History News Autumn 2014

Partnership

Success Factors

#QR1863:

Commemoration Through Social Media Flexible Use of Museum Collections Creating a More Meaningful Past

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THE MAGAZINE OF THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR STATE AND LOCAL HISTORY

Features

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7 Embracing Social Media as Part of a Storyteller’s Toolkit

By Shannon Haltiwanger

11 Chasing the White Whale? Flexible Use of Museum Collections

29

By Ron M. Potvin

17 Twenty-One Partnership Success Factors

By Brian O’Neill

22 Creating a More Meaningful Past: A Short History of AASLH

By Rick Beard

17

Departments 3 On Doing Local History

By Carol Kammen

5 On History Leadership

By John W. Durel and Anita N. Durel

29 Award Winner Spotlight

By Mike Bunn

31 Book Reviews

By Rebecca Conard and Sarah Milligan

ON THE COVER

Golden Gate Bridge, San Fransisco, one of many partners of Golden Gate National Parks.

Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress

Inside: Building Better Budgets

By Stacy L. Klingler and Laura B. Roberts

History News exists to foster publication, scholarly research, and an open forum for discussion of best practices, applicable theories, and professional experiences pertinent to the field of state and local history.

For information on article submissions and review, see www.aaslh.org/ historynews. Articles typically run 2,500 words in length. History News (ISSN 0363-7492) is published quarterly by the American Association for State and Local History, a nonprofit educational membership organization providing leadership, service, and support for its members who preserve and interpret state and local history in order to make the past more meaningful in American society. Articles appearing in this journal are abstracted and indexed in Historical Abstracts and America: History and Life. Annual membership dues for AASLH includes $13 applicable to subscription in History News. Single copy is $10. Postmaster, please send form 3579 to History News, AASLH, 1717 Church Street, Nashville, TN 37203-2991. Periodical postage paid at Nashville, Tennessee. Entire contents copyrighted ©2014 by the American Association for State and Local History. Opinions expressed by contributors are not necessarily those of the American Association for State and Local History. For advertising information contact Rebecca Price, 615-320-3203. For membership information contact AASLH at 1717 Church Street, Nashville TN 37203-2991; 615-3203203; fax 615-327-9013; e-mail: membership@aaslh.org.

1717 Church Street Nashville, Tennessee 37203-2991 615-320-3203, Fax 615-327-9013 membership@aaslh.org, www.aaslh.org

History News is a quarterly membership publication of the American Association for State and Local History (AASLH). It provides articles on current trends, timely issues, and best practices for professional development and the overall improvement of the field of state and local history.

EDITOR Bob Beatty Managing Editor Bethany L. Hawkins EDITORIAL ASSISTANCE Susan Ferentinos DESIGN Go Design, LLC, Gerri Winchell Findley

Nelson Chenault

Dear Readers,

Greetings from Nashville! We hope that you all are having as glorious an early fall as we are here in middle Tennessee. We believe this latest edition of History News provides a little bit of everything to whet your history appetite: a bit of history, some “how-to” articles, and a few things to spark your imagination. First up is Shannon Haltiwanger’s article on the 1863 Commemorate Lawrence (#QR1863) program, a Leadership in History Award-winning social media commemoration of Quantrill’s Raid.

In “Chasing the White Whale? Flexible Use of Museum Collections,” Ron M. Potvin addresses the ongoing discussion of the proper use of collections in our institutions.

The late Brian O’Neill’s article, by way of his National Park Service colleague Chuck Arning, offers us all the hard-learned lessons of one of the key components of our work: partnerships. Our final article is the first in a series on AASLH’s upcoming Diamond Anniversary, Rick Beard’s “Creating a More Meaningful Past.” Stay tuned for more!

No issue of History News is complete without Carol Kammen’s “On Doing Local History” essay, this one on the opportunities the upcoming World War I centennial presents history organizations. John and Anita Durel write on an essential topic of leadership: delegation. In addition to the #QR1863 article, learn about another Leadership in History Award winner, the Fort Daniel Foundation, winner of the Corey Award as an all-volunteer organization, in Mike Bunn’s spotlight article. And Rebecca Conard and Sarah Milligan review The Lost Region: Toward a Revival of Midwestern History and Community Oral History Toolkit respectively. Finally, our Technical Leaflet, by Stacy L. Klingler and Laura B. Roberts, covers the ever-important topic of budgeting.

With great admiration for your work, Bob Beatty, Interim President & CEO, AASLH

OFFICERS Chair Lynne Ireland Nebraska State Historical Society Vice Chair Julie Rose West Baton Rouge Museum Secretary Scott Stroh III Gunston Hall Treasurer Cinnamon Catlin-Legutko Abbe Museum Immediate Past Chair D. Stephen Elliott Minnesota Historical Society

COUNCIL Norman O. Burns II Maymont Foundation Laura Casey Texas Historical Commission Catherine Fields Litchfield Historical Society Janet Gallimore Idaho State Historical Society Linnea Grim Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello Jane Lindsey Juneau-Douglas City Museum Burt Logan Ohio Historical Society Lorraine McConaghy Museum of History & Industry Bill Peterson Arizona Historical Society Donna Sack Association of Midwest Museums Susan Tissot Clark County Historical Society & Museum

Lifelike Realistic Figures since 1957.

Conservation Forms since 1996.

Ken Turino Historic New England Max van Balgooy Engaging Places Jay Vogt South Dakota State Historical Society Tobi Voigt Detroit Historical Society Phyllis Waharockah-Tasi Comanche National Museum and Cultural Center

STAFF © Birmingham Museum of Art

Aja Bain Program Assistant BOB BEATTY Interim President and CEO CHERIE COOK Senior Program Manager Patricia Harris Marketing Assistant Bethany L. hawkins Program Manager TERRy JACKSON Membership and Marketing Coordinator

© Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum

Sylvia McGhee Director of Finance Rebecca Price Director of Advertising and Marketing

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On Doing Local History >

By Carol Kammen

Library of Congress

Wilson’s Ghost

W

e live with the consequences of times past, never more obvious than in the events of the last quarter century as the treaty that ended the Great War unraveled, embroiling millions of people in new conflicts that undid what was thought to have been “The War to End All Wars.” Currently, the fighting to remedy those artificial lines seems endless and continues to embroil our nation in battles in far-off fields.

In Europe commemorations of World War I began with handshakes between former enemies on battlefields now lined with the graves of the fallen. The war is garnering attention in historical accounts, in fiction placed during that era (or that leading up to it), in film and television, through collections efforts, and via conferences. For those across the Atlantic from us, the events of 1914-18 are acute and visceral even today.

It is relatively easy to ascribe a precise date to the beginning of events, but historians know that the origins of that war lie deep within earlier generations’ longings and frustrations. The First World War began with pacts and promises, in treaties between the European powers years before the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914. Still, for commemoration purposes, it is good to have a beginning to mark.

At the Anglo-American Conference of Historians held early in July 2014 in London at the Institute for Historical Research, the Great War took center stage. Speakers dissected its many parts.

This included papers that looked at events in Canada, a subject with which I was not familiar. In Halifax, ammunitions ships collided in the harbor, creating a tsunami and massive destruction on land and to established residential communities. In Winnipeg, only in its fourth decade by 1914, tension erupted between and against ethnic minorities, thus introducing the idea of the “enemy alien.” A number of foreign-born citizens were made to register with authorities and often were pushed from their employment. Violence led to the socalled Battle of Quebec, fought on the

basis of ethnic tensions dating back as far as the eighteenth century.

United States military involvement in the Great War dates to 1917, when President Woodrow Wilson committed U.S. troops to the fight. Our role was significant from the beginning, yet it has been obscured in our memories by the times that followed: the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, and the Second World War. In London, a small group of us gathered to explore ways the local history community in the U.K. and the U.S. might work together to commemorate the era. The English National Lottery has funded several programs linking the academic world to local sites, and has created centers at five universities to promote thought about the war and its meaning to local communities. The lottery money, in addition to money the British Parliament has allocated, is intended to bring together academic scholars and the public. Three of these endeavors have created the Centre for Hidden Histories: Community Commemoration and the First World War (http://hiddenhistorieswwi.ac.uk), stressing the global nature of the war.

One striking way to think about the war is to review Kate Tiller’s thoughtful pamphlet “Remembrance and

Community: War Memorials and Local History,” put out by the British Association of Local History. It examines the placement and style of World War I memorials. Tiller’s book mines local memory while also looking at the creation of and the differences between individual gravestones and monuments put up in memory of groups of the fallen.

In addition, there are several other efforts to collect information about the war. Europeana 1914-1918 (www.europeana1914-1918.eu/en) has digitized more than 400,000 items from national library collections in eight countries. The Family and Community Historical Research Society in England is stressing local community research in a project called The Home Front 1914-15 (www.fachrs.com/ content/homefront/hfp.html) to see how the war affected communities in real time through local newspapers, parish magazines, local council minutes, school records, and war poetry. Several other digital efforts are already in place as well.

The question we few Americans at the conference raised was how we might use this interest in the First World War to link the United States and Great Britain.

Are there ways that we might pose questions that people on both sides of the Atlantic could think about and then share across the pond? This is a proposal readily accomplished in the digital age, for original materials do not have to be sent abroad but can be posted online and conversations can easily develop between groups or individuals.

There are always large existential questions we can ask: Why do we have war in the first place? What can we do to prevent war? But these seem to me to be too large to have meaningful answers. I prefer to leave questions of these sorts to the philosophers and hope that they might come up with some solutions—especially in our very precarious world where war seems to threaten us from numerous places.

The questions that local historians can fruitfully explore and discuss with others might be less grand but equally useful in bringing documents to light and exploring them. I always wonder H i s t o r y n e ws

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On Doing Local History > about the British reaction to what they consider the late arrival of the United States into the conflict. The First World War began for them in 1914; the U.S., while it watched the war closely, did not engage militarily until 1917. What did the English say about this in newspapers and letters? What, too, did Americans in their letters and diaries have to say about our allies?

I wonder, too, about ethnic tensions that developed in our land of immigrants.

There were many. In my state of New York, New Berlin became Jefferson, and I’m sure we were all taught that sauerkraut became “Liberty Cabbage.” But what else happened? Were the fault lines between ethnic communities clearly defined, and was the conflict between peoples something we can look for?

We should think about the experience of U.S. soldiers, many of whom had never left their states, much less traveled abroad. How did they describe what they saw? What do they tell us about others fighting with them and against them?

What do their letters leave out? Where are those letters, and might we work to see that they are preserved?

We should also consider the many African Americans who volunteered to fight and who found themselves in a segregated military. There is the particularly awkward situation that black college men faced when they discovered that even their officer training would be segregated.

Certainly we need to look at how the home front responded, from those things that make us proud to those that make us wince (ethnic hostility, for example). The materials for researching the home front are available in our communities and should be identified and preserved—and interpreted for the community.

And we should look at how our communities commemorated participation in the war. There are two dozen names on my local war memorial for those who fell in battle, but there is little remembrance of Jane Delano, who created the manual for nurses in field hospitals, a program adopted by the Red Cross and the U.S. Army, thus creating the standard for nursing in war conditions. There is a statue dedicated to Delano at the Red Cross headquarters in Washington, D.C., but little else. She not only created the standard nursing manual, she went to France to supervise nurses and died there of disease. This is a story of local and international importance.

•W WI was a “great event” that came home through newscasts and letters, and those artifacts reside in archives and some still in attics.

• In the U.S., the American Civil War, World War I, and World War II engaged the entire population through total enrollment and selection; U.S. wars since then have been selective in who became involved and why, raising questions of race and class that earlier wars generally cut across.

• Wars of liberation challenge the U.S. notion of individual freedom and liberty, dating from the American Revolution to the present, asking if citizenship applies to all, if those fighting will benefit from equality at home.

• The Great War challenged Americans because many had hyphenated or divided identities as immigrants or first-generation Americans.

• Commemoration of WWI awakens families’ direct connections with a “great event” from the not-too-distant past.

• How have we memorialized the war, and how has its memory changed over time?

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Library of Congress

Here are some considerations I’ve kept in mind as I ponder the topic of the upcoming World War I centennial.

We should research how we have thought about World War I. It loomed large at the time, but our memory of it became dim as time went on. This clouded memory is important. One question might be: What is our collective memory of the Great War in the twentyfirst century?

Here in the States, many of us have a family link to a great-uncle or grandfather who went to war or through an aunt who nursed or drove the wounded across the battle-scarred land. We own letters, poems, diaries, and drawings from those who participated. These provide rich sources on the American WWI experience and link us to that other time. We should seek letters in our community attics, to tap into memories and how they have changed over time, and we can share this information with each other and with local historians abroad. We should all head to Kansas City to visit the stunning National World War I Museum at Liberty Memorial, a truly amazing museum that uses the written word, artifacts, and the historical imagination to wonderful effect. Now is the time to create citizen historians to help find, think about, and tell the story of what happened in our communities, how our families coped, and about the people who did not come home.

We are, of course, just now rounding the corner on the Civil War 150th commemoration, and I am growing weary of war. There are other topics that have changed our community life and these too can fire up historical interest, bringing folks into the historical organization as participants and contributors and not just as audience. The Great War offers one opportunity, but ongoing community topics create a great many other ways of opening up local history to those who have lived it.

Speaking across the Atlantic about World War I is certainly exciting and leads to comparative historical perspectives. Helping a community to think historically is priceless. After all, it’s our raison d’être, is it not? t “On Doing Local History” is intended to encourage dialogue on the essential issues of local history. Carol Kammen can be reached at ckk6@cornell.edu.

