General – THATCamp National Council on Public History 2013

Notes from “Brainstorming the Public History Commons” session

Eric Nystrom — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 21:01:50 +0000

docs.google.com/document/d/14-Kyvu_NbfmcjK6JdsKlciXWW8blIMyff26HgKIdo-k/edit?usp=sharing

Google Doc for Grounding History as a Community Value

Ann Martin — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 19:55:51 +0000

t.co/PsrUyYi8vI

Session webdesign play session

Jill Paterson — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 19:46:19 +0000

docs.google.com/document/d/1a16GKFIBuKoUMnu-sWXfHXe4HEMeP3LjKE6iy6NebbY/edit?usp=sharing

“WordPress as a Public History Platform” session notes

Cathy Stanton — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 19:02:40 +0000

Here are the notes from this afternoon’s session on using WordPress in public history settings.

Pop Up Museum

Devon Elliott — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 15:37:12 +0000

This is a Play/Make session themed around the idea of a Pop Up Museum created from digital content.

Some museums/galleries have been digitally scanning parts of their collections to generate 3D models of those objects, while others have invited individuals to create models of objects on display using their cell phone cameras.

www.thingiverse.com/tag:museum

These initiatives rely on recent technological developments in 3D scanning and printing. As more cultural and heritage resources are digitized in this way, what can we do with that content? How can it be made accessible? In what form(s) could it take, and where?

Pop Up events are temporary, ad hoc installations, often in unconventional places. With the availability and portability of digital content, what would Pop Up Museums utilizing this content look like?

I’m bringing some of these 3D technologies with me to NCPH for a session on Saturday, but I’m proposing to set it up at THATCamp NCPH for people there to try out. I’ll have RGB depth cameras (like Microsoft’s Kinect) that can be used for scanning objects or for interaction — such devices basically allow a computer to see. Try creating your own digital models with one of these sensors, or using your own digital camera with free photogrammetry software to digitize the world around you.

There will also be a 3D printer there if you’d like to explore that technology — maybe your Pop Up Museum would have replicas of things printed out for people to handle or involve the realization of a mashup of various objects to make a particular statement. You can try it out, and we can explore options to make things with the printer.

Some peripherals to try to make custom interfaces for interacting with a computer will also be available. These might be needed to control and direct software involved, or to add more interaction to your Pop Up Museum.

This would be a hands-on session — you can try out some of the technologies to get some experience with them, or you could use them to work on elements of a Pop Up Museum.

Added Value

Joel Ralph — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 04:00:49 +0000

Hi folks,
I’m very excited to participate in my first THATCamp this week. I’m really impressed and interested in the topics that have been posted so far and I think they should make for some excellent discussion. I’ll throw one discussion in the hat:

What I would like to discuss is examples of added value online. It’s nice to make pictures, documents, primary sources, or historical work available online. But how do we package that and make it something that the public or consumers are actually interested in? How do we make it a package that is attractive and interesting compared with what is available through traditional media (i.e. Newspapers) or new media (i.e Wikipedia).

Looking forward to meeting everyone in Ottawa. Cheers, Joel.

Reconstructing a Minneapolis neighborhood online

Kirsten Delegard — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 22:32:39 +0000

I’m super excited to experience a THAT camp.

Here’s what I would like to explore. I have started a new public history initiative in Minneapolis, the Historyapolis Project, which seeks to make the history of the city as accessible as possible, in order to spark discussions about some of the most challenging aspects of the city’s past. One of the ultimate goals of this project is to produce a traditional book. But I want to work my way to the book by doing projects that engage a broader audience.

To launch the Historyapolis Project, I would like to reconstruct online the historic heart of the city, which was demolished by an ambitious urban renewal project from 1958 to 1963. The Gateway district of Minneapolis became synonymous with dispossession during the Great Depression, when o000000">ne-time lumberjacks, gandy dancers and farm hands found themselves marooned in the city, left high and dry in the Gateway by agricultural mechanization, the contraction of the railroad industry and the environmental devastation wrought by clear-cutting. This economic seachange solidified the Gateway’s identity as the region’s largest skid row, a refuge for the unemployed and the desperate. Migrant workers became permanent residents, their perambulations circumscribed by changing economics and advancing age. Subsisting on pensions and fixed incomes, the largely male population of the Gateway circulated within a tight circle of bars, liquor stores, flop houses and missions. The community became a magnet for political radicals and evangelicals hoping to win the hearts and minds of the dispossessed. It drew journalists, academics and WPA photographers who sought to document the human and political drama of the economic crisis. City leaders hated this area. In the 1950s they managed to secure federal funding to undertake the largest urban redevelopment project in the nation’s history. The city flattened 40 percent of its downtown–25 blocks, total. The downtown has never really recovered from this trauma. The center of the city still has a hole, which is covered by surface parking lots.

