digital tools would we need to incorporate into the Commons to make this work? (For example, I’ve recently built a little baby version of a Library area, but it’s obvious that this needs to sit on a much more sophisticated platform so we can actually catalog things – but before we do that, I think we need to figure out exactly how we’re hoping this area of the Commons might function within the field as a whole.)
I’d welcome discussion about this at THATCamp NCPH, perhaps along with broader conversations about digital publishing, reviewing, collecting of scholarly and other materials, etc.
I think this is a wonderful idea–especially the library area as a way to obtain comments about draft best practices documents. They need a wide readership and the public history commons is one way to add more voices to the conversation.