On History Leadership >

By John W. Durel and Anita N. Durel

Leadership Means Delegation

W

hat’s a leader to do? The leader of any history organization— whether it is a large historical society, a small historic site run by volunteers, or anything in between—has many demands for attention and time. Leaders must guide the staff and volunteers, work with the board of directors and possibly an advisory board, maintain relations with donors and foundations, meet with business and civic leaders, negotiate with vendors, collaborate with other nonprofit leaders, respond to unhappy visitors or concerned neighbors—not to mention maintaining some semblance of a personal life. Sound daunting? It can be if you are tied down making every decision and managing every aspect of the work.

Effective leaders know how to delegate.

If leaders do not delegate, they end up in the weeds, putting out fires instead of attending to the most important work of the organization. Generally speaking, a leader’s job is not to do the work, but to create the environment and garner the resources so that others can get the work done. This requires leaders to make external relationships a priority, while leaving responsibility for collections, exhibits, and programming to others.

Leaders need to get out of the office to build external relationships, open new networks, expand community engagement, and raise money.

To reach this goal, leaders can begin by honestly examining how and where they spend their time. Executive directors should be out in the community more than half the time; in very large organizations this can be 80 percent or more of the director’s week. Department heads may be more internally focused, but they need to spend considerable time building external relationships as well. Even in small organizations, the leader must delegate routine decisions and tasks to volunteers in order to free time to spend with community leaders and donors.

Some leaders feel that if they don’t do a job themselves, it won’t be done right, and that training someone else to do it properly takes too long. Not only does this sentiment consume the leader’s time,

it also deprives staff and volunteers of opportunities to develop their own competencies. How can leaders learn to trust their staff and volunteers to do the right things in the right way, especially if something unexpected occurs? How can they be available when they are really needed, without micro-managing the work? One way is to treat delegation as a process of professional development. In our work with museum leaders, we have developed such a process, using a concept called “Situational Leadership.” 1 In this process, effective leaders learn how to tailor their leadership style to individual situations as well as the known competency of an individual employee or volunteer. An individual may be more competent in some areas of responsibility than in others. Similarly, a person’s degree of confidence and commitment may vary, with greater enthusiasm for some responsibilities and less for others.

The leader adapts his or her leadership accordingly. The first step is to become familiar with four leadership approaches.

Direct

This approach works best with someone who lacks the knowledge and skills needed to take on a responsibility but who is enthusiastic about learning and doing a good job. The leader sets specific goals and objectives for the subordinate, tells the subordinate what to do and how to do it, and checks in frequently to give direction.

The subordinate reports on progress on a predetermined schedule, daily or weekly.

Coach

This style works best with individuals who have basic skills and knowledge and who are taking on a new challenge.

It also helps with subordinates who have low commitment due to a lack of confidence or who struggle because things are not as easy as they first seemed. The leader presents his or her expectations of what should be done and discusses with the subordinate how best to do it. They mutually agree to a time schedule and method for doing the work. The leader then helps the individual with specific knowledge and

skills that are lacking, provides information and guidance, and demonstrates how things should be done. The individual asks for instructions when needed, and reports on progress weekly or biweekly.

Support

This style works well with someone who has strong skill and knowledge regarding a responsibility and who has demonstrated confidence and commitment to the work. Rather than initially presenting his or her own expectations, the leader first asks the subordinate to present goals, objectives, and a method for completing the work on schedule. After discussion, they mutually agree on how to proceed.

It is up to the subordinate to ask for advice and guidance when needed, and the leader checks in periodically to praise and offer help. The subordinate reports on progress on a predetermined schedule, biweekly or monthly.

Delegate

This style of leadership is for highly competent and confident individuals who are committed to the organization’s success.

They can be trusted to handle unexpected events and challenges in a way that is consistent with the organization’s goals and values. The leader asks the subordinate to present goals, objectives, and a time schedule, leaving it to the subordinate to decide exactly how the work will get done. The subordinate has the leader’s permission to act and asks the leader for advice and guidance only when needed.

The leader checks in occasionally, and the subordinate reports on status and progress as needed or monthly.

U

sing this model, a leader can help individuals move to higher levels of competency and performance. Here is how it works.

1. Meet with all of your direct reports to describe the delegation process, stating that your goal is to help each of them move to a point of high performance, competence, and commitment in all areas of their respective responsibilities.

Help them understand the model.

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On History Leadership > 2. Next, meet individually with each direct report to identify his or her major responsibilities. Be specific, but avoid the overwhelming details. Define four or five areas of responsibility.

Give this careful thought and point to priorities.

3. Independently, you and your direct report assess his or her competency and commitment for each area of responsibility. Each of you asks: • To what degree does the individual possess the knowledge and skills to effectively carry out this particular responsibility?

• To what degree is the individual enthusiastic about the work and resolved to achieve the expected results?

• What leadership style would work best for this situation?

any differences you may have. Have you both defined a responsibility in the same way? Do you agree on what specific skills are needed? Do you disagree about the individual’s competency for a particular responsibility or about his or her commitment to doing things properly? Wherever you disagree, you as the leader should give specific examples of what you expect. This takes the guesswork out of working together, since you must be clear about the job and the needed outcomes, and the individual can easily see areas where he or she is not measuring up. Ultimately the aim is to reach agreement on the level of leadership you will provide for each major responsibility.

5. If you have determined that the individual is not yet ready for delegation in a selected responsibility, set up a series of progress meetings over the next one to three months. At these collaborative

Methods of Supervision

Direct I decide what, when, and how, and you implement. We meet frequently to make sure you are

Coach

make the right

I decide with your

recommendation

decisions; let me

input, and then

and if I agree,

know when it’s

we meet regularly

then you

done.

so that you can

implement and

learn how to do it

come to me only

correctly.

when you need

ote that a person may be at different levels of competency for different responsibilities. For example, in one area the leader may have to be very directive and supportive, and in another he or she may delegate most decisions and actions.

4. The next step is to meet and discuss your respective assessments. Ask the individual to report on what he or she has written and listen without interrupting. Next, state back what you have heard, ensuring that you have understood accurately. Next describe what you have written and ask the individual to state back what he or she has heard. You may be in agreement on some of the responsibilities, but differ on others. Clarify and discuss

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I trust you to

You make a

on track.

N

Support

Delegate

my help.

meetings, the two of you will assess how the person is doing in advancing to a level of greater competency, confidence, and commitment. Discuss whether the selected leadership style is working. As progress is made, decide when it is time to move up to the next level.

C

ommunication must remain a constant throughout the process.

Reporting should be more frequent and structured when the leader is directing and can become less formal as he or she moves toward delegation. The leader and the subordinate must agree on how information will be communicated (preferably in writing), giving the status of work, progress, anticipated next steps, and outcomes. A leader wants no surprises.

Although this process takes time up front, a leader will discover that as individuals gain competency in one area, they will advance in other areas as well. By giving “permission” to act, the leader helps employees develop a positive attitude about work and affirms their efforts, allowing them to take pride in their growing abilities and achievements.

As competency grows, they will become more reliable. This opens up opportunities to expand their responsibilities, and sets them up for advancement to higher levels in the organization.

So delegation is not simply about a leader’s need to get out of the weeds and focus on bigger concerns. It is also a leadership development tool, enabling others in the organization to grow in competency and become better leaders themselves. In this light, delegation is not an option. Rather, it is a responsibility of leadership. The leader who fails to delegate is not really leading. t 1 Kenneth H. Blanchard, Leading at a Higher Level: Blanchard on Leadership and Creating High Performing Organizations, rev. and expanded ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: FT Press, 2010).

John W. Durel holds a Ph.D. in American history from the University of New Hampshire, teaches museum leadership in the Johns Hopkins University museum studies program, and is the Coordinator of Developing History Leaders @SHA (formerly the Seminar for Historical Administration), the premier leadership development program for history professionals.

Anita N. Durel, Certified Fundraising Executive (C.F.R.E.), has a degree in museum studies and administration from the University of New Hampshire. Her philanthropy experience spans more than three decades. Her professional development work includes fundraising leadership roles at the Society of Architectural Historians, Goucher College, and the Fund for Johns Hopkins Medicine.

Together, the Durels consult with leaders of museums and cultural institutions nationwide on leadership development, CEO coaching, and the challenges of building relevant, effective, and sustainable organizations. They are members of the Qm2 community of consultants. They can be contacted at johndurel@gmail.com and anitadurel@gmail.com.

By Shannon Haltiwanger

Embracing Social Media as Part of a

Storyteller’s Toolkit D

Library of Congress

The destruction of the city of Lawrence, Kansas, and the massacre of its inhabitants by the Rebel guerrillas, August 21, 1863

o we actually know when we make history? Do we ever sit back when planning out events, exhibits, campaigns, and projects and think to ourselves, “This is going to be huge”? At 5:30 a.m. on Wednesday, August 21, 2013, when most of us were either sleeping or just rising to start our workday, the 1863 Commemorate Lawrence (#QR1863) project volunteers made history.

The team did something that no one had done before. They reenacted the story of the proslavery guerilla attack known as Quantrill’s Raid, not on the streets of Lawrence, Kansas, where the original raid occurred, but on Twitter, using firstperson narratives and some basic storytelling tactics. These tactics—creating characters that people can relate to, setting the stage, establishing conflict, and foreshadowing—had been used before in telling the story of Quantrill’s Raid, but not like this.

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S

had only read about in school or wondered about when we torytelling is the backbone of every heritage organizapassed a battlefield sign. tion, but how we deliver those stories is ever changing.

Quantrill’s Raid is not one of the more prominent events As communicators and promoters of heritage organizaof the Civil War, but for the communities in the Freedom’s tions, we are always researching our medium and tweaking Frontier National Heritage Area, it charted the course of our voice to better connect to new audiences. In this age life on the Missouri-Kansas border and is known as one of social media, when we can instantly understand how our of the bloodiest events in Kansas history. Led by William audience reacts to content, it’s easier to evaluate feedback Quantrill, the pro-slavery massacre on the abolitionist town and adjust, unlike a new exhibit, which is semi-permanent. of Lawrence, Kansas, took the lives of nearly two hundred On social media, stories will be gone from feeds in mere men and boys and left moments, and even a town in smolderthen, they have to coming ruins. This story pete with funny cat videos, the latest celebrity simply had to be told news, breaking reports during the 150th Civil out of the Middle East, War anniversary. and all the other things In Lawrence, a that fill up the daily group of friends, newsfeeds. For many of communicators, and us, social media is the reporters discussed the way that we receive our upcoming 150th comnews and information memoration and came  TwHistory.org is a website devoted to Twitter-based about topics that matto a wild question: reenactments in order to help others share major ter to us. For heritage What would the Civil events in history through social media. organizations, social War have been like if media is not just an Twitter had existed?  The Joan Ganz Cooney Center (www.joanganzcooney avenue to get people to Not long after, one center.org), a creation of the founder of Sesame visit our museums and member of the group, Street, offers a number of scholarly white papers sites; it is also a way Christine Metz supporting digital learning, including a free document to tell our story and Howard, communicadownload titled Pockets of Potential: Using Mobile the stories of our past. tions manager for the Technologies to Promote Children’s Learning.

With so much online Lawrence Convention  Teachinghistory.org, a national clearinghouse for content, the real quesand Visitors Bureau, history teachers, has a guide for using Twitter in the tion for us in heritage attended an 1863 classroom. Included on the site is a case study of how organizations is: How Commemorate Lawrence one teacher in St. Louis each year teaches the Cuban do we change our stosteering committee Missile Crisis by assigning roles to students who are rytelling to become meeting, and shared then charged with “acting” out the story via Twitter. a relevant source of the thought she and information for a wide her colleagues had  In Massachusetts, a graduate student discovered audience? posed. The captivatthrough research at the Massachusetts Historical For many organizaing story of Quantrill’s Society that John Quincy Adams wrote short line-ations, the 150th anniRaid had already been day entries in his diaries. This sparked the historical versary of the Civil told through letters, society to launch a Twitter account for Adams, War was a moment in books, and film, but @JQAdams_MHS, to share his diary through tweets, history that couldn’t for the 150th the town line by line. be ignored. It was an was going to embrace opportunity not only a new medium to tell to highlight famous the story. events but also to Just how would explore new stories by they tell this story to bringing to light some of the smaller battles that left their reach new audiences and engage more community memmarks on individual towns. Every historian, history buff, bers on Twitter? The team brought together local actors, and heritage tourist in the nation was looking to take part in historical reenactors, and interested community members. an activity around the commemoration, and every town had Team members sent out calls for participation, held two a story to tell. Heritage organizations seized the moment workshops, and created more than fifty different characters to satisfy the audience. Big-name organizations like the representing both sides of the Missouri-Kansas border, all History Channel, the Washington Post, and the Civil War thoroughly researched. The week before the battle, each Trust gave us timelines of events during the war and calencharacter launched his or her individual Twitter account, dars of events across the country honoring it. For all of us prepping for the bulk of the action that would occur on non-Civil War buffs, we were learning about the battles we August 21, 2013. The team worked with a local acting

Other Ways

Twitter Is Being Used

To Tell Stories

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troupe, led by the artistic director of performing arts at the Lawrence Arts Center, Ric Averill, to make sure everyone was ready on launch day.

A typical reenactment was not practical because the raid’s violence happened in the streets, at businesses, and in homes throughout the city as the residents of Lawrence were waking up that August morning in 1863. The committee simply chose to mimic the raid in “real time” by tweeting it in the morning. At 5:30 a.m. the team gathered at the old Carnegie Library, the Eldridge Hotel, and other parts of Kansas and Missouri with their scripts in hand, ready to interpret Quantrill’s Raid.