In order to secure federal redevelopment funding, the city had to document the “blight” of this district. On the eve of the neighborhood’s demise, commercial photographers carefully documented every building and business to be demolished. The result is an astonishing photographic record of a place foreign to most Minneapolitans. The photographs show bars, diners, liquor stores, missions, flophouses, secondhand stores and myriad other businesses that enjoyed cheap rent in this deteriorating part of town. These photographs–about 2,000 in all–have been buried in the city archives, moldering and uncatalogued in chaotic cardboard boxes. I have spent the winter digitizing these photos and want to use them to reconstruct the Gateway in some kind of online project. I culled through the boxes and only chose to digitize about 850 of the most interesting items. I would say that 100 of them are spectacular photo documents of this lost world. For a sample, see the FB page I have started: www.facebook.com/TheHistoryapolisProject

I have some ideas about how to approach such a project. But I would love some advice on what is involved in such a project and some of the best ways to approach making accessible such a large visual record, which could be supplemented by lots of additional material–sound records, home movies, newspaper articles, all kinds of goodies.

Thanks for any help that you can provide. Looking forward to seeing you in Ottawa.

A few ideas for sessions

Jill Paterson — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 20:30:00 +0000

Here are a few nuggets of ideas for a Talk Session.

1 – The risks and benefits of user generated content. How do we manage a website effectively when we are opening our content up to public comment? Is the benefit of the democratization of content worth the risks inherent with allowing outside users to add to your site?

2 – We have a challenge in connecting online with some of our core audience – we are interviewing veterans, who aren’t really big users of the internet (The Memory Project)

3 – The problem of balancing the timeliness of technology with the cost of being cutting edge.We always have big ideas that get whittled down by our budget realities.

4 – The treatment of images online. We have a huge repository of digitized images in a number of our programs, new technologies allow for the easy embedding of slide-shows, but not easy curating of content. Does Google Images have it right by just aggregating images online in a single space, or do we owe more to the curation of images when we are an authoritative reference? How can we better utilize, showcase images, while still being mindful of the weight of high res galleries online?

A Play session could be to share examples of really effective website design. It could be beautiful, could be really intuitive or well laid out, but has to be inspiring.

WordPress as a Public History Platform

Clarissa Ceglio — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 13:11:15 +0000

On Thursday, April 18 at 8:30 a.m. in Ballroom A, I have the pleasure of joining Erin Bell, Jeffrey McClurken, and Tom Scheinfeldt in a discussion of how public historians are using and adapting WordPress software to teach, disseminate, and do public history. The types of issues we’d like to discuss range from practical basics (e.g., what plug-ins have you found useful) to deeper implications (e.g., how do the digital platforms we use influence the production of history).

In addition to the pre-conference conversation taking place on History@Work (please comment!) and the session itself, I’d like to propose a THATCamp NCPH session along similar lines.

For instance, we’ve recently started using EditFlow with our WordPress-based project, a re-envisioned collaborative state encyclopedia called ConnecticutHistory.org. And I’d love to hear from others who are using this or other tools to manage the content development workflow within WordPress rather than external to it. For example, until recently, our editing and finalization of entries took place in MicroSoft Word and material wasn’t brought into WordPress until it was complete save for images. There are pros and cons to both approaches, particularly if one is managing external authors who are not familiar with WordPress or if the internal project team is hesitant to grant backside access to outside contributors.

So, if your public history project or course uses WordPress software—or if you’ve been wondering if it might work for your needs—let me know if a session along these lines is of interest.

Join us for the third THATCamp NCPH!

Cathy Stanton — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 15:04:25 +0000

NCPH’s THATCamps in 2011 and 2012 were great successes–collegial and productive days in which people from all over the public history field got together to share ideas, learn skills, solve problems, and plan projects. Join us for the third camp in Ottawa on Wednesday, April 17, 2013, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the Delta Ottawa City Center (Richelieu Room).

Registration is $25. if you’re registering for the entire conference and want to attend THATCamp, use this link. Click here to register for THATCamp only or to add THATCamp if you’ve already registered for the full conference.

The camp is open to graduate students, scholars, librarians, archivists, museum professionals, developers and programmers, administrators, and funders from the nonprofit and for-profit sectors, and anyone with an interest in these fields, the workshop emphasizes collegial work aimed at strengthening skills and projects directly applicable in participants’ own institutions and programs. Staff from the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media (CHNM) will facilitate. (Limit 75 Participants)