The main audience was the Freedom’s Frontier National Heritage Area, comprising forty-one counties along the Missouri-Kansas border. The second-tier audience was the Twitter community. For those not on Twitter, the team embedded the tweets, which utilized the hashtag #QR1863, on the 1863 Commemorate Lawrence website (www.1863Lawrence.com), so that anyone could follow. The tweets have also been archived at this website, avoiding the ephemeral trap of social media that all but eliminates tweets once they’ve been posted.

According to the wrap-up report produced by the 1863 Commemorate Lawrence steering committee, the #QR1863 hashtag trended worldwide on Twitter that day, reaching 1.3 million people. The website had nearly 4,600 unique visitors, representing 53 percent of the site’s monthly traffic.

The Washington Post, which had been sharing the timeline of the Civil War, covered the story on its blog, which was shared on Facebook more than 1,500 times.

These days reenactments on Twitter are not uncommon. Just as Orson Wells captivated the nation using radio as his medium for War of the Worlds, storytellers today are embracing social media as their tool of choice. What makes this story truly unique is that this massacre was one of the lesser-known events that surrounded the Civil War, it incorporated 150-year perspective on both sides of the battle, and it grabbed the attention of millions. For one shining day the #QR1863 team and its partners enabled people to put away their cat videos, stop watching the current news, and tune in as a raid from the past played out on their smart phones, tablets, and computers. Schools projected the feed in their classrooms and in their cafeterias.

Unlike Orson Wells, this team did not have to craft a fictional story to grab audiences’ attention. Storytellers just had to put themselves into the voice of their characters using actual moments in time.

or the sensory overload of being there, Annie Bell @AnnieBell1863 The stench of charred remains and bodies fills this hot summer day. My every sense is assaulted, my memory indelibly stained. #QR1863

to reacting to friends lost and still not found.

Kate Riggs @KateRiggs1863 @Sarah_Fitch1863: Heard rumors of Edward’s death. My sincerest condolences. I am so sorry. #QR1863

Annie Bell @AnnieBell1863 Will they leave us to bury our dead in peace? No idea where to collect @Clrk_GeorgeBell’s remains.

Don’t know what else to do. #QR1863

Jetta Dix @JettaDix1863 Many of the dead are being carried into our shops and the old Methodist Church. Both are now morgues. #QR1863

Jim Lane 1863 @Lane1863 Relatively safe for now. This view doesn’t afford much vigilance. @Lanecrackscorn #QR1863

Topics ranged from the cries for help…

Abigail Morse @abbymorse1863 No one answers my cries for help. If I can climb that tall fence perhaps someone there will hear me?! via:@mcarpenter1863 #QR1863

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Tweets even offered a little humor with one of the horses reacting to being captured during the raid, Horse1863 @Horse1863 I cannot bear to serve these thieves and murders [sic]! I must endeavor to escape immediately! #bolts #QR1863

and with the subsequent replies.

BrintonWoodward @BrintonWoodward Heaven be praised! An escaping horse distracted the raider and I was able to escape! Truly, I owe my life to that horse! #QR1863 FrankJames1863 @fjames1863 @Horse1863 Get back here you Yankee demon!!! #QR1863 Horse 1863 @Horse1863 @fjames1863 Never! Free horse of a free state!

FrankJames1863 @fjames1863 @Horse1863 Back in Missouri we shoot mad horses! #QR1863 Horse 1863 @Horse1863 @fjames1863 Who DON’T you shoot in Missouri? #kansasproud FrankJames1863 @fjames1863 @Horse1863 (aims at the dratted horse, shoots … misses) #QR1863 Pelathe 1863 @Pelathe1863 @Horse1863 Ride with us! My horse has died of exhaustion and I’m gathering a new posse from the Delaware. #QR1863

T

he #QR1863 team could have put together an exhibit or showcased films about the raid; they did not. Instead, they blended traditional methods of engaging heritage audiences with new technology to create a fresh, modern experience. #QR1863 was meant to engage audiences in learning about local history, but the commemoration of this day was also a chance to honor those who died during the raid on Lawrence, so the day’s final tweets were the names of the raid’s victims. The #QR1863 team fully embraced a new way of telling stories, and the new way that many of us get our news: through social media. Some of the team revealed their true identity and others continued to tell their characters’ stories of how the town rebuilt and came back.

Annie Bell @AnnieBell1863 Tweeting for Annie: Dawn Shew, wife of the actual County Clerk of DGCO. Annie, wife of Cty Clrk Bell, raised 6 kids alone after #QR1863

Carvel Donovan @CDonovan1863 I was played by my great-great-great-great grandson, Chris Nelson, @RoboNelson79. #QR1863

Sarah Fitch @Sarah_Fitch1863 Carol Elk tweeting for Sarah Fitch, who stayed in Lawrence with her children 5 more years, helping her father rebuild his business #QR1863

The #QR1863 project is more than just a story about embracing social media for sharing historical stories; it is about the partnerships we can form. What the #QR1863 project team might not have realized when they gathered at 5:30 a.m. on Wednesday, August 21, 2013, is that the history they were creating was a lesson to us all: that by bringing together different organizations and community members around one goal, we can make a relatively unknown historical story relevant to many. Through this example, other smaller heritage organizations can look to form new partnerships and embrace new ways to tell their stories. Every community has a story to tell, and sometimes by embracing new media and partners, together we can make history. t

Shannon Haltiwanger is the Preservation Communications Manager at History Colorado. She holds an M.S. in historic preservation from Pratt Institute in New York. Shannon currently serves as Region 11 chair for the AASLH Awards Committee. She can be reached at shannon.haltiwanger@state.co.us.

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R

e m b r a n d t

R

u l e

:

Workshop of Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn, A Young Scholar and his Tutor, c. 1629-1630, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

“Because we are stewards of the cultural heritage contained within our collections, handling museum objects should always be done thoughtfully and with the utmost regard for each object.

Monetary value should not be a consideration; each object is a priceless part of the collection.�

Chasing the White Whale?

F lexible Use

of

M useum C ollections

B y R on M . P ot v in

H i s t o r y n e ws

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M

y seven-year-old son touched the sperm whale skeleton. He ducked under the railing and put his hand on one of the whale’s ribs. I didn’t let him do it, but I didn’t try to stop him either. In all honesty, my first thoughts were “photo-op” and “Facebook,” but a guard intervened and I missed the moment. My son remembers it though. He still talks about the museum where he touched the whale, and we’ve been back there several times.

As someone who has worked with museums for more than twenty years, I should have known better, right? Maybe a swift intervention would have been more “professional” than fumbling for the camera app on my phone. But, c’mon. It was a whale skeleton, not George Washington’s false teeth, or a painting by Caravaggio. No disrespect to the whale or to the museum that preserves its skeleton, but do we really need to treat everything the same way?

There’s been a lot of talk in the last few years about whether museums should consider breaking the “Rembrandt Rule,” the unwritten dictum that states every object in a museum must be treated equally, like a precious Rembrandt.

Much of the discussion has been positive and probably has won a few converts, but I’m beginning to wonder if flexible use of collections is like Herman Melville’s famous white whale, elusive and risky to pursue. In Moby-Dick Starbuck, the prudent and cautious first mate of the Pequod, accuses Captain Ahab of blasphemy for his dangerous pursuit of the white whale and his ignorance of the potential cost of life, limb, and ship. Ahab, Starbuck believes, is violating the crew’s mission to collect and safely return to home-port as many barrels of oil as possible. Is breaking the Rembrandt Rule a violation of museum standards? Is it blasphemy to even consider it?1 Undoubtedly, visitors, their hands, and museum objects are not usually a good combination, and damage can happen even when museums attempt to protect their collections. In August 2013, for instance, an American tourist broke a finger from a fourteenth-century sculpture of the Virgin Mary at Florence’s Museo dell’Opera del Duomo. The tourist reportedly was measuring the hand of the sculpture by comparing it with his own when the pinkie finger broke off. The museum’s director vehemently criticized the offending visitor: “In a globalized world like ours, the fundamental rules for visiting a museum have been forgotten, that is, ‘Do not touch the works.’”2 At London’s Tate Museum, a two year old snuck under a barrier and left sticky handprints on Mark Rothko’s Black on Maroon. At the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, a visitor smashed three unprotected three-hundred-year-old Chinese vases when he took a tumble down the stairs. The restored vases are back on display inside a custom-built case, but too late for the tourist, who was arrested on suspicion of causing criminal damage.3 Stories of the collateral damage caused by visitors are quick to appear on museum blogs, in the popular press,

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Do we dare to let visitors touch the

whale?

Let’s ask ourselves the big question:

Do museums exist to serve the objects or the visitors?

Skull of Orcinus Orca, Senckenberg Museum, Frankfurt

and at museum conferences. They form part of the rationale for restricting access to collections, shielding them from sticky fingers and curious but clumsy tourists. These stories and their damaged objects offer tangible and sometimes sensational proof that only bad things can result from allowing patrons to touch museum objects. But there are headlines that we’ll never see: “Scolded Patron Vows Never to Visit Another Museum.” “Child Touches Whale Skeleton, is Captivated.”

Is there anything a museum can do to fully protect an object? After all, we live in an entropic universe. Even in the best storage conditions, left untouched, objects will decay— perhaps not as quickly as in the wilds of an exhibit gallery, but decay is inevitable. In galleries, velvet ropes are a barrier to some but a dare to others, like my son, or the couple charged in July 2014 for stealing exhibit props, including a $10,000 replica of a baby dinosaur, by climbing over a security rail. Perhaps a better strategy for museums would be to permit controlled interaction with some objects, rather than attempt to protect everything.4

EvaK

I

n this tug-of-war between access and preservation, are “cheating our visitors by simply showing and describing there are victims. Some say the victims are the objects these objects,” rather than allowing more intimate contact. that constitute a museum’s collections and its very In August 2013 CNN Travel producer and self-professed reason for being. We must preserve these objects for future gen“museo-phobe” James Durston wrote a provocative and erations, the champions of the artifacts declare. Others say sometimes humorous opinion piece titled “Why I Hate the victims are the visitors, without whom museums would Museums.” Durston accused museums of being “Graveyards merely be storage vaults. Visitors are the reason that museums for stuff. Tombs for inanimate things,” which “reverberate exist, this side declares. Why can’t this genwith the soft, dead sounds of tourists shuferation enjoy these objects? Who are we savfling and employees yawning.” Museums are “Stop ing them for anyway? overly obsessed with caring for their stuff, ‘presenting’ In this long ideological battle, there is Durston believes. “Inside these crypts of when you should no victor and no resolution, despite the curatorship, the connection to humankind attempted peace accords held at the annual falls short.”5 be flaunting. meeting of the American Association for Although pilloried by museo-philes on Give me a story.

State and Local History in 2010, 2011, and social media, on blogs, and in the comments Show, don’t tell.”

2012. Each of these conferences included a section of the original online article—“The from session about the Rembrandt Rule; I sat on reason he dislike[s] museums is because he each of these panels, although, perhaps, as is NOT that smart”—Durston does make “Why I Hate Museums” more of an agent provocateur than a peacesome valid points, if we care to listen. “The

by James Durston maker. At the 2010 session, I claimed that we collect-and-cage policy that defines the H i s t o r y n e ws

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Go Ahead and Tier Your Collections!

B y Tr e vor Jon es Director of Museum Collections and Exhibitions Kentucky Historical Society

What artifacts best support your mission? Which are just OK? What has nothing to do with what you’re trying to accomplish? The Kentucky Historical Society has been experimenting with ranking our collections so that we can focus our time and money on the ones that best support our mission.

The following chart shows the concept that I call “tiering.” We’re ranking our collections into one of five tiers based on how well they support the mission.

Issues of condition, use, and function play into this decision, but “how does it support the mission?” is the primary question. This is a work in progress, so if you’ve got ideas for improvement or want to share your experience, please do so at www.activecollections.org.

C r i t e r i a f o r Ti e r i n g C o l l e c t i o n s Tier 1

Tier 2

Tier 3

Tier 4

Tier 5

Significant to Kentucky AND nationally or internationally significant

Significant historical value to Kentucky; strong provenance

Historical value to a location in Kentucky; limited provenance

Historical value to other locations; no Kentucky connection

Limited or no historical value; limited or no provenance

Few, if any, duplicates in this or other collections and/or of high monetary value

Few similar examples in this or other collections

Similar examples are held in this or other collections

Common in this or other collections

Not applicable

Rare, likely irreplaceable

Uncommon and difficult to replace

Moderately difficult to replace

Not applicable

Not applicable

Could be used to tell multiple powerful stories about Kentucky and its place in the nation

Could be used to tell multiple powerful stories about the state

Plays a supporting role in telling stories about the state

May play a supporting role or illustrate a concept, but is not the focus

Plays a minor role

Example:

Example:

Example:

Example:

Example:

Portraits of Dennis and Diademia Doram

The coat Governor William Goebel was wearing when he was fatally shot

Copper still

Flapper dress

Woodworking planes

L e s s o n s L e a r n e d ( s o fa r ) : •T his is a subjective process, and it’s likely to feel uncomfortable at first. However, as you rank more artifacts, useful patterns will emerge that will help you manage the collection as a whole.

So far about a third of our artifacts are ending up in Tier 3.

This means they have a connection to the mission, but are not particularly compelling. I’m seeing clearly that we’re using a lot of storage space and time on artifacts that cannot strongly support our mission.

•T here are other potential benefits from the process. Tiering helps with disaster planning, and also for selecting candidates for conservation and improved storage. It seems ridiculous to invest in new storage cabinets for Tier 4 flags that lack any connection to Kentucky. We’re not there yet, but my goal is to eventually establish varying standards of care based on tiers. My hope is that we can one day have different storage, handling, and loan requirements based on the artifact’s tier.

•T iering does not automatically make de-accession choices easier.

Our Tier 5 artifacts are clearly ready for de-accession, but we’ve

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found plenty of Tier 2 and 3 artifacts that also should be de-accessioned because of duplication or condition issues.

In order to address this we’ve kept a separate “Recommended for De-accession” field in our database, in addition to the field we use for tiering.

•T iering requires both good documentation and expertise. It’s difficult to assign a tier if the artifact’s provenance is not associated with the catalog record and buried in a file somewhere. Curatorial knowledge also plays a large role in evaluating significance. We had originally hoped to tier our artifacts as we inventoried them, but the practice took too many curators and too much time. Instead, tiering has become part of the cataloging process.

•T hink about starting small. If it seems overwhelming to add tiers to your existing collection, think about assigning tiers to the artifacts that you’re considering accepting. This will help focus the collections committee’s discussion and should focus your collections planning.

M

I’m suggesting that museums embrace the contradiction and challenge themselves to use objects creatively, for the benefit of people.

Penn Museum

visible exhibits, much of which is not even visible most of the time, is anathema to an engaging experience,” Durston writes. “Museums need to stop relying on the supposed intrinsic value of collections. Stop ‘presenting’ when you should be flaunting. Give me a story. Show, don’t tell.”6 A rejoinder came from a commenter named The Curator. “We aren’t protecting these objects just for you, or us, or anybody’s kids. We’re protecting them for all of humanity For the Rest of Time Forever [emphasis by The Curator]. We want these objects to last as long as possible so that they can continue to be used for research and to educate the public.… The best way to do this with most things is to put it in a case [or] behind a rope.”7 useums breed conservatism. It’s an occupational hazard. It comes with the responsibility to preserve objects For the Rest of Time Forever. Museum objects are non-renewable resources, and they don’t roll off assembly lines into museum storage rooms and galleries. Durston is correct: it is the intrinsic value that mostly concerns museums, and this should not be underestimated or belittled. Intrinsic value may originate from the perceived beauty or aesthetic quality of an object, or it might flow from the object’s numen, a word used by material culture historians to refer to the powerful “spirit” created through an object’s association with people and events. However, if it ever occurred to curators to rank their collections by intrinsic value, it would be a futile undertaking. Aesthetics and numen are imperfect scales, subject to passing trends in art, history, and culture.

Monetary value may be a touch less subjective, but it’s too dependent on shifting tastes and economic factors to be reliable—and perhaps too vulgar to be palatable to museums.

In case we forget all this, the literature of the museum field is there to remind us. In Museum Registration Methods (MRM5), Rebecca Buck and Jean Gilmore come close to ratifying the Rembrandt Rule: “Because we are stewards of the cultural heritage contained within our collections, handling museum objects should always be done thoughtfully and with the utmost regard for each object. Monetary value should not be a consideration; each object is a priceless part of the collection.”8 It’s easier and more sensible for museums to decide that every object they own—by virtue of being acquired by the museum—is of identical value: priceless. This notion informs the collections management practices of museums and their staff. It’s the philosophical underpinning of the Rembrandt Rule. Wear white gloves for everything; treat everything the same, because everything is priceless. However, it’s not that easy, because, in fact, museums don’t always treat everything the same. Within museums, there is an unstated pecking order of objects that is based on their appeal to visitors (think: Mona Lisa), the subjective preferences of the people who work with the objects, and security and conservation needs. Some objects clearly have more numinous value (think: Lincoln’s top hat) than others. Museums also rank

Carol Saylor, an artist who is deaf and blind, reaches to feel the scale of the throne of seated statue of Ramesses II during trial runs of the "Insights into Ancient Egypt" Touch Tour at the Penn Museum.

objects based on monetary value for the purposes of insurance, acquisitions, and prioritizing conservation needs.

Intrinsic value and monetary value are not mutually exclusive and sometimes even reinforce each other. Museum patrons often feel a special—numinous—awe when standing before an object of great value (think: Hope Diamond).

I am not accusing museums of hypocrisy. It’s possible to maintain two ideas—even seemingly contradictory ones like preservation and engagement—simultaneously. Rather, I’m suggesting that museums embrace the contradiction and challenge themselves to use objects creatively, for the benefit of people. Touching, smelling, manipulating, and other Rembrandt-Rule-violating object experiences can evoke powerful memories, open new worlds for sight-impaired people, make sense of mechanical objects, and permit visitors to form their own meanings and connections to an object.9 Let’s ask ourselves the big question: Do museums exist to serve the objects or the visitors? If the answer is the visitors, or both, then some flexible use of collections, including handling or using some objects in appropriate ways, should/must be allowed. This doesn’t mean a collections free-for-all, with visitors climbing over each other to try on Dorothy’s Ruby Slippers. Museums should consider creating flexible collections policies that allow for meaningful visitor interaction with some objects. Organizing and ranking collections into tiers is one possibility. The Kentucky Historical Society has been experimenting with ranking their collections in relation to mission-driven goals (facing page). Another option is to identify objects for interactive use based on criteria such as condition, rarity, and replacement cost, along with H i s t o r y n e ws

15

the potential of the objects to create evocative and meaningful learning experiences. based on their These objects should not be deacpotential for creating cessioned castoffs or reproductions. a sense of awe, for Rather, they should be selected by imparting specific ideas, conservators, curators, registrars, and and for evoking educators based on their potential for memories and creating a sense of awe, for imparting specific ideas, and for evoking meaings unique to the memories and meanings unique to individual visitor. the individual visitor. Museums must carefully consider the setting in which the public interacts with objects—a historic house, an exhibition, or an educational program—along with the type of interaction and whether it is facilitated by a staff member or integrated into a space designed for self-exploration. If a museum is considering taking this leap—and committing this blasphemy—by violating the Rembrandt Rule, it must take care to do it well. t

They should be selected…

Ron M. Potvin is the Assistant Director of the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. He serves as the Region 2 representative

for the AASLH Leadership in History Awards, and he is a member of the AASLH Historic House Museums Committee. He can be reached at ronald_potvin@brown.edu.

1 James M. Vaughan, “Rethinking the Rembrandt Rule,” Museum (March/April 2008).

2 Nina Golgowski, “American Tourist Snaps Off Finger to 600-Year-Old Italian Statue, Says He Was Trying to Measure It,” New York Daily News, August 6, 2013, accessed May 14, 2014, www.nydailynews.com/news/world/tourist-snaps-600year-old-statue-finger-article-1.1418763#ixzz2dBL3aRj7.

3 Ethan Trex, “9 Other Times Museum Patrons Mangled Works of Art,” Mental Floss, accessed May 14, 2014, http://mentalfloss.com/article/24549/9other-times-museum-patrons-mangled-works-art.

4 Andrew Kenney, “Suspects in Science Museum’s Dinosaur Heist Turn Themselves In,” Newsobserver.com, July 17, 2014, accessed August 4, 2014, www. newsobserver.com/2014/07/17/4012341/raleigh-suspects-in-museums-model. html.

5 James Durston, “Why I Hate Museums,” CNN Travel, August 22, 2013, accessed May 14, 2014, www.cnn.com/2013/08/22/travel/opinion-why-i-hatemuseums/index.html?goback=%2Egde_36036_member_268491727#%21. The website identifies Durston as “a senior producer for CNN Travel, who has visited many of the major museums around the world. He lives in Hong Kong but doesn’t spend much time in museums there anymore.”

6

Ibid.

7

Ibid.

Rebecca A. Buck and Jean Allmam Gilmore, eds., Museum Registration Methods, 5th ed. (Washington, DC: American Association of Museums, 2010), 209.

8

9 Elizabeth Pye, The Power of Touch: Healing Objects in Museum and Heritage Contexts (Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2008).

THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR STATE AND LOCAL HISTORY Acknowledges and appreciates these Institutional Partners and Patrons for their extraordinary support:

Institutional Partners $1,000+ Alabama Department of Archives and History Montgomery, AL American Swedish Institute Minneapolis, MN Arizona Historical Society Tucson, AZ Atlanta History Center Atlanta, GA Belle Meade Plantation Nashville, TN Billings Farm & Museum Woodstock, VT Cincinnati Museum Center Cincinnati, OH Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Williamsburg, VA Conner Prairie Fishers, IN First Division Museum at Cantigny Wheaton, IL Florida Division of Historical Resources Tallahassee, FL Hagley Museum & Library Wilmington, DE

16

Illinois State Museum Springfield, IL

North Carolina Office of Archives and History Raleigh, NC

Indiana Historical Society Indianapolis, IN

Ohio History Connection Columbus, OH

Indiana State Museum Indianapolis, IN

Old Sturbridge Village Sturbridge, MA

Kentucky Historical Society Frankfort, KY

Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission Harrisburg, PA

Massachusetts Historical Society Boston, MA

Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library Lexington, MA

Michigan Historical Center Lansing, MI

Senator John Heinz History Center Pittsburgh, PA

Minnesota Historical Society St. Paul, MN

The Sixth Floor Museum Dallas, TX

Missouri History Museum St. Louis, MO

Strawbery Banke Museum Portsmouth, NH

Museum of History and Industry Seattle, WA

The Strong Rochester, NY

Nantucket Historical Association Nantucket, MA

Tennessee State Museum Nashville, TN

National Trust for Historic Preservation Washington, DC

William J. Clinton Foundation Little Rock, AR

Nebraska State Historical Society Lincoln, NE

Wisconsin Historical Society Madison, WI

Patron Members $250+

The Hermitage Nashville, TN

Bob Beatty Franklin, TN

Historic House Trust of New York City New York, NY

Ellsworth Brown Madison, WI

History New York, NY

Jacqui Sue Conley Arvada, CO

History Colorado Denver, CO

Karen Cooper Minneapolis, MN

Idaho State Historical Society Boise, ID

Georgianna Contiguglia Denver, CO

Autumn 2014

David Crosson San Francisco, CA

Joni Jones Annapolis, MD

Bari Oyler Stith Pepper Pike, OH

Stephen Elliott St. Paul, MN

Katherine Kane Hartford, CT

Jean Svandlenak Kansas City, MO

Lori Gundlach Fairview Park, OH

Russell Lewis Chicago, IL

Richard E. Turley Salt Lake City, UT

Jeff Hirsch Philadelphia, PA

Lorraine McConaghy Kirkland, WA

Bev Tyler Setauket, NY

Lynne Ireland Lincoln, NE

Davinder Pal Singh Panjab, India

Robert Wolz Key West, FL

David Janssen Cedar Rapids, IA

Library of Congress

21

Partnership

Success Factors

By Brian O’Neill 1941-2009

F

rom 1986-2009, Brian O’Neill served as General Superintendent of Golden Gate National Parks and was a visionary in regard to community involvement and building partnerships. He and Greg Moore of the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy and their staff influenced and changed the course of the National Park Service, other public land agencies, and national parks around the world as to the way they should operate in the twenty-first century and beyond.

Brian understood that for the National Park Service to be relevant to a changing and more diverse nation, parks needed to operate beyond park boundaries, listen to the needs of the greater community, and serve a different role than in the past—fostering shared vision, shared power, and shared responsibility. Brian realized that this did not “mean giving up control or influence or organizational autonomy” but “represented a balance between maintaining one’s own identity and adding value to a collective effort.” Brian modeled this by proactively working with partners to overcome challenges and achieve success.

Examples include the restoration of Crissy Field from an

vice National Park Ser

Alcatraz Officers’ Club, Alcatraz Island, San Francisco, part of Golden Gate National Parks Right: Brian O’Neill

airfield to a wetland and the creation of the Crissy Field Center, which hires diverse youth and empowers them to do community outreach and be future leaders and stewards of the planet.

As the National Park Service embarks on its centennial celebration in 2016 and beyond, utilize Brian’s twentyone partnership success factors, which reflect over two decades at Golden Gate National Parks, as a learning laboratory and a synthesis of best practices. In a time of limited capacity and resources, think smarter—and empower and work through others to accomplish great things for the public benefit. Brian would want to remind you that, “Every time you do it yourself, we [the National Park Service] miss out on an opportunity for community engagement.” He also believed that partnership is about more than fundraising; it is “friendraising. What you love, you care for.”

Brian’s legacy is yours; now carry it to the next level.

—Brent (Brian’s son) and Anne O’Neill (daughter-in-law) NPS employees

H i s t o r y n e ws

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21

Partnership

Success Factors

1 Focus on Important Needs. Relationships take time to establish and nurture in order to have successful outcomes. The decision to establish a partnership should begin with the belief that the effort will successfully fulfill an important need. Potential partners will always be knocking at your door, suggesting partnering arrangements. Often we find ourselves in reactive rather than proactive situations, responding to an idea from an outside party. It is more productive to be proactive. First determine that a partnership is the best way to accomplish an important body of work; then, seek out the partner or partners who might best be able to help. In some cases you may have to create the right partner.

2 Make the Partnership a Win-Win. Successful partnerships begin and thrive with a clear understanding that mutual benefits will accrue to the organizations involved.

Each may not benefit equally, but each must realize a valueadded benefit. Each partner must constantly assess the needs of their respective collaborators and ensure that individual and collective actions are responsive to those needs. It is important to tie the partnership and its outcomes to the missions of each organization. Partnership initiatives should not only be a great thing to do but also a benefit to each partner. Sharing resources, benefits, and recognition for successes keeps the partnership from becoming lopsided, or dominated by any one player. Each partner needs to see its contribution alongside the benefit gained.

3 Adopt a Shared Vision. Development and continuing refinement of a shared vision of the work to be accomplished is key to the success of any partnership. The shared vision

Crissy Field, San Francisco, part of Golden Gate National Parks

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should evolve from the full engagement of all partners in the relationship. The vision should reflect both the broad body of work and each initiative to be undertaken. Too often, one entity in a partnership independently develops the vision without full engagement of the other partner(s).

This violates the underlying premise of a partnership and often results in insufficient ownership or emotional buy-in.

Successful partnerships demonstrate a culture of full engagement from the very beginning, which leads to collective enthusiasm and results.

4 Negotiate a Formal Agreement. Good intentions and a handshake are not enough. Partnerships need formal written agreements and work plans that define mutual interests and expectations, the roles and responsibilities of each partner, and clear accountability for the work to be performed. The formal agreement serves as a mutually binding contract to ensure that each partner acknowledges and fulfills its responsibility. Most people are overextended with work, and tasks can fall through the cracks. If a given partnership is important, provide structure for it through a formal agreement and specific work plans that lay out what tasks need to be performed for each initiative, by whom, and when. In a busy world, clearly written intent, roles, process, schedules, and accountability procedures guide performance and follow-through. If differences arise or performance lags, the formal written agreement provides a touchstone for accountability, revisiting intent and commitments, reconciliation, and getting back on track. When needed, the agreement should be updated or amended to keep it current.

5 Ensure Good Communication. The success of every partnership is dependent upon the structure, frequency, and quality of communication between partners. The most successful partnerships incorporate regularly scheduled meetings to review progress on individual work elements and to discuss how the relationship is working. The schedule

should reflect the importance of the work. Even the best partnerships do not carry their own momentum for long without a structure for touching base in order to stay on task and on schedule. The chief executive of each entity in a relationship must demonstrate leadership and stay involved to an extent that reinforces executive-level interest and provides sustained policy direction. The executives also are responsible for ensuring that good communication processes are in place within and between each partner entity to maintain the excitement of the collaboration, resolve issues, and advance the work. No partnership can reach its full potential without good communication as a core element of the relationship. Partnerships, like any human relationship, are about communication, communication, and communication.

8 Leave Your Ego and Control at the Door. The most insidious impediment to good partnerships is the unwillingness or inability of a partner to share power and control.

This can be the “Achilles’ heel” of partnerships. At their very basic definition, partnerships are about shared power, shared vision, and shared responsibility. While one entity may possess a superior position, larger budget, or more staff in a relationship, the execution of the work and credit for accomplishments should not reflect this. This is not about a landlord-tenant relationship; this is about two or more entities working in unity to accomplish important work.

Successful partnerships create an equality of importance— an environment where individual egos are subservient to the interests of the whole.

This being said, it is important to help your organization understand that partnering does not mean giving up control or influence, nor does it mean that organizations relinquish their autonomy. Good partnerships represent a delicate balance between maintaining one’s own identity and adding value to a collective effort.

Library of Congress

6 Ensure the Partnership is Owned by Your Whole Organization. For partnerships to succeed, the entire staff of each partner organization needs to truly understand and embrace the relationship. Partnerships often originate as a dream or vision of an individual, who fails to share the compelling reasons and excitement for potential outcomes throughout the organization. This incomplete organizational buy-in inevitably limits full success, because the staff people responsible for implementing the partnership do not understand the rationales and commitments behind it. It is crucial for the leader to invest time and energy to build ownership of the partnership throughout supervisory levels. If the partnership is not understood or accepted as being important, it is difficult to sustain over time, especially when the key individuals responsible for its creation take other jobs or retire. Build a sense of team and a partnership culture so everyone understands the importance and value added by working collaboratively. You need to instill the importance of continually acknowledging the contributions of each party to the overall effort. In essence, individualism needs to be transformed into shared stewardship that is reinforced by actions as well as words.

7 Maintain an Environment of Trust. Trust is an essential ingredient for successful partnerships and enables collaboration and contribution. Trust must be demonstrated and earned day by day. A single betrayal can be costly and make it hard to regain the same level of trust between the partners. Trust-eroding behaviors include: independent action by one partner without consulting the other partner(s); grandstanding at the expense of another partner; not honoring one’s word, commitment, or confidentiality; creating suspicion in terms of one’s motives; or acting in any way contrary to the best interests of the overall partnership.

You build trust through the consistency and integrity of your actions over time, and you have to trust your partners in order to be trusted.

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21

Partnership

Success Factors

9 Understand Each Partner’s Mission and Organizational Culture. Every organization has its own culture that is built over time, based on its mission, practices, people, governing values, traditions, and institutional history. In any partnership, it is important to understand and acknowledge these different organizational cultures, to respect them, and to find ways that these realities can strengthen the mutual endeavor. The most successful partnerships recognize and value their differences and find ways to integrate them into a workable overarching partnership culture.

10 Utilize the Strengths of Each Partner. Each entity in a partnership brings special capabilities, unique authorities, and different flexibilities to further the work of the group. Consider the particular strengths of each partner in determining the most cost-effective means of accomplishing specific tasks. Successful partnerships adopt a flexible approach to assigning responsibilities, given each partner’s funding, policies, political connections, and other considerations.

11 Find Ways through the Red Tape. Partnerships regularly face “red tape” barriers in trying to work across organizational lines, especially with public-sector partners, which tend to have more regulations. This can lead to heightened frustrations and complications in moving desired work forward in a timely manner. The more entities in a relationship, the more likely that legal, policy, attitudinal, and cultural challenges will be part of doing business. Successful partnerships acknowledge and address these realities up front and take satisfaction in resolving them. Convert your stumbling blocks to stepping stones.

Successful partnerships map out the red tape barriers and mobilize whatever it takes to overcome them. It is too easy to point fingers or use these impediments as excuses for derailments and not achieving success. How partners overcome adversity and the institutional complexities of individual partner members will determine, in large measure, the success of the partnership.

12 Build Step-by-Step. It is natural for the partners to want early successes. There is a tendency to look at similar partnership arrangements and their accomplishments without appreciating all the steps taken that led to the result.

You have to invest to get results, and process is important to achieve successful outcomes. Every situation presents a different set of opportunities based on the unique social, economic, and political realities in which a partnership must operate. Much can and should be learned from the experience of others. Good partnerships take a steady investment of time and energy to develop. They are built incrementally by starting at the beginning, growing gradually, and tackling more complex initiatives based on the competencies gained from previous efforts.

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Successful partners understand the value of due process and earned-vs.-instant gratification. They recognize that building the infrastructure necessary to achieve future success is important, and they are willing to forgo premature success in order to achieve larger, more important long-term gains. Partners will grow as far in the partnership as the other partner(s) are willing to help or let them. Challenge yourself and your partners to collectively raise the bar of expectations and advance the partnership step-by-step.

13 Strive for Excellence. A partnership ultimately gains stature and a reputation based on the quality of the work it accomplishes. The most successful partners understand the importance of doing everything well. Build an early reputation for excellence and sustain that reputation. This will be an important factor in how others view your partnership and what doors will be opened to you. People, and potential funders, want to associate with important work and a reputation for excellence. Step back and analyze what you want people to say about your partnership’s work and organizations. This standard then should underscore your strategy, behaviors, and actions to ensure you achieve your desired reputation.

14 Diversify Your Funding Sources. The ultimate success of any partnership depends on the human and financial resources it is able to garner. Successful partnerships develop multiple and steady sources of support, particularly for covering basic operational costs and launching new initiatives.

Building a diverse funding base is the best hedge against the vagaries of over-reliance on fund sources that may be problematic or undependable from year to year. A comprehensive business plan addressing both near- and longer-term funding sources (public and private, earned and contributed) will give your partnership staying power and adaptability.

15 Constantly Seek Out and Adopt Best Practices.

The best practitioners act as sponges for new ideas and are always on the lookout for innovation and creativity that can be adapted to their partnership. Too often, we hear statements such as, “We don’t do things that way. We’ve always done it this way;” “It won’t work;” “This is too risky.” While such cautionary thoughts are worth considering, successful partnerships are open to new ideas and better ways to accomplish their goals. They can readily grasp and adapt best practices.

Overcoming resistance to change is one of the major challenges to partnership success. Partner entities need to seek ways to build greater flexibility and adaptability into their structures and work in order to take advantage of “partnering moments.” Establish a work environment that encourages and rewards reasoned risk-taking and creativity.

Leaders should act as “champions” with the courage to support experimentation and run interference when necessary.

Resourcefulness also characterizes successful partnerships.

Work together to identify and engage the abundant human talent residing in most communities to participate in and assist your partnership.

16 Always Be Courteous and Diplomatic. Sustaining successful partnerships involves hard work, practiced effec-

17 Honor Your Commitments. Partnerships entail perseverance and follow-through by each participating organization and individual. They require a shared commitment to each other’s success. Sustaining any partnership requires that exciting ideas of interest to the participants actually get executed. Progress depends on each person in the partnership honoring commitments. When work does not get accomplished, it suggests that the work was not really that important to the individual or organization. This, in turn, builds frustration in the other participants and erodes mutual trust.

Successful partnerships address these realities by developing reliable accountability measures and channels through which executives can touch base to stay on top of commitments and actions.

18 Celebrate Success. Effective partnerships look for every opportunity to celebrate individual project successes or key benchmarks in the evolution of the relationship.

Such celebrations allow partners to recognize good work being done that reinforces the goals of the partnership, to gain some outside recognition of the partnership, and/or to demonstrate possibilities for the partnership to grow. People often are reluctant to take the time to celebrate but invariably are pleased when it does occur. Recognizing and celebrating accomplishments helps motivate and spur people on to new challenges. It is a lost opportunity when it does not occur.

If one’s goal is to build greater community awareness of the partnership, then the partners need to take every opportunity to legitimately “toot their horns” and market their work and successes. Besides, many people who pitch in on partnerships do so because they believe in the cause and because it is enjoyable; celebrating success milestones ensures everybody’s “fun quotient” stays high. Especially when results are going to take time, it is important to celebrate some early milestones to build a sense of accomplishment and momentum.

19 Respect the Right to Disagree; Act on a Consensus Basis. There are times in a partnership when honest differences will surface and when there are compelling reasons why one of the partners cannot support an action. It is important that partners understand the basis of the concerns and respect these positions with adequate dialogue.

Successful partnerships establish ground rules to give each partner veto power over proposed actions. Partnership work means reaching consensus among all, and doing your homework should eliminate most of these differences before they become contentious. Such negotiation is worth the effort in

order to maintain beneficial core working relationships.

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tively and consistently over time. It is essential for partners to establish strong ground rules that will govern how the organizations and individuals will interact and treat each other.

There is no room for disrespectful behavior. It serves only to tarnish how partners work together. Honesty, respect, courtesy, tact, and diplomacy should govern partner relationships.

A useful technique is for the partners to define all behaviors that are crucial to sustaining good relationships and then ensure that accountability measures are in place to reinforce their ongoing practice. Successful partnerships work constantly on developing effective relationships built on trust and a shared commitment to each other’s interests and success.

Old Station Hospital at the Presidio, one of Golden Gate National Parks’ partners

20 Network and Build Relationships.

A core competency in partnership work is the ability to network and build relationships. People sell ideas to others; people lend support because people ask them to.

Partnerships are by definition about people working together and reaching out to others to gain their emotional engagement.

Successful partnerships establish formal systems to identify people who can add value and support. They strategically build new relationships and expand networks to accomplish their priorities. Their relationship-building is deliberate and proactive, rather than reactive or coincidental. It is based on a clear strategy of engaging the specific organizations and individuals within the broader community who can advance the work of the partnership. Systematically match your needs with potential sources of support to ensure that effective connections occur.

21 Put Mechanisms in Place to Reinforce the Partnership. To realize its full potential, a partnership needs a clear vision, dedicated and skilled people, a rewards and recognition program, incentives that stimulate desired activity, sustained management support and involvement, operational funds, and a clear understanding among supervisors and staff of the potential benefits that result from the arrangement. These are complex, but essential, elements to put in place. The seriousness with which they are addressed will determine your degree of success.

It all boils down to how deliberate and strategic you and your partners are in building a “partnership culture” that incorporates these success factors and the commitments you are willing to make. Understand and adapt success behaviors, develop competencies for these behaviors to be regularly practiced, and align your partnership to succeed. t Brian O’Neill served as the superintendent of Golden Gate National Parks. He passed away in 2009.

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Creating a More

By Rick Beard

A Short History of

AASLH “The AASLH is to develop a broad field which, though already cultivated in various foreign countries, up to now has lain fallow in the United States and Canada.”

Christopher C. Crittenden Secretary, North Carolina Historical Commission First AASLH President 1

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O

n December 27, 1940, eighty-nine men and women representing forty-eight organizations gathered in New York to create the American Association for State and Local History. Their number included historical society executives, academic historians, archivists, librarians, and local historians, nearly all of them members of the American Historical Association’s Conference of State and Local Historical Societies. Their actions that day, while dramatic, were also predictable. As Robert B. Townsend’s companion essay details, frustration with the ineffectiveness of the conference had been steadily growing (see sidebar).2 A fifteen-member committee representing institutions from all regions of the country recommended the creation of a new association that would provide a broad array of services to state and local historical organizations. In what was surely a series of lopsided votes, the meeting attendees adopted the report’s recommendations and a constitution (fortuitously prepared in advance), disbanded the conference and transferred its negligible assets to the new organization, elected a slate of officers, and established dues (ranging from two dollars for an annual individual membership to a hundred dollars for a lifetime institutional membership). In July the first issue of State and Local History News announced the new association to a world of “organizations in the field of state, provincial, and local history” that “would profit by a closer association with the others.” 3

Meaningful Past: Launching a new organization with national aspirations represents a formidable challenge in the best of times.

One must marvel at the boldness of AASLH’s founders, who faced both an intractable economic depression and the United States’ increasingly likely entrance into a world war. In October 1941 the first annual meeting convened in Hartford, Connecticut, where morning and afternoon sessions addressed “Raising the Standards of Historical Society Work” and “A Publication Program for Historical Societies.” At the end of the organization’s first year, it reported income of $1,638.93 and a surplus of $563.15.4 During World War II, the new association managed to meet annually, publish nine technical bulletins and State and Local History News monthly, and initiate a national awards program. Membership in 1945 totaled 430 individual, 183 institutional, and eight life members. The following year, the members endorsed a five-year plan that in large measure reiterated the goals first articulated in 1940, with special emphasis on assisting local historical societies. 5

AASLH

and the

Break

By the mid-1930s, the leaders of state and local history societies were fed up with the American Historical Association (AHA). In 1934 Julian Boyd, manuscripts curator at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, took to the pages of the American Historical Review to catalog the distinguished work of the societies and vent a general sense of disgust at the academics running the AHA. He tried to rally the leaders of the other societies to “take their destiny firmly in hand and establish an autonomous national organization.”

The divisions were not always thus, however. Beginning in the late 1800s, the leaders of the AHA started to take note of the fact that history was taking on an important life outside the books and articles of its founding members. Up to that point, the attitudes of many of the early leaders in the AHA—almost all of whom came from the New England area—were shaped by the often antiquarian character of the societies in that region, particularly the Massachusetts Historical Society, which was prone to collect and publish materials about a few select families.

Author of

In the decade after the war, AASLH’s ambitions tested its volunteer leadership’s energies. A publication launched in 1946 “to coordinate the teaching of history in the various states” had three years later morphed into American Heritage.

An agreement with a commercial publisher to produce the magazine in 1954 generated a considerable, although unpredictable, revenue stream for AASLH for many years.6 In 1956 AASLH adopted the Crittenden Report, which would guide the organization’s growth for nearly two decades. It identified the AASLH annual meetings, publications, awards program, and information clearinghouse as organizational successes, while expressing disappointment at the failure to attract members beyond the profession.

While lobbying for a paid administrative position, the report recommended that the association “go slow in making continuing commitments that will hamstring us.” “The goal of swelling state and local history to the American people,” it concluded, could be reached if “we never lose sight of the pitfalls of ivory-towerism, old-fogysim, and pedantry.” 7

with the

AHA

By the late 1890s, however, the leaders of the AHA began to connect with emerging professionalized societies west of the Appalachians, particularly the work of Reuben Gold Thwaites at the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. After an abortive attempt in 1897, the AHA finally constituted a Conference of State and Local Historical Societies under Thwaites’s leadership in 1904.

At the outset, the meetings of the group (which occurred during the AHA annual meeting) attracted a distinguished collection of historical society leaders, archivists, university faculty, and amateur historians. Conversations at the meetings ranged from discussions of best practices in archiving to efforts to systematize the working relationships between the societies. Outside the meeting gatherings, the conference set about developing a running census of historical societies and their practices.

But over the next three decades participants at the historical society sessions began to sort themselves out continued on page 25

B y Robe rt B . Townse nd History’s Babel: Scholarship, Professionalization, and the Historical Enterprise in the United States, 1880-1940 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013)

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1941

1945

1956

1960

1963

1964

1974

1977

American Association for State and Local History is founded in New York

First annual meeting in Hartford, Connecticut

Membership: 430 individual, 183 institutional, and eight life members

First paid staff member: Clement C. Silvestro

Membership: 1,559

Membership: over 2,000 New director: William T. Alderson

Membership: 2,348

Launched: The States and the Nation: Bicentennial Histories

Membership: 5,086

Yo ur Ho m e f o r His to ry

1 940

24

The association’s first paid staff member—a University of Wisconsin graduate student named Clement C. Silvestro— went to work in late 1956 as a part-time administrative assistant for the organization’s incoming president. Within a year, Silvestro became a full-time employee, editing History News and, over his seven-year tenure, assuming increasing executive responsibility. The association continued its popular newsletter and series of informational bulletins, regularly updated the directory of historical agencies, organized annual meetings and other conferences, assumed cosponsorship for the Seminar for Historical Administration (now Developing History Leaders @SHA) at Colonial Williamsburg, and began publishing technical leaflets.8 In March 1963 the AASLH leadership reaffirmed the Crittenden Report, committing the organization to raising standards; recruiting and training personnel; helping amateur historians and local historical societies; urging historical societies to support the basic functions such as the annual meeting, publications and awards programs, and the information clearinghouse; and encouraging school services. By the time Silvestro resigned in December 1963, the professional staff included a full-time field director, a director of education, and an editor for History News, as well as secretarial support. Aggressive efforts had pushed membership from 1,559 in 1960 to over 2,000 in 1963.9 Within months, AASLH’s governing council selected William T. Alderson, then head of the Tennessee State Library and Archives, as the new director. In keeping with past practice, Alderson relocated the association’s administrative activities to Nashville, in the process establishing the organization’s first and continuing permanent headquarters. Alderson’s fourteen-year administration cemented the importance of AASLH to the local and state history community. Membership in all categories grew from 2,348 in 1964 to 5,086 in 1977. The association employed thirty-two full-time and two part-time staff members by 1976.10 Alderson’s tenure spanned the creation of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) in 1966 and the celebration of the two-hundredth anniversary of the American Revolution ten years later. Both would prove critical to the growth of support for and interest in history at the state and local levels. AASLH immediately benefitted from NEH largesse: grants of more than $208,000 over three years supported core educational seminars and institutes for professionals. The significance of the NEH’s early support was considerable, for it enabled AASLH to enhance its core training programs and raise its national profile at a time when the association’s annual operating budget hovered around $100,000. The NEH would continue to be a significant, though less frequent, source of support for AASLH programs, particularly as the bicen­ tennial approached.11

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AASLH planning for the 1976 bicentennial began with a two-year, NEH-funded study of how local historical societies could develop effective programs to commemorate the anniversary. The resulting publication, titled Bicentennial USA: Pathways to Celebration, drew on case studies of commemorative activities in Canada and the United States to guide “programs which will open up the human capacities of America to the highest degree.” The manual’s author, Robert Hartje, went on to suggest that “most of the [bicentennial] action will take place at the local level” and reminded planners to put “man’s search for identity, his needs for festivity, and his innate urge to create” at the center of commemorative activities.12 AASLH’s most ambitious bicentennial project—The States and the Nation: Bicentennial Histories—launched early in 1974. Co-published with W. W. Norton & Company and supported by $1.6 million from the NEH, the series of fiftyone volumes sought to “characterize a state historically and interpret its history in relation to the nation.” By the end of 1979, forty-seven volumes had been published, and over 300,000 copies had been sold. Almost forty years later, eighteen of the fifty-one volumes are still available.13 In February 1978 William Alderson announced his resignation to become director of museum studies at the University of Delaware. Under his leadership, AASLH had grown from an organization with a five-person staff and a budget of $79,000 to a thirty-five-person organization spending $1.1 million a year. It had successfully established itself as the major publisher of materials on the administration of historical organizations and was nationally recognized for its training seminars and workshops. The association did not have to look far for Alderson’s successor, announcing in May that Gerald George, who had been managing editor of the bicentennial book series, would be the next director.14 During George’s time at the helm, AASLH reaffirmed its commitment to publication and education while launching several important initiatives. A comprehensive survey of the historical agency and museum field, completed in 1983, was summarized in History News the following year.

Who were AASLH members? 15 • 52 percent of AASLH members were under age forty • 73 percent held advanced degrees • 98 percent earned less than $50,000 • 38 percent were administrators or directors • 26 percent were curators, archivists, and historians

How much were they paid? 16 • Average salary for a historian was $25,489 • Average salary for an educator was $17,045 • Women comprised 53 percent of the work force, and over 60 percent in city and county historical agencies • By age sixty-four, women were paid on average $19,000 less than their male colleagues

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1987

1989

1990

1994

1995

2006

2009

2014

New director: Gerald George

New director: Larry Tise

New interim director: Peter S. LaPaglia

New director: Patricia Gordon Michael

New interim director: Terry Davis

New president & CEO: Terry Davis

Launched: Visitors Count!

Launched: StEPs (Standards and Excellence Program)

Membership: 6,000 New interim president & CEO: Bob Beatty

• Mean salary for a history professional was highest in the South • Federal agencies offered the highest salaries, followed in descending order by state, private, city, and county organizations

What was the institutional profile? 17 • 75 percent of American historical organizations had been founded after 1935 • 8 percent had been founded before 1900 • 20 percent annually spent between $1,000 and $9,999 • 12 percent spent less than $1,000 • 5 percent spent more than $1 million • Over half of these organizations had no paid staff • Fewer than 8 percent had more than ten employees

What did they worry about?

• 35 percent identified fundraising and financial stability as their greatest worry • 14 percent chose collections care and acquisition • 2 percent selected either exhibitions or education • Fewer than 1 percent chose research Financial stability was clearly a critical issue for the profession and also of increasing concern for AASLH. The goals of a three-year plan adopted in 1983 included (1) helping organizations maintain financial stability, (2) providing history professionals with opportunities for intellectual and career development, (3) recognizing their work, (4) dispensing technical support, and (5) strengthening AASLH. Three years later, an ad hoc planning committee recommended that the association (1) identify a core program of services to be supported by dues and fees, with other activities to be underwritten by new sources of revenue; (2) pay greater attention to the professional needs of career-oriented members and their institutions; and (3) invest in the sustained development of sources supporting financial growth.18 The 1986 report provided a stark warning that AASLH’s most important services were under serious threat of curtailment. Association dues, kept deliberately low to encourage membership, covered only a small portion of the costs of core programs. Royalties from American Heritage constituted an important but unreliable revenue stream that ended abruptly with a 1984 court settlement severing the agreement. Although the association received a one-time payout of $360,000, AASLH leadership depleted these funds with a campaign that failed to produce a meaningful increase in membership. Simultaneously, the NEH recast its funding priorities, severely reducing what had been a reliable source of funding for both existing operations and new programming initiatives.19 As feared, the growing financial crisis led to program reductions, efforts to make surviving programs self-

supporting, and staff reductions. Ironically, the downturn in AASLH’s fortunes took place at the very moment when a new generation of professionals, eager to build on the enthusiasm for history generated by the bicentennial, turned increasingly to the association for more sophisticated service. Over 65 percent of all historical organizations in the nation had been founded since December 1940, and almost half of those dated from the bicentennial era. Some of these new institutions pursued modest goals, but a significant number of the new institutions, as well as many older, longsomnolent ones, had larger aspirations that only a national service organization could help advance. While recognizing the need for dramatic changes to meet the field’s evolving needs and expectations, leadership found itself hamstrung by AASLH’s dwindling financial resources.

Unfortunately, things went from bad to worse over the next decade. Ineffective executive leadership over the next nine years further weakened AASLH. Gerald George stepped down in the spring of 1987, after fourteen years with the association, nine as director. His replacement, Larry Tise, had held leadership positions in North Carolina and Pennsylvania. Tise arrived with a clear sense of mission, recognizing that AASLH “is at one of those junctures

Break

continued from page 23

into separate conversations based on particular professional interests. The archivists became more active in a conference of their own, and the academics increasingly devoted their time to highly specialized sessions on scholarly research.

By the early 1930s the leaders of the conference looked about with growing discomfort at their increasing isolation in the meetings of the AHA—exacerbated by the AHA Council’s tendency to put the conference’s proposals on a back burner (generally citing a lack of funds due to the Depression).

Boyd’s manifesto in the American Historical Review provided a spur to organize a separate organization, but despite general enthusiasm, the logistics of establishing such an organization in the lean years of the Depression proved too high in the mid-1930s.

By 1939, however, the finances and organization of the societies were back on firmer ground, and could draw on the experience of the archivists, who had broken away from the AHA in 1936. With close assistance from leaders of the Society of American Archivists, particularly Solon Buck (who had started his career at the Minnesota Historical Society), the conference finally formalized the break with the AHA and set a new and positive agenda as the American Association for State and Local History.

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In the 1980s over 65 percent of all historical organizations in the nation had been founded since December 1940, and almost half of those dated from the bicentennial era.

Endnotes

in its own history when we are planning to make major and significant amendments to the manner in which we operate and to the programs we foster and promote.” By his own admission, he enjoyed “almost any enterprise that seeks to connect ideas and aspirations with perceived needs into some grand scheme to change the world.”20 But solutions to the dilemmas faced

by AASLH in the late 1980s were not to be found in grand schemes. The organization did not need a “philosopher king;” it needed a hard-headed, action-oriented executive. While Tise was clearly motivated by a deep love of history, his programmatic solutions were too often buried amid long-winded expositions such as “A New Ethic and Plan of Action,” presented in the spring of 1988. After eight pages spent taking most historians to task for the sorry state of history education and presentation in the United States, the plan offered four general action steps, only one of which had much relevance to AASLH’s immediate situation or its

1

“President’s Message,” State and Local History News 1, no. 1 (July 1941): 1-2.

“Our Association and the Future,” State and Local History News 1, no. 9 (November 1942): 6-7.

2

3

“President’s Message,” State and Local History News 1, no. 1 (July 1941): 1-2.

“Annual Meeting,” State and Local History News 1, no. 3 (November 1941): 3; and “The American Association for State and Local History,” State and Local History News 1, no. 6 (May 1942): 8.

4

5 Robert W. Richmond, “Fifty Years of AASLH Annual Meetings,” History News 45, no. 5 (September/October 1990): 1-4. Meetings were held in Richmond, Virginia (1942); Princeton, New Jersey (1943); Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (1944); and Indianapolis, Indiana (1945). The first meetings west of the Mississippi River took place in 1947 (Denver, Colorado) and 1950 (Portland, Oregon).

6 George Rollie Adams, “Planning for the Future, AASLH Takes a Look at Its Past,” History News 37, no. 9 (September 1982): 15; Holman Swinney, “Realizing the Intentions: AASLH, 1956-1976,” in Frederick L. Rath, ed., Local History, National Heritage: Reflections on the History of AASLH (Nashville, TN: American Association for State and Local History, 1991), 52; and Gerald George, “From the Director: The End of an Era,” History News 39, no. 3 (March 1984): 4. The initial infusion of revenue from American Heritage underwrote the employment of the organization’s first paid staff member and the creation of a contingency reserve fund. AASLH’s relationship with American Heritage ebbed and flowed over three decades. By the late 1950s, the magazine’s circulation topped 300,000, and AASLH was receiving $50,000 to $60,000 a year from its publication. It proved to be an unpredictable source of revenue, however, and the agreement ended badly when AASLH sued for breach of contract. The resulting monetary settlement severed all ties with the magazine in early 1984.

Albert B. Corey, Russell W. Fridley, James C. Olson, Frederick L. Rath, and K. Ross Toole, “Long-Range Plans for Association Announced: Report of Committee on Long-Range Planning Reviews Past History of Association and Makes Recommendations for the Future,” History News 12, no. 5 (March 1957): 35-38.

7

8 The association’s bylaws were not amended officially to create a full-time paid directorship until 1959. See Clement C. Silvestro, “Annual Report,” History News 14, no. 12 (October 1959): 115.

9 George Rollie Adams, “Planning for the Future, AASLH Takes a Look at its Past,” History News 37, no. 9 (September 1982): 17; and Clement C. Silvestro, “Annual Report, 1963,” History News 18, no. 12 (October 1963): 189.

10 Holman Swinney, “Realizing the Intentions: AASLH, 1956-1976,” in Frederick L. Rath, ed., Local History, National Heritage: Reflections on the History of AASLH (Nashville, TN: American Association for State and Local History, 1991), 51; William T. Alderson, “Annual Report, 1964” History News 19, no. 13 (November 1964): 212; William T. Alderson, “Annual Report, 1977,” History News 33, no. 1 (January 1978): 32; and William T. Alderson, “Annual Report, 1976,” History News

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Summer 2014

traditional “nuts and bolts” services to members. Further, his lobbying on behalf of the relocation of AASLH headquarters to the northeast corridor alienated many members who viewed such a move as a betrayal of the organization’s roots at the state and local level.21 In September of 1989, History News announced the appointment of Peter S. LaPaglia as the association’s new interim director. A former AASLH staff member in charge of seminars and workshops and most recently director of the Wichita Falls Museum and Arts Center, LaPaglia steered the organization for nine months as it prepared for its fiftieth year of operation. In July 1990 Patricia Gordon Michael, a seasoned museum administrator most recently at the Museum of Staten Island, accepted appointment as the organization’s fifth director. During her five-year tenure, Michael proved unable to stanch the financial bleeding. Membership dropped, publications placed an ever-greater strain on the association’s budget, and for a time the organization teetered on the edge of bankruptcy.22 The elevation of Terry Davis, who had joined AASLH as director of finance and advancement in late 1994, first to interim director and then in late summer 1995 to president and chief executive officer, introduced sorely needed man-

32, no. 1 (January 1977): 32. In the mid-1950s AASLH had operated from the location of whoever was president, although publications were headquartered in Raleigh, North Carolina, and finances in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The move to Nashville proved a permanent one, and all of the association’s activities were centralized for the first time. The growth of the annual operating budget is hard to track, for the annual reports from 1964 through 1977 do not include financial summaries. It is reasonable to suppose that the business meeting at the annual conference would have included (as it does today) a summary of AASLH’s financial condition. In the 1972 report Alderson references an operating budget for 1973 of $376,000, which he notes is 4.5 times the operating budget for 1964, which would thus have amounted to $85,500.

See History News 28, no. 1 (January 1973): 17.

11 These grants were reported on in History News 22, no. 12 (December 1967): 237; and History News 23, no. 12 (December 1968): 225.

12 “Endowment Awards Grant to AASLH for Study of Bicentennial Programs,” History News 25, no. 7 (July 1970): 144; and “AASLH Publishes Robert Harte’s Guide to Meaningful Bicentennial Programs,” History News 28, no. 9 (September 1973): 193.

13 “Bicentennial Histories Begin in Earnest with New Humanities Endowment Funding,” History News 29, no. 1 (January 1974): 3; and “American Association for State and Local History Annual Report, 1979,” History News 35, no. 6 (June 1980): 32. At the time of this report, the volume on Connecticut had just gone to press, and those for Hawaii, New York, and Vermont were still outstanding.

14 “Alderson to Leave AASLH for Museum Studies Post,” History News 33, no. 2 (February 1978): 35; “Gerald George to Assume Directorship of AASLH,” History News 33, no. 5 (May 1978): 113.

15 “Who Reads History News? Highlights from the Latest Survey of AASLH Members,” History News 39, no. 1 (January 1984): 13-15.

16 Charles Phillips and Patricia Hogan, “The Wages of History: History News Presents Highlights from AASLH’s Employment Trends and Salary Survey,” History News 39, no. 8 (August 1984): 6-10. When adjusted to 2013 dollars, the comparable salaries for a historian and an educator would be $59,862 and $40,031 respectively.

The high salaries afforded historians are most likely an anomaly caused by the inclusion of federal employees designated as historians. There would be no comparable position to that of director in federal agencies such as the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Defense, or the National Park Service. The difference between men and women’s salaries dropped sharply, to about $6,400, if the analysis assumed that education and time employed were equal for both genders.

17 Charles Phillips and Patricia Hogan, “Who Cares for America’s Heritage?

History News Presents Highlights from the AASLH’s Profile of the Historical Agency and Museum Field,” History News 39, no. 9 (September 1984): 6-12.

18 William Puryear, “Annual Report, 1983,” History News 39, no. 4 (April 1984): 1; and Ellsworth Brown, “Foundations for the Future: Initial Report of the Ad Hoc

agement skills to a troubled organization. Relying on task forces to evaluate association programs such as publishing and membership, she identified opportunities for cost cutting and revenue enhancement. While decisions such as the outsourcing of future publishing activities produced almost immediate cost savings, it took several years of belt tightening to restore financial stability.23 Davis’s administration simultaneously repurposed longestablished AASLH activities and introduced important new programs. The customarily low-key awards program, for example, became the occasion for a celebratory, often raucous banquet on the last evening of the annual conference.

For the first time, the association instituted an ongoing multi-faceted development effort. Leadership asked members not only for annual dues but also for contributions to an annual campaign and an endowment fund that by 2014 totaled $1.4 million.24 Sophisticated new initiatives helped further strengthen history organizations. Visitors Count!, inaugurated in 2006 as the Performance Management Program, teaches institutions how to use visitor satisfaction measures to improve their performance. The Standards and Excellence Program for History Organizations (StEPs), launched in 2009, helps small

Committee on Planning for the American Association for State and Local History,” History News 41, no. 5 (September/October 1986): 28-33.

19 Larry Tise, “The Critical First Year: A New Departure for AASLH: 1988 Annual Report,” History News 44, no. 1 (January/February 1989): 3-4.

20 Larry E. Tise, “From the Director: On Revolutions and Constitutions,” History News 42, no. 5 (September/October 1987): 4; and Larry Tise, “From the Director: A Common Agenda for History in America,” History News 43, no.

2 (March/April 1988): 4.

21 Larry Tise, “Special Report: Organizing America’s History Business: A New Ethic and Plan of Action,” History News 43, no. 2 (March/April 1988): 17-28; and Larry Tise, “The Critical First Year: A New Departure for AASLH: 1988 Annual Report,” History News 44, no. 1 (January/February 1989): 20. The one action step that held promise—the integration of historical knowledge derived from collecting and documentation activities—would manifest itself in the “Common Agenda” project, the subject for a future article.

22 “From the Director: Patricia Gordon Michael Named New AASLH Director,” History News 45, no. 3 (May/June 1990): 2.

23 Author interview with former AASLH president and Council member, August 20, 2014.

24

Provided by AASLH staff, August 20, 2014.

25

AASLH (website), www.aaslh.org/.

26 Steve Shulman, “AASLH HEART Project: Recovering History Collections After the 2005 Hurricanes Along the Gulf Coast,” and “AASLH HEART Team Volunteers,” History News 61, no. 2 (Spring 2006): 8-12, 13; Gerald George, “Historic House Museum Malaise: A Conference Considers What’s Wrong,” History News 57, no. 4 (Autumn 2002): 21-25; Jay D. Vogt, “The Kykuit II Summit: The Sustainability of Historic Sites,” History News, 62, no. 4 (Autumn 2007): 17-21; and Terry Davis, “If You Want More Money, Now’s the Time to Ask: Federal Formula Grants for Museums,” History News 61, no. 4 (Autumn 2006): 13-16. Kykuit, the Rockefeller estate north of New York City in Westchester County, hosted both historic house meetings.

27 Duane W. Gang, “Couple Charged in Embezzlement of More than $730,000 from Nonprofit,” Tennessean, March 29, 2012, accessed August 20, 2014, http://archive.tennessean.com/article/20120329/ NEWS03/303280139/ Couple-charged-embezzlement-more-than-730-000-from-nonprofit. Risa Woodward pled guilty to six felony charges for theft, fraudulent use of credit cards, identity theft, and forgery in July 2013. She was sentenced to one year of incarceration and nine years of probation. At the time this article was written, AASLH has a suit pending against its audit firm, Frasier Dean & Howard, for $950,000 and is also seeking repayment of the stolen funds and a $3 million compensatory award from the Woodwards.

and mid-sized history organizations with policy assessment, daily operations, and strategic planning.25 By the early twenty-first century, AASLH was well positioned to play an increasingly important national role. When Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast in August 2005, the association organized and found funding for the History Emergency Assistance Recovery Teams (HEART) program, which deployed eight teams throughout Louisiana and Mississippi to assess the damage to cultural institutions and their collections. AASLH also took the lead role in addressing long-term challenges within the profession.

In 2002 and 2007, for example, the association worked with the National Trust for Historic Preservation to convene the “Kykuit summits” to consider the ongoing sustainability of historic house museums and historic sites. A problem such as this may well prove intractable, but by facilitating an ongoing dialogue, AASLH assures that efforts to solve it will continue. AASLH also led a federal formula grant effort modeled after the program that currently directs When Hurricane nearly $200 million annually to the Katrina devastated nation’s libraries through the Institute of Museum and Library Services. In a perthe Gulf Coast verse twist of fate, the effort coalesced in August 2005, just as the nation fell into its worst ecoAASLH organized nomic slump since the 1930s. While the chances of success for federal formula and found funding grants in the current political climate for the History are nonexistent, the effort firmly estabEmergency lished AASLH as a national player and could today be easily resuscitated should Assistance Recovery our national funding priorities shift.26 Teams (HEART) Terry Davis resigned in July 2014, program. after nearly twenty years as the association’s CEO, and new leadership will soon be selected to lead the celebration of AASLH’s seventy-fifth anniversary.

In an illustration that human venality too often trumps personal trust and loyalty, Davis spent much of the last two years of her administration addressing the fallout from embezzlement over many years by the association’s longtenured director of finance. It was an undeserved end to two decades of leadership that one past Council chair characterized as a “golden age” for the organization. Since the 1990s AASLH has rebounded from near financial ruin, added an exciting array of new programs, strengthened old ones, and cemented its position as the organization best suited to help us create more meaningful pasts.27 t Rick Beard, currently an independent historian and author, is a past member of the AASLH Council and formerly served in senior management positions at the Hudson River Museum, the Museum of the City of New York, the Atlanta History Center, the New York Historical Society, and the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum. He can be reached at reric@mindspring.com. This is the first in a series of essays commemorating the seventy-fifth anniversary of the AASLH.

H i s t o r y n e ws

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J. M. Ke l l e y l T D.

Specializing in the Preservation and Replication of Period Architecture 5075 Old Traveller Lane • Mechanicsville, VA 23111 • Phone: (804) 200-5705 • www.jmkelleyltd.com

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Award Winner Spotlight >

By Mike Bunn

The Fort Daniel Foundation Fort Daniel Foundation

A

little over a decade ago, retired teacher and archaeologist Dr. James J. D’Angelo and a few friends who shared his interest in history collectively shook their heads in dismay at the devastating consequences of the suburban sprawl of metro Atlanta. As residents of Gwinnett County, one of the fastestgrowing counties in Georgia, D’Angelo and his colleagues were all too well aware of the rapid pace at which northern Georgia was losing historic sites. Armed with little more than a desire to foster greater appreciation of the rich heritage they saw literally being paved away and a vision that things in their community could be better, D’Angelo and his companions formed the Gwinnett Archaeological Research Society (GARS) in 2003. Its simple purpose was to promote the study and preservation of local historic sites. From that broad initiative eventually came a series of related accomplishments that was recognized by AASLH in 2014 with the prestigious Albert B. Corey Award. The award honors all-volunteer groups that “best display the qualities of vigor, scholarship, and imagination” in their work.

While his group embodies those qualities in spades, one cannot help but wonder if D’Angelo’s advanced degrees in philosophy and theology were as much a part of the process as his academic background in archaeology, for what they have accomplished is indeed a minor miracle.

The formation of GARS, an official chapter of the Society for Georgia Archaeology, laid the foundation for a remarkable series of accomplishments that exemplify the energy and skill with which the nation’s leading all-volunteer history organizations accomplish their goals. GARS helps facilitate and carry out professional-level archaeological investigations of prehistoric and historic sites in Gwinnett County, led by trained professionals adhering to the highest standards. It strives to make reports from these and other related investigations available, most often through its newsletter, so that the public can appreciate and make use of their findings. Crucially, the group promotes awareness of the impor-

Above and Below:

Artifacts discovered during archaeological excavation at the site of Fort Daniel

Right: Jim D’Angelo

and members of the Fort Daniel Foundation team identifying artifacts found at the site

tance of archaeological study as a tool for interpreting the past and promotes preservation and thoughtful stewardship of historic resources. Through the generosity and hard work of the group’s members and supporters, the organization in 2009 launched an annual special event, known the “Frontier Fair,” to encourage public awareness of its activities and the rich history of Gwinnett County and the wider region. Not only has a wide spectrum of the public participated in educational programming associated with this growing and popular grassroots event, but students and faculty from area colleges and elementary and middle schools also have been involved.

A primary goal of GARS always has been the interpretation of the site of Fort Daniel. Originally built circa 1806, the fort was a militia outpost located near the junction of the early nineteenth-century boundaries of the state of Georgia and the Creek and Cherokee Indian Nations.

During the Creek War of 1813-14, by order of Major General Allen Daniel, the fort was reconstructed. The post became the starting point for a road to the Chattahoochee River (modern Atlanta), designed to allow the shipping of supplies downriver to the militia and U.S. Army forces operating in the heart of Creek

territory in what is now Alabama. Its role in the Creek War, an underappreciated turning point in U.S. history, is still being discovered today.

In 2007 GARS succeeded in documenting the actual site of Fort Daniel in the backyard of a private residence.

An ensuing series of programs, including, especially, professional archaeological investigation, literally placed Fort Daniel “on the map” and helped it get the long overdue attention it deserves.

Archaeologists have discovered numerous artifacts that shed light on the fort’s intriguing history, such as pottery, glass, clay pipe fragments, musket flints and bullets, wrought iron nails, and even a Spanish coin. Perhaps most importantly, remote sensing techniques have contributed to the first-ever mapping of the site of the fort.

D’Angelo and his compatriots didn’t rest on their laurels after finding the fort.

Rather, they creatively leveraged their accomplishments toward other long-term goals. First, they arranged for the listing of the fort site on the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation’s annual list of “Places in Peril” in 2009. That designation helped them win a major grant from the Trust and a substantial in-kind donation of services from an Atlanta landscape H i s t o r y n e ws

29

THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR STATE AND LOCAL HISTORY Acknowledges and appreciates these Endowment Donors for their extraordinary support:

Dr. William T. Alderson Society $50,000+

Ms. Terry L. Davis Nashville, TN Mr. John & Ms. Anita Durel Baltimore, MD

Ms. Sylvia Alderson Winston–Salem, NC Anonymous

Mr. Stephen Elliott St. Paul, MN

Mr. John Frisbee (Deceased) Concord, NH

Mr. Dennis Fiori Boston, MA

National Endowment for the Humanities Washington, DC

Mr. Leslie H. Fishel (Deceased) Madison, WI

Mr. Dennis & Ms. Trudy O’Toole Monticello, NM

Ms. Barbara Franco Harrisburg, PA

AASLH President’s Society

Mr. James B. Gardner Washington, DC

$10,000 – $49,999

Historic Annapolis Foundation Annapolis, MD

Mr. Edward P. Alexander (Deceased) Washington, DC AltaMira Press Lanham, MD Mr. & Mrs. Charles F. Bryan, Jr. Richmond, VA Ms. Sandra Sageser Clark Holt, MI The History Channel New York, NY Martha-Ellen Tye Foundation Marshalltown, IA

Friends of the Endowment Society $5,000 – $9,999

Indiana Historical Society Indianapolis, IN Mr. Russell Lewis & Ms. Mary Jane jacob Chicago, IL Maryland Historical Society Baltimore, MD Missouri History Museum St. Louis, MO Ms. Candace Tangorra Matelic Pawleys Island, SC Ms. Kathleen S. & Mr. James L. Mullins Grosse Pointe Shores, MI National Heritage Museum Lexington, MA Nebraska State Historical Society Lincoln, NE

Atlanta History Center Atlanta, GA

Ms. Laura Roberts & Mr. Edward Belove Cambridge, MA

Mr. Charles H. Bentz Warren, OH Mr. & Mrs. Salvatore Cilella Atlanta, GA Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Williamsburg, VA Mr. David Crosson & Ms. Natalie Hala San Francisco, CA

Ms. Ruby Rogers Cincinnati, OH Mr. Jim & Ms. Janet Vaughan Washington, DC Mr. George L. Vogt Portland, OR Ms. Jeanne & Mr. Bill Watson Orinda, CA

AASLH also thanks the following individuals for their leadership as members of the AASLH Legacy Society. The Legacy Society provides AASLH members an opportunity to donate to the endowment via estate planning.

Ms. Sylvia Alderson Winston–Salem, NC

Mr. J. Kevin Graffagnino Barre, VT

Anonymous

Mr. John A. Herbst Indianapolis, IN

Mr. Bob & Ms. Candy Beatty Franklin, TN Mr. Robert M. & Ms. Claudia H. Brown Missoula, MT Mr. & Mrs. Charles F. Bryan Jr. Richmond, VA Ms. Linda Caldwell Etowah, TN Ms. Mary Case & Mr. Will Lowe Washington, DC Mr. & Mrs. Salvatore Cilella Atlanta, GA Ms. Terry L. Davis Nashville, TN Mr. Stephen & Ms. Diane Elliott St. Paul, MN Mr. John Frisbee (Deceased) Concord, NH

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architectural firm, which together resulted in the creation of a master plan for a proposed historic site and archaeological park.

With significant private support, GARS soon set up the Fort Daniel Foundation as a separate entity to administer the growing responsibilities related to the fort project. In 2012 the foundation helped facilitate the purchase of the property by Gwinnett County, and in 2013 it signed an agreement with the county to lease the site in order to develop it as an archaeological park. The home of the former owner, now vacated, will be used as an educational center and conservation laboratory for artifacts recovered from excavations.

Mr. H. G. Jones Chapel Hill, NC Ms. Katherine Kane West Hartford, CT Ms. Kathleen S. & Mr. James L. Mullins Grosse Pointe Shores, MI Mr. Dennis A. O’Toole Monticello, NM Ms. Ruby Rogers Cincinnati, OH Mr. David J. Russo Ontario, Canada Mr. Will ticknor Las Cruces, NM Mr. George L. Vogt Portland, OR

Under professional supervision, local volunteers have helped out with excavations at the site of Fort Daniel

GARS and the Fort Daniel Foundation have a lot left on their ambitious to-do list. In addition to completion of the historical park at the fort site, plans call for continuation of the Frontier Fair and the development of a “traveling teaching trunk” and scale model of the fort, which will provide area educators with an opportunity to introduce students to this amazing local resource and the good work being done there. These educational resources will include a digital presentation relating some of the basic concepts of archaeology, as well as a curriculum guide for fourth-, fifth-, and eighth-grade students. Dr. D’Angelo even has a book about Fort Daniel and the efforts to find it due out soon. The Fort Daniel project and the associated efforts to raise awareness of cultural heritage resources and engage the public about the importance of responsible stewardship are a model of what can be done through the efforts of a few dedicated volunteers. For more information on the organization, see www.thefortdanielfoundation.org. t Mike Bunn is the Executive Director of the Historic Chattahoochee Commission, headquartered in Eufaula, Alabama, and the regional representative for Alabama, Florida, and Georgia for the AASLH Leadership in History Awards program. He can be contacted at mike.bunn@chattahoocheetrace.com.

Book Reviews > The Lost Region: Toward a Revival of Midwestern History

Community Oral History Toolkit

By Jon K. Lauck (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2013), 206 pp.

Reviewed by Rebecca Conard

By Nancy MacKay, Mary Kay Quinlan, and Barbara W. Sommer (Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2013), 746 pp.

Reviewed by Sarah Milligan

on Lauck follows a number of writers who have commented on the lack of regional awareness in the Midwest and a corresponding paucity of scholarly literature that can be categorized as midwestern history, especially when compared to the South and to lesser degrees the West and New England. Lauck, however, makes a sweeping case for why midwestern history matters; closely examines two generations of Prairie Historians (his term) who, inspired by Frederick Jackson Turner, established midwestern history as a once-vibrant subfield; lays primary cause for its demise in the 1965 rebranding of the Mississippi Valley Historical Association (MVHA) as the Organization of American Historians; and issues an impassioned call for both the revival of midwestern history and an institutional base to support it. Although he focuses his attention on the prairie Midwest, Lauck generally defines the Midwest as the twelve states that make up the U.S. Census Bureau’s “north central” designation: Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan.

The Lost Region is aimed at historians and advanced graduate students in history, not historical organizations, and Chapter 4 contains an impressive historiography of recent scholarship to establish the potential for revival. Nonetheless, some points worthy of consideration by state and local historical organizations can be teased from the pages. Lauck notes that, “In addition to organizing the MVHA to promote midwestern history, the Prairie Historians were strongly committed to aiding the state historical societies of the Midwest” (35). In the same vein, he states that their “dedication to state historical societies was complemented by an intense commitment to state and local history” (36). To stimulate a revival, Lauck calls for the creation of

he Community Oral History Toolkit is an excellent resource for anyone considering or already implementing collections management of a community oral history project. The authors’ more than fifty years’ combined experience working with a diversity of people on community oral history projects is entirely evident in the uncomplicated dissemination and easy authority they demonstrate in this publication. The fivevolume toolkit is structured into visibly accessible and straightforward segments that reflect the entire oral history process, from initial idea to collections access. Not only is this publication easy to skim with handy quick-fact boxes and highlighted abbreviated lists, it also provides in-depth explanations of the logistics of the various aspects of an oral history project.

Individuals frequently come to the process of community oral history with a smart phone and good intentions and may not possess a long-process view. This view includes finding a balance for planning an inclusive community approach; recruiting and managing volunteers to help; budgeting time, costs, and partnerships; and focusing on the longevity and accessibility of the interview after all of the work of conducting it is concluded. As stated in the introduction, a “well-funded institutional setting is not a prerequisite to create solid oral history projects that will endure over time. What is required, however, is a fundamental understanding of oral history as a process that begins long before you ask the first interview question and ends long after you turn off the recorder” (10).

With the rapid changes in technology, we might question the relevant longevity of a paper published guide, but the reality is that oral history methodology has remained fairly unchanged over the last few decades. What continues to change is the equipment oral historians utilize and the way the collected material is maintained and accessed. This toolkit

T

J

a new regional historical organization on the order of the Southern Historical Association (established 1934) and the Western History Association (established 1961), and challenges younger historians—especially doctoral students looking for dissertation topics—to consider writing local histories of the type that Turner and his followers advocated, which is to say connecting the local and particular to “the wider currents of national and global history” (74). Lauck does not offer a similar challenge to historical societies, although he might have done so because in order for regional history to thrive, there must be an audience greater than scholars and the university presses that support academic history. In other words, public history must be involved.

If one accepts Lauck’s premise that the Midwest ought to support a vibrant subfield of history, then it is worth considering the implications for midwestern museums, historical societies, archives, and historic sites. Historical societies, particularly at the state level, have become much more robust in their support of National History Day, and federally funded programs such as Teaching American History and Landmarks of American History and Culture have helped build bridges between universities and K-12 school systems. Creating a larger audience for history logically begins with the schools, but it should not end there. It must encompass the greater historical enterprise. This is a tall order, but one worthy of serious consideration. t Rebecca Conard is director of the graduate program in public history at Middle Tennessee State University. She can be reached at rebecca.conard@mtsu.edu.

H i s t o r y n e ws

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Book Reviews >

Statement of Ownership, Management, and Circulation

does a very strategic job of highlighting the online resources that stay current to the changing technology, including how to choose recording equipment and resources for digital preservation. With an abundance of sample forms for aspects like permissions and collections management printed in the book, as well as available to download from the publisher’s website (www. lcoastpress.com), this toolkit makes it very easy to put well-informed practices in place from the beginning of a project.

This publication is the perfect resource for state and local historical organizations, as well as public

libraries and the multitude of affinity groups looking for guidance on developing an oral history project. I recommend, and use, this toolkit on a regular basis when working with community oral history groups. t Sarah Milligan is the Oral History Administrator for the Kentucky Historical Society (KHS). Her responsibilities include managing the Kentucky Oral History Commission granting programs, leading oral history workshops, offering technical assistance to Kentucky oral history collection holders, and overseeing the more than nine thousand interviews in the KHS archive.

Milligan is a member of the 2011 class of Developing History Leaders @SHA. She can be reached at sarah.milligan@ky.gov.

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